The holy city of Mecca

There is a Pakistani girl, who is doing "Basic Pathophysiology" course with me . Her name is Nimra. I, the curious one, waned to know the meaning of her name and sarted googling for it. The search, as usual carried me away to read the Wikipedia articles. I had always been interested in the Islam religion and it's history. I spent an entire day reading about Prophet Muhammad (may peace be upon him), the mecca, the Kaaba, the medina, Hijra, Haj, the first caliphs, the shia beliefs etc.

According to the Islam, "Allah is the only God" and "Muhammad is the last prophet". The Quran says that a muslim should pray by facing the "Kaaba" which was supposed to have been built by Abraham and his son. The Kaaba is in the Holy mosque in mecca. Mecca and Medina are forbidden for non-muslims. Hence, I wanted to see the site using google maps. I got some good pictures of Mecca and Kaaba and would like to share it in this blog.

You can see the white marble floors of the holy mosque in mecca.

There is a lot of settlement to the left of this mosque, but there is no settlement to the right. This is because the right side has hills.





The Holy mosque.
The central cube structure is the "kaaba". The edges of "Kaaba" roughly face the 4 directions.
The semi circular walls just next to "Kaaba" are not clearly seen. Between these walls and the "Kaaba" lies the remains of Abraham's son and Abraham's second wife.



Wikipedia Kaaba link

PS:
1) There is a lot of argument about the direction of "kaaba" from the places that are on the other side of the earth. Look at Quibla for more details

2) "The Gypsy, the Jew and El Islam (1898)" By Sir Richard Burton is an account of his travel to Mecca disguised as Arab. Should get hold of this book someday.

3) Did you know? In 1979, there was a terrorist attack on "The Holy mosque". Read more..

PPS: Well! By the end of the day, I got back to my original mission, to find out what Nimra means. Nimra means "Tigress" in Arabic.