1987 Mecca Massacre
Encyclopedia
A violent clash between Shia pilgrims and demonstrators and the Saudi Arabia
n security forces during the Hajj
pilgrimage, which led to the deaths of over 400 people, occurred in Mecca
on 31 July 1987. The event has been variously described as a "riot" or a "massacre." It arose from escalating tensions between Shia Iran
and Sunni Saudi Arabia
. Since 1981, Iranian pilgrims had held an annual demonstration against Israel and the United States, but in 1987, a cordon of Saudi police and National Guards had sealed part of the planned demonstration route, leading to a confrontation between them and the pilgrims. This escalated into a violent clash, followed by a deadly stampede. There is a controversy regarding the details of the incident, with both Iran and Saudi Arabia laying much of the blame on the other side. Some sources claim the death toll from the incident was 402 people: 275 Iranian pilgrims, 85 Saudi police, and 42 pilgrims from other nationalities. Other sources claim that more than 400 pilgrims had died, and thousands more injured.
, and King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud
continued with this initiative, destroying parts of the Shiite-revered burial site of Al-Baqi'
in 1925. This caused outrage in Iran, with the Iranian government calling for the ouster of ibn Saud, and banning Iranians from performing the pilgrimage in 1927. In 1943, an Iranian pilgrim was beheaded based on Saudi charges that he brought excrement inside the Great Mosque on his garment. Iran lodged a formal protest, and suspended pilgrimage until 1948.
For years, Iranian pilgrims had tried to stage demonstrations
called "Distancing Ourselves from Mushrikīn
" (برائت از مشرکين) in the Muslim
holy city of Mecca
during the hajj
. These demonstrations had their origins in 1971, when Ruhollah Khomeini
instructed his Shiite followers to distribute political messages when performing their pilgrimage. Even though a few Iranians were arrested for this act, the Saudi officials were generally apathetic, as they did not view these political messages to be a threat to the Saudi royalty. The practice of distributing political messages, which were mainly criticism of the United States and Israel, as well as pro-Western governments, continued up until the year 1981.
In 1981, this was escalated into openly chanting political slogans in the Masjid al-Haram
and the Prophet's Mosque, two of the holiest sites in Islam, resulting in violent clashes with Saudi security and one death. In the same year, King Khalid of Saudi Arabia
wrote a letter to Saddam Hussein
saying "crush these stupid Iranians" as Saddam pushed on with the invasion of Iranian territory. It has often been claimed that Iraq recruited non-Iraqi Arabs during the war to balance the far superior number of Iranian forces on the ground.
In the following years, both sides tried to calm the situation: Khomeini urged his followers to maintain peace and order, not to distribute printed political material, and not to criticize Muslim governments. In return, Saudi officials reversed their earlier position and allowed two separate demonstrations to take place: One in Mecca, and the other in Medina.
By 1986, the situation was calm enough for Saudi officials to re-open the sealed al-Baqi' cemetery for Shiite pilgrims, and in response, Khomeini’s representative formally thanked the Saudi King for the gesture. However, on that same year, Iranian radical Mehdi Hashemi
was accused of smuggling explosives on an airplane headed for Saudi Arabia, renewing Saudi fears. Further adding to the tensions were the demands made by Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha
in 1987 to allow the Iranian pilgrims to hold their demonstrations within the Great Mosque itself, and without the presence of security guards. Khoeiniha had been earlier appointed as the supervisor and personal representative of Ayatollah Khomeini for Hajj affairs, but had been expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1982. Even though Mehdi Karrubi, who was Khomeini’s official pilgrimage representative that year, tried to assure Saudi officials that the demonstrations would take place in the usual manner and in the agreed routes, it did little to quell the Saudi fears.
