General view of Sa'i gallery as seen from the Safa, the point where the pilgrims start the Sa'i, moving towards Jabl Marwah. Functionally and legally the route is now integral to the Great Mosque: the pre-modern open path between the two hills has been roofed, incorporated within the mosque’s footprint and organised as a multi-lane pedestrian gallery designed to handle very large, uni-directional flows of pilgrims. The two points and the path between al-Safa and al-Marwah are now inside a long gallery that forms part of the Masjid al-Haram. The nominal distance between Ṣafā and Marwa is roughly 450 metres, so the seven laps dictated by the rite amount to a little over 3.2 kilometres in total; contemporary infrastructure layers—escalators, marked brisk-walking lanes, and dedicated lanes for elderly or differently abled worshippers—alter how the rite is experienced compared with earlier periods.

The al-Masá (commonly transliterated al-Masaaʾ) within Masjid al-Ḥarām constitutes a distinguished example of the processional street in the Islamic world, defined by its clear axiality, ritualized movement, and monumental enclosure. Extending between the hills of al-Ṣafā and al-Marwah, it embodies the archetypal function of such avenues as regulated pathways of collective passage, yet distinct in its exclusive orientation toward devotional practice.

Unlike urban processional streets of Mesopotamia or the Mediterranean, whose architectural and ceremonial frameworks often emphasized civic or royal authority, the al-Masá is structured as a sacred conduit, its spatial articulation governed by ritual prescription rather than political display. In this regard, it represents a paradigmatic evolution of the processional form, reoriented from the civic and imperial toward the purely sacred.

Tradition situates the origins of al-Masaʿa in the Abrahamic period, circa 2000 BCE, with the account of Hājar’s search for water between Ṣafā and Marwa. Archaeological and historical evidence, however, only allow us to trace the development of the physical route from the early Islamic period onwards, with progressive architectural interventions under the Abbasids, Ottomans, and modern Saudi expansions.

circa 2000 BCE- Modern Period

The rite of saʿī commemorates the narrative—preserved in Islamic tradition—of Hājarah (Hagar) running between the hills of Ṣafā and Marwa in search of water for her son Ismāʿīl after their settlement at the valley of Mecca by the house associated with Abraham. The repeated traversals are understood as acts of petition, endurance and remembrance; juristic sources treat the seven passages as a binding element of the Ḥajj and ʿUmrah rites, with specific rules governing sequence and counting. Historically the ritual was practiced in an open valley; its relocation to a roofed, segment-marked gallery has changed the pragmatic conditions of performance but not the liturgical requirements. Contemporary guidance from mosque authorities seeks to reconcile ritual observance, crowd safety and accessibility without altering the rite’s canonical structure.

circa 2000 BCE- Modern Period

Pilgrims begin at Ṣafā, proceed toward Marwa, return to Ṣafā and repeat until they have completed seven passages. In the modern al-Masaʿa this movement is channelled into separate lanes: inner lanes are generally reserved for those unable to perform the brisk walking that is ritually encouraged in the central segment, while outer lanes accommodate the general flow. The route runs roughly east–west relative to the Kaʿba and is physically bounded by the structural arcade and glazing that separate it from adjacent prayer courtyards; entrances and exits are controlled by directional signage and crowd-management barriers during periods of high occupancy. The present gallery is the product of sequential building campaigns that progressively enclosed and expanded the space to accommodate mass pilgrimage.

circa 2000 BCE- Modern Period

Burckhardt
European and Ottoman travellers as well as Muslim historiographers have described al-Masaʿa at different moments. John Lewis Burckhardt, the Swiss orientalist who visited Mecca in the early nineteenth century CE (year 1814 CE) while travelling as a Muslim pilgrim, recorded the route as a long, commercially active street (suq) with an Ottoman-style arched cover and adjacent shops—an urbanised corridor in which ritual movement and daily commerce coexisted. Burckhardt’s narrative is valuable for pre-modern topographic detail and for conveying how the space functioned prior to the sweeping 20th-century expansions. He expalains that the al-Masa'a street is one of the most prestegious street.

Later Ottoman repairs and the early Saudi building campaigns progressively removed many of the older fabric and streetfronts Burckhardt described; mid- and late-twentieth-century expansions formally incorporated Ṣafā and Marwa into the mosque’s architectural envelope, replacing an open processional street with the modern enclosed gallery.

circa 1960 CE

During the First Saudi expansion of Masjid al-Haram the Mas'a gallery (and the hills of as-Safa and al-Marwah) were included in the Mosque, via roofing and enclosures.

Architecturally the current structure of al-Masaʿa dating from the First Saudi expansion is a purpose-built gallery layered over the historical line of movement between the two hills. Structural design responds primarily to three constraints: (1) the need to carry very large, bidirectional pedestrian loads safely; (2) the requirement to keep the line of sight and compass orientation that preserve the ritual sequence (Ṣafā first, then Marwa); and (3) accessibility and crowd management. The gallery is typically expressed as a long, column-free span or series of spans with durable flooring, mechanical ventilation and climate control, and translational signage. In plan the contemporary solution separates flows with marked lanes and provides ramps and elevators to integrate the route with adjacent prayer decks and the Kaʿba plaza. Earlier surviving elements of the mosque—most visibly the Ottoman arcades elsewhere in the complex—remain important comparative reference points for scholars who study continuity and loss across successive campaigns of enlargement; however, much of the pre-modern street fabric within the al-Masaʿa corridor was removed during the modern expansions.