November 20

The Great Mosque of Mecca, Arabic al-Masjid al-Ḥarām, also called the Grand Mosque, the Holy  the Mosque or Haram Mosque, is the mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, built to enclose the Ka'bah, the holiest shrine in Islam.  As one of the destinations of the hajj and 'umrah pilgrimages, the Great Mosque receives millions of worshippers each year. 

On November 20, 1979 the Great Mosque (Grand Mosque) of Mecca was at the center of a rebellion against the Saudi royal family when it was seized by a group of several hundred Islamic militants led by Juhaymān al-ʿUtaybī and Muḥammad bin 'Abd Allah al-Qaḥṭānī. The insurgents denounced the impiety of the Saʿūd family and claimed that Qaḥṭānī was the mahdi, an Islamic messianic figure. After obtaining a religious ruling sanctioning the use of force within the Great Mosque, where violence is forbidden, government troops retook the mosque in a bloody battle in December. 

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The Grand Mosque seizure^[7] occurred during November and December 1979 when armed civilians calling for the overthrow of the House of Saud took over Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The insurgents declared that the Mahdi (the "redeemer of Islam") had arrived in the form of one of their leaders, Mohammed Abdullah al-Qahtani, and called on Muslims to obey him. For nearly two weeks Saudi Special Forces, assisted by Pakistani and Frenchcommandos,^[8] fought battles to reclaim the compound.^[9]

The seizure of Islam's holiest site, the taking of hostages from among the worshippers and the deaths of hundreds of militants, security forces and hostages caught in the crossfire in the ensuing battles for control of the site, shocked the Islamic world. The siege ended two weeks after the takeover began and the mosque was cleared.^[10] Al-Qahtani was killed in the recapture of the mosque but Juhayman and 67 of his fellow rebels who survived the assault were captured and later beheaded.^[11][12][13]

Following the attack, the Saudi King Khaled implemented a stricter enforcement of Shariah (Islamic law),^[14] he gave the ulama and religious conservatives more power over the next decade, and religious police became more assertive.^[15]

The seizure was led by Juhayman al-Otaybi, a member of an influential family in Najd. He declared his brother-in-law Mohammed Abdullah al-Qahtani to be the Mahdi, or redeemer, who arrives on earth several years before Judgement Day. His followers embellished the fact that Al-Qahtani's name and his father's name are identical to Prophet Mohammed's name and that of his father, and developed a saying, "His and his father's names were the same as Mohammed's and his father's, and he had come to Makkah from the north", to justify their belief. The date of the attack, 20 November 1979, was the first day of the year 1400 according to the Islamic calendar; this ties in with the tradition of the mujaddid, a person who appears at the turn of every century of the Islamic calendar to revive Islam, cleansing it of extraneous elements and restoring it to its pristine purity.^[16]

Al-Otaybi was from one of the foremost families of Najd. His grandfather had ridden with Ibn Saud in the early decades of the century and other of his family members were among foremost of the Ikhwan.^[11] He was a preacher, a former corporal in the Saudi National Guard and a former student of Sheikh Abdel Aziz al-Baaz who went on to become the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia.