MECCA — As a child, Osama al-Bar walked from his home past Islam’s holiest site, the Kaaba, to the market of spice and fabric merchants where his father owned a store. At that time, Mecca was so small, pilgrims could sit at the cube-shaped Kaaba and look out at the serene desert mountains where the Prophet Muhammad walked.
Now the market and the homes are gone. Monumental luxury hotel towers crowd around the Grand Mosque where the Kaaba is located, dwarfing it. Steep rocky hills overlooking the mosque have been leveled and are now covered with cranes building more towers in row after row.
‘‘My father and all the people who lived in Mecca wouldn’t recognize it,’’ said Bar, who is Mecca’s mayor.
As Muslims from around the world stream into Mecca for the annual hajj pilgrimage this week, they come to a city undergoing the biggest transformation in its history.
Decades ago, this was a low-built city of centuries-old neighborhoods. Over the years, it saw piecemeal renewal projects. But in the mid-2000s, the kingdom launched its most ambitious overhaul ever with mega-projects that, though incomplete, have reshaped Mecca.
Old neighborhoods have been erased for hotel towers and malls built right up to the edge of the Grand Mosque. Historic sites significant for Islam have been demolished. Next to the Kaaba soars the world’s third-tallest skyscraper, topped by a gigantic clock, which is splashed with colored lights at night.
‘‘It’s not Mecca. It’s Mecca-hattan. This tower and the lights in it are like Vegas,’’ said Sami Angawi, an architect who spent his life studying hajj and is an outspoken critic of the changes. ‘‘The truth of the history of Mecca is wiped out ... with bulldozers and dynamite. Is this development?’’
Critics complain that the holy city is being stripped of its spirituality. They also say the hajj is being robbed of its more than 1,400-year-old message that all Muslims, rich or poor, are equal before God as they perform the rites meant to cleanse them of sin, starting and ending by circling the Kaaba seven times.
Mecca is revered by hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide. They face the Kaaba every day in their prayers. The Grand Mosque is one of the few places where Muslims of all stripes gather — Sunnis and Shi’ites, secular Muslims, mystics, and hard-liners.
Overseeing Mecca is also a key source of prestige for Saudi Arabia’s monarchy. The past two kings — the current one, Abdullah, and his predecessor, Fahd — have adopted the further title of ‘‘custodian of the two holy mosques’’ to boost their status, referring to Mecca’s Grand Mosque and Muhammad’s mosque in nearby Medina.
Now Mecca is being molded to a particularly Saudi vision that bolsters the rule of the Saud royal family.
Two forces shape that vision. One is raw, petrodollar-fueled capitalism. Mecca’s planners are largely catering to wealthier pilgrims by constructing five-star hotels, surrounding the Kaaba in marble-sheathed luxury. Nearby, pilgrims can shop at international chains, including a Paris Hilton store and a gender-segregated Starbucks.
The other force is Wahhabism, the strict, puritanical interpretation of Islam that the Saud rulers elevated to the country’s official doctrine. Saudi kings, for example, have given Wahhabi clerics a monopoly over preaching at the Grand Mosque. In return, the clerics staunchly back the monarchy.
One tenet of Wahhabism is that Muslim tombs or sites connected to revered figures — even the Prophet Muhammad, his family, and companions — should be destroyed to avoid veneration of anything other than God. It is the same iconoclastic zeal that has prompted militants from the Islamic State group to blow up Muslim shrines in Iraq and Syria.
In Mecca, few sites associated with Muhammad remain. Many were destroyed in previous expansions of the Grand Mosque in the 1980s and 1990s, and the new development is finishing off much of what remains. In 2008, the house of Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s successor as leader of the Muslim community, was razed to make way for a Hilton.
The country’s top religious official, Grand Mufti Abdul-Aziz Al-Sheik, backed such demolitions last year, saying ‘‘the removal of such things within the expansion is necessary.’’
The urban renewal is necessary, officials say, to accommodate hajj pilgrims whose numbers are expected to swell from around 3 million currently to nearly 7 million by 2040.
The $60-billion Grand Mosque expansion will almost double the area for pilgrims to pray at the Kaaba. About half the cost went to buying about 5,800 houses that had to be razed for the expansion, said Bar, the Mecca mayor. Domes and pillars dating back to rule by the Ottoman Empire are being pulled down to put up modern facilities.
The Grand Mosque’s expansion is being headed by the Saudi Binladin Group, which also built the clock tower. The Binladin family has been close to Al Sauds for decades and runs major building projects around the country. Al Qaeda’s late leader Osama bin Laden was a renegade son disowned by the family in the 1990s.