The city belongs to the Province of Mecca. The Mecca region covers an area of approximately 140,100 km², which is about 6% of the total area of the Kingdom. It is located in the centre of western Saudi Arabia and has an extended coastline on the Red Sea. The western region is mountainous, except for the coastal plain bordering the Red Sea and encompassing the area of Jeddah.
The mountainous region is called the Hejaz, which means ‘the barrier’. This region in the west extends far into the north of the Kingdom from the Gulf of Aqaba south to about Mecca and runs almost parallel to the Red Sea. The higher basaltic mountain ridge to the south of it, stretching to the Yemeni border, is part of the Sarawat mountain range, which also includes the Asir mountain range further south. The Hejaz region includes the cities of Mecca, Madinah, Jeddah, Yanbu and Tabuk. Geographically, it could, thus, be described as the ‘Western Province’. It is bordered by the Red Sea to the west, Jordan to the north, Najd to the east and the Taif region to the south.
Along the Red Sea and parallel to this huge mountain range, the coastline of Tihāmah extends. In the north it reaches the Gulf of Aqaba and in the south it goes as far as Bab el Mandeb (a strait between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, Djibouti and Eritrea at the Horn of Africa). Jeddah and the Red Sea are inseparable – they go hand in hand.