Before the demonstrations started, Khomeini instructed the Iranian pilgrims to maintain peace and remain civil during the pilgrimage.
and Israel
), started amid heightened security. The march was uneventful until towards the end of the planned route, where the demonstrators found their way blocked by Saudi riot police and National Guardsmen. At this point, some of the Iranians began to call for the demonstrations to press ahead and continue to the Great Mosque. While this was happening, unidentified persons began harassing the Iranian pilgrims by throwing bricks and other objects at them from a nearby location. These factors exacerbated the situation, escalating it into a violent clash between the Iranian pilgrims and Saudi security, with the Saudis reportedly using truncheons and electric prods and the Iranians using knives and clubs.
The Saudi security reportedly opened fire on the demonstrators, a charge which Saudi officials deny. The rioting, and the resulting stampede caused a reported 402 dead (275 Iranians, 85 Saudis including policemen, and 42 pilgrims from other countries) and 649 wounded (303 Iranians, 145 Saudis and 201 other nationals).
The details of the riot are controversial. Iranian officials maintain that the Saudis had fired on the protesters without provocation, and that the demonstrations had been peaceful. Saudi officials insist that no shots were fired, and that all deaths were caused by the melee and stampede.
. On the same day, the Iranian leader Khomeini called on Saudis to overthrow the House of Saud
to avenge the pilgrims' deaths. In a Washington news conference, the Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan
claimed that "not one bullet was fired," blaming the violence on the Iranian pilgrims who he accused of "brandishing knives, clubs and broken glass drawn from beneath their cloaks." According to Dr. Robert O. Freedman, Professor of Political Science at Baltimore Hebrew University: "Later on, however, Iranian officials displayed the bullet wounds in the victims' bodies, which proved that the Saudis had indeed used firearms." Robin Wright also reports that "Many of the Iranian bodies, shown to American and European reporters immediately upon their return to Tehran, had bullet punctures".
Both sides took additional measures to bolster their view on the issue. Saudi Arabia severed ties with Iran and reduced the number of permitted Iranian pilgrims to 45,000, down from 150,000 in earlier years. Iran boycotted the Hajj for three years, from 1988 to 1990.
In 1991, Iran and Saudi Arabia renewed diplomatic relations after coming to an agreement to allow Iranian pilgrims to perform the Hajj once more. The total number of pilgrims was set at 115,000, and the demonstrations were allowed to be held, but only in one specific location granted by the Saudis. Under this agreement, Iranian pilgrims continued their annual demonstration in the 1990s and 2000s with few or no incidents. They limited their rally to within the confines of their compound in Mecca.
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
n security forces during the Hajj
Hajj
The Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is one of the largest pilgrimages in the world, and is the fifth pillar of Islam, a religious duty that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so...
pilgrimage, which led to the deaths of over 400 people, occurred in Mecca
Mecca
Mecca is a city in the Hijaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level...
on 31 July 1987. The event has been variously described as a "riot" or a "massacre." It arose from escalating tensions between Shia Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
and Sunni Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
. Since 1981, Iranian pilgrims had held an annual demonstration against Israel and the United States, but in 1987, a cordon of Saudi police and National Guards had sealed part of the planned demonstration route, leading to a confrontation between them and the pilgrims. This escalated into a violent clash, followed by a deadly stampede. There is a controversy regarding the details of the incident, with both Iran and Saudi Arabia laying much of the blame on the other side. Some sources claim the death toll from the incident was 402 people: 275 Iranian pilgrims, 85 Saudi police, and 42 pilgrims from other nationalities. Other sources claim that more than 400 pilgrims had died, and thousands more injured.
Background
There is a long history of tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab had initiated the destruction of various religious burial sites in HejazHejaz
al-Hejaz, also Hijaz is a region in the west of present-day Saudi Arabia. Defined primarily by its western border on the Red Sea, it extends from Haql on the Gulf of Aqaba to Jizan. Its main city is Jeddah, but it is probably better known for the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina...
