Editing Mecca (section)

==={{transliteration|ar|Makkah, Makkah al-Mukarramah}} and ''Mecca''===

{{transliteration|ar|Makkah}} is the official transliteration used by the Saudi government and is closer to the Arabic pronunciation.<ref name="Hamp76">{{cite book|author1=Ham, Anthony|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PddTr1X7hEgC&pg=PA76|title=Saudi Arabia|author2=Brekhus Shams, Martha|author3=Madden, Andrew|publisher=[[Lonely Planet]]|year=2004|isbn=978-1-74059-667-1|edition=illustrated|name-list-style=amp}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Long|first=David E.|url=https://archive.org/details/culturecustomsof00long|title=Culture and Customs of Saudi Arabia|publisher=Greenwood Press|year=2005|isbn=978-0-313-32021-7|page=[https://archive.org/details/culturecustomsof00long/page/14 14]|url-access=registration}}</ref> The government adopted {{transliteration|ar|Makkah}} as the official spelling in the 1980s, but it is not universally known or used worldwide.<ref name="Hamp76" /> The full official name is {{transliteration|ar|Makkah al-Mukarramah}} ({{Langx|ar|مكة المكرمة||lit=Makkah the Honored}}).<ref name="Hamp76" /> {{transliteration|ar|Makkah}} is used to refer to the city in the Quran in [[Surah]] [[Al-Fath]] (48), verse 24.<ref name="Versteeghp513" /><ref name="Hittip6">{{cite book|author=Philip Khûri Hitti|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9niSNOCIoL8C&pg=PA25|title=Capital cities of Arab Islam|publisher=University of Minnesota Press|year=1973|isbn=978-0-8166-0663-4|edition=Illustrated|page=6}}</ref>

The word ''Mecca'' in English has come to be used to refer to any place that draws large numbers of people, and because of this some English-speaking Muslims have come to regard the use of this spelling for the city as offensive.<ref name="Hamp76" /> Nonetheless, ''Mecca'' is the familiar form of the English transliteration for the Arabic name of the city.

Macoraba, another ancient city name [[Claudius Ptolemy]] says was within [[Arabia Felix]], was also claimed to be Mecca.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), Maacah, Maacah, Macoraba|url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0064:alphabetic+letter=M:entry+group=1:entry=macoraba-geo|access-date=13 May 2020|website=perseus.tufts.edu}}</ref> Some studies have questioned this association.<ref name="Morris">{{Cite journal|last=Morris|first=Ian D.|date=2018|title=Mecca and Macoraba|url=https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:22167/|journal=Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā|language=en-US|volume=26|page=3|doi=10.17613/zcdp-c225|issn=1068-1051}}</ref> Many etymologies have been proposed: the traditional one is that it is derived from the [[Old South Arabian]] root M-K-R-B which means "temple".<ref name="Morris" />