Makkah
Umm al-Qura University grew out of the College of Shari'ah founded in Makkah in 1369 AH (1949), the first college of higher education in Saudi Arabia. As new…
Umm al-Qura University grew out of the College of Shari'ah founded in Makkah in 1369 AH (1949), the first college of higher education in Saudi Arabia. As new colleges joined it, it was renamed Umm al-Qura, one of the names of Makkah, by royal decree in 1981, and today it teaches medicine, engineering and the sciences alongside Shari'ah, the Qur'an and Arabic. Its main campus lies at al-Abidiyyah on the eastern side of Makkah, near Arafat, where King Fahd laid the foundation stone in 1986. It is a large working university, with branch colleges in other towns of the Makkah region.