Jeddah

Jeddah is the Red Sea harbour of Mecca, seventy kilometres to the east, and for centuries the landing place of pilgrims who came to the Hajj by sea. The Ayyubids of Egypt took it in 1177, and after the Mongols destroyed Baghdad in 1258 the Hejaz passed to the Mamluk sultans of Cairo, whose rule over the Holy Cities made the harbour a point of contact between Egypt, Arabia and the Indian Ocean.

When Vasco da Gama's arrival in India put the pilgrim and spice fleets at risk, the Mamluk sultan Qansuh al-Ghawri sent a fleet of fifty ships under Hussein the Kurd, governor of Jeddah, and the town was walled as a refuge for the Red Sea. In 1517 the Ottomans conquered Egypt, and the Portuguese admiral Lopo Soares de Albergaria's armada was repulsed at the siege of Jeddah that same year. The Ottomans rebuilt the walls in 1525 with six towers and six gates, among them the Mecca and Medina gates, and beat off a second Portuguese attack in 1541. From 1803 Najdi forces of the first Saudi state pressed the Hejaz and besieged Jeddah, which by about 1806 had come under Saudi suzerainty along with Mecca and Medina; Muhammad Ali Pasha landed at Jeddah in 1813 and restored the sultan's rule.