Makka al-Haram, the holy mosque is situated in Makka, a western city of  Saudi Arabia, located 70 km (43 miles) inland from Jeddah, in a constrict valley 277 m (909 ft) above sea level, 340 kilometers (210 mi) from  Madina, is the holiest city in Islam.

Madina is the second-holiest city in Islam, with significant religious and historical importance to Muslims. Madina is also called as Madina An-Nabi (The City of the Prophet) or Medinah Al-Munawwarah (The Enlightened City), or Madina. In early times, the city was known as Yathrib. Located 450 kilometers (200+ miles) north of Makka, Yathrib was an agricultural center in the coarse desert landscape of the Arabian Peninsula.


Religious importance of Makka:

Mecca considered as the Muslim reliable as Umm al-Qura, the Mother of Cities, is the holiest place in the Islamic world because Holy prophet Hazrat Muhammad (SAW) (c. 570–632), the Messenger of God, the founder of the Muslim faith, was born in 570, a cave 3 km (2 miles) from Makka was the place of Muhammad's(SAW) first revelation of the Quran, and it is here within the Great Mosque that the Ka'aba, the most blessed holy place of Islam.  All devout Muslims over the world pray five times in a day, each time bowing down to face Makka. The pilgrimage to Makka (hajj )—once in one’s lifetime—is a religious duty for that Muslims who can afford it through out  the Muslim month of Dhu-al-Hijah.

Makka is located at an elevation of 909 feet (277 metres) above sea level in the dry bunk of the Wadi Ibrāhīm and several of its short tributaries. It is encircled by sirat mountains, the climax of which include Mount (Jabal) Ajyad, which hight is 1,332 feet, and Mount Abū Qubays, which attains 1,220 feet, to the east and Mount ouhd, which hight is 1,401 feet, to the west. Mount Hirāʾ rises to 2,080 feet on the northeast and having a cave in which Muhammad (SAW) sought loneliness and visions before he became a prophet. The Mount Thawr (2,490 feet) accommodate the cave in which the prophet concealed himself from his Makka enemies during the Hijrah to Madina. 

The city crossroads on the Ḥaram Mosque, also called the Great Mosque, in which are located the Kaʿbah and the blessed well of Zamzam. The dense built-up area around the mosque comprises the old city, which tract to the north and south west but is limited on the east and west by the accessible mountains. The main approaches are al-Muddaʿah and Sūq al-Layl to the north of the mosque and al-Sūq al-Ṣaghīr to the south. Since World War II Makka has enlarged along the roads through the mountain gaps to the north, northwest, and west. Among the modern residential areas are al-ʿAzīziyyah and al-Faysaliyyah beside the road to Minā and al-Ẓāhir, al-Zahraʿā, and Shāriʿ al-Manṣūr beside the roads to Jiddah and Madina. Enlargement has been accompanied by the building of new streets in the old city.

Madina is the second holiest city in Islam, after Makka. Madina is concluded as the place from which Muhammad (SAW) established the Muslim community (ummah) after his flight from Makka (622 CE) and is where his body is entombed. A pilgrimage(Haj) is made to his tomb in the tribe of chief mosque. Only Muslims are allowed to enter the city.

Madina was Muhammad's (SAW) destiny in his Hijrah (migration) from Makka, and became the capital of a promptly increasing Muslim Empire, under Muhammad's leadership, serving as the power foundation of Islam, and where Muhammad's (SAW) Ummah (Community), composed of both inhabitants and foreigner from Muhammad's original home of Makka developed. Madina is home to three great mosques whose names are al-Masjid an-Nabawi, Quba Mosque, and Masjid al-Qiblatayn (‘the mosque of two Qiblas'). Muslims accept that the consecutively final surahs of the Quran were revealed to Muhammad (SAW) in Madina, and are called Medinah surahs in contradiction to the earlier Makka surahs.

Importance of Madina increased due to Muhammad's family members and Companions of the Prophet (early followers of Islam) are buried in the Baqi' Cemetery in Madina, located to the southeast of the Prophet's Mosque.

The earliest history of Madina is faint though it is said that there were Jewish settlers there in pre-Christian times. Probably it can be said that the Arab tribes of Aws and Khazraj were then in occupancy of the oasis In that years. Abu Karib, the Sabaean king of Yemen, visited the colony and consumed the lore and teaching of the Jewish rabbis with the effect of that he adopted the religion of the Jews and made it the state religion of Yemen on his return, in supersedure of the local paganism.

When the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and his supporter faced persecution in Makka, they were offered resort by the main tribes of Yathrib. The Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and his followers left Makka and traveled to Yathrib in 622 A.D. So in significant of this migration, the Islamic calendar starts counting time from the year of the Hijrah.

On September 20, 622, the coming of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) at Madina, in flight from Makka, introduced a new chapter into the record of the oasis. After some time the Jews, at first deal with kindness, were forced out of all their settlements in Hejaz. Madina develop into the administrative capital of the constantly expanding Islamic state, a position it maintained until 661, when it was superseded in that role by Damascus, the capital of the Umayyad caliphs.

At the end of the 10th year after the imigration to Madina, Muhammad (SAW) performed his first truly Islamic pilgrimage, thereby teaching his companions the rules governing the different ceremonies of the annual Great Pilgrimage. In 632, some months after returning to Madina from the Farewell Pilgrimage, Muhammad (SAW) fell ill and died. At that time when Muhammad (SAW) died, most of the Arabian Peninsula had accepted Islam as a religion, and he had united Arabia into a single Muslim religious platform.