An excerpt from the Safar-nama of Nasir Khusraw:
“Jidda is a large city and has a strong wall on the edge of the sea. The population is five thousand. The city is situated to the north of the sea, has good markets, and the kiblah of the Friday mosque faces east. Outside the city there are no buildings except for a mosque known as the Mosque of Prophet of God. The city has two gates, one toward the east and Mecca and the other toward the west and the sea. Going south along the coast from Jiddah, you reach the Yemen via the city of Sa’da, which is fifty leagues away. To the north is the town of al-Jar, which is in the Hejaz. There are no trees or cultivation in Jiddah, and all produce is brought from the outlying countryside. It is twelve leagues to Mecca.
The emir of Jiddah, a vassal to the emir of Mecca, is Tajulma’ali ibn Abi’l-Futuh who is also the emir of Medina. I went to see the emir, and he was generous enough to exempt me from the customs duties that would have applied to me when I passed through the Muslim Gate, and he wrote to Mecca saying that I was a scholar and nothing was to be taken from me.
I left Jiddah at the time of evening prayer.”
Source: Thackston, W. Wheeler McIntosh, ed. trans., Nasir- i Khusraw’s Book of Travels (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2010), 88.
Jidda is a port on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia. The town is flanked by a lagoon on the north-west and salt flats on the south-east facing a bay on the west so encumbered by reefs that it can only be entered through narrow channels. By paved road, Jidda is about 72 km from Mecca and 419 km from Medina.
Jidda during early Muslim Period: The foundations of Jidda’s importance were laid in 26 AH / 646 CE by the Caliph ‘Uthman, who chose it as the port of Mecca in place of the older port of al-Shu‘ayba, to the south. As the focus of the Muslim world, Mecca became a great centre for import with supplies coming from Egypt and India arriving via Jidda.
The mid-4th AH / 10th CE century Muslim geographer, al-Muqaddasi (d. 381 AH / 991 CE) notes Jidda as a prosperous commercial town. Its customs were a considerable source of revenue to the rulers of the Hijaz as were the taxes levied on pilgrims at Jidda. A century later, the geographer from Al-Andalus Ibn Jubayr (d. 614 AH / 1217 CE) described Jidda as a town of reed huts, stone khans (caravansaries), and mosques, praising Salah al-Din Ayyubi for having abolished the taxes levied by the sharifs.
Jidda during the Medieval Muslim Period: With the decline of the Abbasid Caliphate, much of the trade formerly going to Basra diverted to Jidda. Ships from Egypt, carrying gold, metals, and woollens from Europe, met those from India carrying spices, dyes, rice, sugar, tea, grain, and precious stones at Jidda. The arrival of the Portuguese to Eastern waters, and their attacks on Muslim shipping from 907 AH / 1502 CE onward, brought a new threat to Jidda, which the Mamluks, and after them the Ottomans, made determined efforts to combat.
Jidda from 19th century onwards: During the 19th century, Jidda passed through a number of vicissitudes. In 1803 the Wahhabis besieged the sharif Ghalib in Jidda but were unable to take the town, which began to boast of itself as a Gibraltar. Upon Ghalib’s surrender, Jidda came under the rule of the Wahhabis and remained in their control until 1811 when the ruling pasha of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, restored nominal Ottoman suzerainty there. Jidda was the first Hijazi city to fall to the Sharifian army after the the Kingdom of Hijaz declared independence in 1916. The Turks surrendered the city after a combined land attack by Sharif Husayn’s army and a six-day bombardment by the British navy. The port then became the major supply depot for the Sharifian forces operating behind Turkish lines during the Arab revolt.
Under the short-lived Kingdom of Hijaz, Jiddah was a focal point in the power struggle between the Wahhabis and the Sharifs. After the Saudi occupation of Mecca in 1924, Jidda became the capital of the Saudi regime. The old city wall of Jidda was demolished in 1946-7, and the town expanded in three directions: east along the road to Mecca, north along the road to Medina, and south along the pier road. Many of the traditional coral block houses with their latticed balconies have been razed in the old section of the town to make room for modern office buildings.
Jidda is known for the cosmopolitan character of its populace. Bukharis, Yemenis, Hadramis, and some tribal communities, notably Harb, still live in separate quarters of the town. Jidda has numerous light industries, including a cement plant and several marble cutting works. A modern port has also been established at the southern end of the city. Jidda still holds its status as the landing point to Hijaz. It is now the official air and sea port of entry for pilgrims on their way to Mecca.
Citation
"Djudda." Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition.. Brill Online, 2013
http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/djudda-SIM_2104 [accessed June 2013]
Hunsberger, Alice C. Nasir Khusraw, the Rruby of Badakhshan (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000).
Bokhari, Abdulla Y., Conservation in the Historic District of Jeddah. In Adaptive Reuse: Integrating Traditional Areas into the Modern Urban Fabric, ed. Margaret Bentley Sevcenko (MIT Laboratory of Architecture and Planning, Cambridge, MA. 1983).
http://www.archnet.org/publications/3070 [accessed February 2014]
Aga Khan Award for Architecture to the Hajj terminal Jidda
http://www.akdn.org/architecture/project.asp?id=274 [accessed June 2013]