, and King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud
Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia
King Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia was the first monarch of the Third Saudi State known as Saudi Arabia. He was commonly referred to as Ibn Saud....
continued with this initiative, destroying parts of the Shiite-revered burial site of Al-Baqi'
Al-Baqi'
Maqbaratu l-Baqī is a cemetery in Medina, Saudi Arabia, located to the southeast of the Masjid al-Nabawi. The mosque is built where the Islamic prophet Muhammad used to live, built a mosque and is currently buried. The cemetery therefore holds much significance. It contains many of Muhammad's ...
in 1925. This caused outrage in Iran, with the Iranian government calling for the ouster of ibn Saud, and banning Iranians from performing the pilgrimage in 1927. In 1943, an Iranian pilgrim was beheaded based on Saudi charges that he brought excrement inside the Great Mosque on his garment. Iran lodged a formal protest, and suspended pilgrimage until 1948.
For years, Iranian pilgrims had tried to stage demonstrations
Demonstration (people)
A demonstration or street protest is action by a mass group or collection of groups of people in favor of a political or other cause; it normally consists of walking in a mass march formation and either beginning with or meeting at a designated endpoint, or rally, to hear speakers.Actions such as...
called "Distancing Ourselves from Mushrikīn
Shirk (polytheism)
In Islam, shirk is the sin of idolatry or polytheism. i.e. the deification or worship of anyone or anything other than the singular God, or more literally the establishment of "partners" placed beside God...
" (برائت از مشرکين) in the Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
holy city of Mecca
Mecca
Mecca is a city in the Hijaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level...
during the hajj
Hajj
The Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is one of the largest pilgrimages in the world, and is the fifth pillar of Islam, a religious duty that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so...
. These demonstrations had their origins in 1971, when Ruhollah Khomeini
Ruhollah Khomeini
Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini was an Iranian religious leader and politician, and leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran...
instructed his Shiite followers to distribute political messages when performing their pilgrimage. Even though a few Iranians were arrested for this act, the Saudi officials were generally apathetic, as they did not view these political messages to be a threat to the Saudi royalty. The practice of distributing political messages, which were mainly criticism of the United States and Israel, as well as pro-Western governments, continued up until the year 1981.
In 1981, this was escalated into openly chanting political slogans in the Masjid al-Haram
Masjid al-Haram
Al-Masjid al-Ḥarām is the largest mosque in the world. Located in the city of Mecca, it surrounds the Kaaba, the place which Muslims worldwide turn towards while performing daily prayers and is Islam's holiest place...
and the Prophet's Mosque, two of the holiest sites in Islam, resulting in violent clashes with Saudi security and one death. In the same year, King Khalid of Saudi Arabia
Khalid of Saudi Arabia
Khalid bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud was King of Saudi Arabia from 1975 to 1982. He ruled during Saudi Arabia's oil boom years. In 1979, he had to deal with the Grand Mosque Seizure...
wrote a letter to Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
saying "crush these stupid Iranians" as Saddam pushed on with the invasion of Iranian territory. It has often been claimed that Iraq recruited non-Iraqi Arabs during the war to balance the far superior number of Iranian forces on the ground.
In the following years, both sides tried to calm the situation: Khomeini urged his followers to maintain peace and order, not to distribute printed political material, and not to criticize Muslim governments. In return, Saudi officials reversed their earlier position and allowed two separate demonstrations to take place: One in Mecca, and the other in Medina.
By 1986, the situation was calm enough for Saudi officials to re-open the sealed al-Baqi' cemetery for Shiite pilgrims, and in response, Khomeini’s representative formally thanked the Saudi King for the gesture. However, on that same year, Iranian radical Mehdi Hashemi
Mehdi Hashemi
Mehdi Hashemi was an Iranian Shi'a cleric, and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, a senior official in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards; he was executed by the new Islamic Republic in its first decade...
was accused of smuggling explosives on an airplane headed for Saudi Arabia, renewing Saudi fears. Further adding to the tensions were the demands made by Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha
Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha
Ayatollah Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha is an Iranian cleric and secretary general of the reformist Association of Combatant Clerics. He was a founder of the now banned Salam newspaper and is a member of the Expediency Discernment Council.-Overview:Khoeiniha was prosecutor general of Iran after...
