Other names

Another name used for Mecca in the Qur'an is at 6:92 where it is called Umm al-
Qurā[26] (‫أُ ّم ٱ ْلقُرَ ى‬, meaning "Mother of all Settlements".[23] The city has been called
several other names in both the Qur'an and ahadith. Another name used historically
for Mecca is Tihāmah.[27] According to Arab and Islamic tradition, another name for
Mecca, Fārān, is synonymous with the Desert of Paran mentioned in the Old
Testament at Genesis 21:21.[28] Arab and Islamic tradition holds that the wilderness of
Paran, broadly speaking, is the Tihamah coastal plain and the site where Ishmael
settled was Mecca.[28] Yaqut al-Hamawi, the 12th century Syrian geographer, wrote
that Fārān was "an arabized Hebrew word, one of the names of Mecca mentioned in
the Torah."[29]
PrehistoryEdit
In 2010, Mecca and the surrounding area became an important site
for paleontology with respect to primate evolution, with the discovery of
a Saadanius fossil. Saadanius is considered to be a primate closely related to the
common ancestor of the Old World monkeys and apes. The fossil habitat, near what is
now the Red Sea in western Saudi Arabia, was a damp forest area between 28 million
and 29 million years ago.[30] Paleontologists involved in the research hope to find
further fossils in the area.[31]
Early history (up to 5th century CE)Edit

Mecca, as seen from Jabal al-Nour, 2009. Note that the Great Mosque is the mainly white building with
9 minarets in the background, next to the skyscraper under construction.

Mecca mentioned in Quranic manuscript Codex Arabe 331 ( Q48:24)

A 1787 Ottoman Turkish map of Al-Haram Mosque, and related religious sites, such as Jabal al-Nour