The Grand Mosque seizure took place between 20 November and 4 December 1979 at the Grand Mosque of Mecca in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest site in Islam. The attack was carried out by up to 600 militants led by Juhayman al-Otaybi, a Saudi Islamist opposed to the monarchy, belonging to the Otaibah tribe. The insurgents identified themselves as "al-Ikhwan" (Arabic: الإخوان), referencing the Arabian militia that had played a role in the early formation of the Saudi state in the early 20th century. Scholars refer to them as Juhayman's Ikhwan.
The insurgents took hostages from among the worshippers and called for an uprising against the House of Saud, decrying their pursuit of alliances with "Christian infidels" from the Western world, and stating that the Saudi government's policies were betraying Islam by attempting to push secularism into Saudi society. They also declared that the Mahdi (a harbinger of the end of times) had arrived in the form of one of the militants' leaders, Muhammad Abdullah al-Qahtani.
Seeking assistance for their counteroffensive against the Ikhwan, the Saudis requested urgent aid from France, which responded by dispatching advisory units from the GIGN. After French operatives provided them with a special type of tear gas that dulls aggression and obstructs breathing, Saudi troops gassed the interior of the Grand Mosque and forced entry. They successfully secured the site after two weeks of fighting. A total of 270 died during the siege and another 68 were subsequently executed.
In the process of retaking the Grand Mosque, the Saudi forces killed al-Qahtani, the self-proclaimed messiah. Juhayman and 68 other militants were captured alive and later sentenced to death by Saudi authorities, being executed by beheading in public displays across a number of Saudi cities. The Ikhwan's siege of the Grand Mosque, which had occurred amidst the Islamic Revolution in nearby Iran, prompted further unrest across the Muslim world. Large-scale anti-American riots broke out in many Muslim-majority countries after Iranian religious cleric Ruhollah Khomeini claimed in a radio broadcast that the Grand Mosque seizure had been orchestrated by the United States and Israel.
Following the attack, Saudi king Khalid bin Abdulaziz enforced a stricter system of Islamic law throughout the country and gave the ulama more power over the next decade. Likewise, Saudi Arabia's Islamic religious police became more assertive.
The seizure was led by Juhayman al-Otaybi, a member of the Otaibah family, influential in Najd. He declared his brother-in-law Mohammed Abdullah al-Qahtani to be the Mahdi, or redeemer, who is believed to arrive on earth several years before Judgment Day. His followers embellished the fact that Al-Qahtani's name and his father's name are identical to the Prophet Muhammad'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.
Juhayman's grandfather, Sultan bin Bajad al-Otaybi, had ridden with Ibn Saud in the early decades of the century, and other Otaibah family members were among the foremost of the Ikhwan. Juhayman acted as a preacher, a corporal in the Saudi National Guard, and was a former student of Sheikh Abd al-Aziz Ibn Baz, who went on to become the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia.
Al-Otaybi had turned against Ibn Baz "and began advocating a return to the original ways of Islam, among other things: a repudiation of the West; abolition of television and expulsion of non-Muslims." Criticizing the House of Saud in his preaching since the mid-1970s, Al-Otaybi accused them of "worship[ping] money and spend[ing] it on palaces, not mosques".
Al-Otaybi and Qahtani had met while imprisoned together for sedition, when al-Otaybi claimed to have had a vision sent by God telling him that Qahtani was the Mahdi. Their declared goal was to institute a theocracy in preparation for the imminent apocalypse. They differed from the original Ikhwan and other earlier Wahhabi purists in that "they were millenarians, they rejected the monarchy and condemned the Wahhabi ulama".
Many of their followers were from theology students at the Islamic University in Medina. Al-Otaybi joined the local chapter of the Salafi group Al-Jamaa Al-Salafiya Al-Muhtasiba (JSM, "The Salafi Group That Commands Right and Forbids Wrong") in Medina headed by Sheikh Abd al-Aziz Ibn Baz, chairman of the Permanent Committee for Islamic Research and Issuing Fatwas at the time. The followers preached their radical message in different mosques in Saudi Arabia without being arrested, and the government was reluctant to confront religious extremists.
In 1978, Al-Otaybi, al-Qahtani and a number of the Ikhwan were locked up as troublemakers by the Ministry of Interior security police, the Mabahith. Members of the ulama, including Ibn Baz, cross-examined them for heresy, but they were released as being traditionalists harkening back to the original Ikhwan, like al-Otaybi's grandfather and, therefore, not a threat.
Even after the seizure of the Grand Mosque, a certain level of forbearance by ulama for the rebels remained. When the government asked for a fatwa allowing armed force in the Grand Mosque, the language of Ibn Baz and other senior ulama "was curiously restrained". The scholars did not declare al-Otaybi and his followers non-Muslims, despite their violation of the sanctity of the Grand Mosque, but only termed them "al-jamaah al-musallahah" (the armed group). The senior scholars also insisted that before security forces attack them, the authorities must offer them the option to surrender.
Because of donations from wealthy followers, the group was well-armed and trained. Some members, like al-Otaybi, were former military officials of the National Guard. Some National Guard troops sympathetic to the insurgents smuggled weapons, ammunition, gas masks and provisions into the mosque compound over a period of weeks before the new year. Automatic weapons were smuggled from National Guard armories. The supplies were hidden in the hundreds of small underground rooms under the mosque that were used as hermitages.
During the preparations to retake the Grand Mosque, Saudi forces received assistance from foreign military advisors. Pakistani military trainers, who had been involved in training Saudi security forces prior to the crisis, were among those who contributed to counterterrorism training. While the primary planning and execution of the operation were handled by the Saudi National Guard, foreign expertise, including from Pakistani advisors, played a role in preparing the Saudi forces for the siege.
In the early morning of 20 November 1979, the imam of the Grand Mosque, Sheikh Mohammed al-Subayil, was preparing to lead prayers for the 50,000 worshippers who had gathered for prayer. At around 5:00 am he was interrupted by insurgents who produced weapons from under their robes, chained the gates shut and killed two policemen, who were armed with only wooden clubs for disciplining unruly pilgrims. The number of insurgents has been given as "at least 500" or "four to five hundred", and included several women and children who had joined al-Otaybi's movement.
At the time, the Grand Mosque was being renovated by the Saudi Binladin Group. An employee of the organization was able to report the seizure to the outside world before the insurgents cut the telephone lines.
The insurgents released most of the hostages and locked the remainder in the sanctuary. They took defensive positions in the upper levels of the mosque, and sniper positions in the minarets, from which they commanded the grounds. No one outside the mosque knew how many hostages remained, how many militants were in the mosque and what sort of preparations they had made.