in 1987 to allow the Iranian pilgrims to hold their demonstrations within the Great Mosque itself, and without the presence of security guards. Khoeiniha had been earlier appointed as the supervisor and personal representative of Ayatollah Khomeini for Hajj affairs, but had been expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1982. Even though Mehdi Karrubi, who was Khomeini’s official pilgrimage representative that year, tried to assure Saudi officials that the demonstrations would take place in the usual manner and in the agreed routes, it did little to quell the Saudi fears.
Before the demonstrations started, Khomeini instructed the Iranian pilgrims to maintain peace and remain civil during the pilgrimage.
Demonstrations
On Friday July 31, 1987, the demonstration by Iranian pilgrims against the "enemies of Islam" (including the U.S.United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
), started amid heightened security. The march was uneventful until towards the end of the planned route, where the demonstrators found their way blocked by Saudi riot police and National Guardsmen. At this point, some of the Iranians began to call for the demonstrations to press ahead and continue to the Great Mosque. While this was happening, unidentified persons began harassing the Iranian pilgrims by throwing bricks and other objects at them from a nearby location. These factors exacerbated the situation, escalating it into a violent clash between the Iranian pilgrims and Saudi security, with the Saudis reportedly using truncheons and electric prods and the Iranians using knives and clubs.
The Saudi security reportedly opened fire on the demonstrators, a charge which Saudi officials deny. The rioting, and the resulting stampede caused a reported 402 dead (275 Iranians, 85 Saudis including policemen, and 42 pilgrims from other countries) and 649 wounded (303 Iranians, 145 Saudis and 201 other nationals).
The details of the riot are controversial. Iranian officials maintain that the Saudis had fired on the protesters without provocation, and that the demonstrations had been peaceful. Saudi officials insist that no shots were fired, and that all deaths were caused by the melee and stampede.
Aftermath
On August 1, 1987, a spontaneous demonstration by enraged Iranians ended with attacks on the Kuwaiti and Saudi embassies in TehranTehran
Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...
. On the same day, the Iranian leader Khomeini called on Saudis to overthrow the House of Saud
House of Saud
The House of Saud , also called the Al Saud, is the ruling royal family of Saudi Arabia and one of the wealthiest and most powerful dynasties in the world. The family holds thousands of members...
to avenge the pilgrims' deaths. In a Washington news conference, the Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan
Bandar bin Sultan
Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud is a prince of the Saudi royal family and was Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005. He was appointed Secretary-General of the National Security Council by King Abdullah on 16 October 2005...
claimed that "not one bullet was fired," blaming the violence on the Iranian pilgrims who he accused of "brandishing knives, clubs and broken glass drawn from beneath their cloaks." According to Dr. Robert O. Freedman, Professor of Political Science at Baltimore Hebrew University: "Later on, however, Iranian officials displayed the bullet wounds in the victims' bodies, which proved that the Saudis had indeed used firearms." Robin Wright also reports that "Many of the Iranian bodies, shown to American and European reporters immediately upon their return to Tehran, had bullet punctures".
Both sides took additional measures to bolster their view on the issue. Saudi Arabia severed ties with Iran and reduced the number of permitted Iranian pilgrims to 45,000, down from 150,000 in earlier years. Iran boycotted the Hajj for three years, from 1988 to 1990.
In 1991, Iran and Saudi Arabia renewed diplomatic relations after coming to an agreement to allow Iranian pilgrims to perform the Hajj once more. The total number of pilgrims was set at 115,000, and the demonstrations were allowed to be held, but only in one specific location granted by the Saudis. Under this agreement, Iranian pilgrims continued their annual demonstration in the 1990s and 2000s with few or no incidents. They limited their rally to within the confines of their compound in Mecca.