Qualla: Jabal al-Nour

Jabal al-Nour: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sadath i, CC BY-SA 4.0. One thousand seven hundred and fifty steps. That is what it takes to reach the Cave of Hira, a cleft in the rock barely twelve feet long and five feet wide, tucked near the summit of Jabal al-Nour. Pilgrims climb in the dark before dawn, in sandals that slip on Precambrian granite nearly six hundred million years old. They are not climbing for the view, though the view is extraordinary: the spreading lights of Mecca below, the Great Mosque glowing in the valley, the desert mountains folding away toward the Red Sea. They climb because on one night in roughly August of 610 AD, a man named Muhammad retreated into this cave for solitude and came out, according to Islamic tradition, with the first verses of the Quran.

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Image: Sadath i | CC BY-SA 4.0

Jabal al-Nour: The Mountain of Light

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Amineshaker, CC BY-SA 4.0. Jabal al-Nour means Mountain of Light, and the name was given for what happened here rather than for anything you can see. Geologically, it is an unassuming peak, rising only about 640 meters above the desert floor, topped by an oddly shaped summit that looks almost like two moun...

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Image: Amineshaker | CC BY-SA 4.0

Jabal al-Nour: The Cave and the Night of Power

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aiman titi, CC BY-SA 3.0. Muhammad was about forty years old and already known in Mecca as a trustworthy merchant when he began withdrawing here for a month each year, a practice the Arabs called tahannuth: seclusion, meditation, the feeding of any poor wanderers who passed by. He would take provisions up...

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Image: Aiman titi | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jabal al-Nour: The Climb

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ali, CC BY-SA 2.5. Today, during Hajj, an estimated five thousand pilgrims climb to the cave every day. The path is steep, the heat brutal in summer, and for many elderly pilgrims the ascent takes three hours. There are no ropes, no cable cars, no guardrails worthy of the word. Pilgrims carry water...

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Image: Ali | CC BY-SA 2.5

Jabal al-Nour: Looking Down on Mecca

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Omar Chatriwala of Al Jazeera English, CC BY-SA 2.0. What the first worshippers saw from the mountain was silence and rock and the distant smudge of the valley. What pilgrims see today is a different world entirely. The white marble of the Masjid al-Haram glows below. The Abraj Al Bait clock tower, for a time one of the tallest bui...

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Image: Omar Chatriwala of Al Jazeera English | CC BY-SA 2.0

Jabal al-Nour: Stillness at the Summit

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Adiput (talk), Public domain. Jabal al-Nour is crowned by a steep, slippery peak that Muhammad and his companions once climbed together, according to tradition. Those who make the hike today say the stillness at the top is unlike anything in the city below. The wind moves through the rocks, the call to prayer...

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Image: Adiput (talk) | Public domain