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 last day of the year 1399 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.
Goals 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".
Relations with 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 (the armed group). The senior scholars also insisted that before security forces attack them, the authorities must offer them the option to surrender.
Preparations 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. ==Seizure==