The Cave of Hira — Ahmed Allawi’s Entry for the Makkah Prize 2010

In 2010, more than 154 artists and designers from across the world were invited to respond to one of the most spiritually charged sites in human history: the mountain of Jabal al-Nour, overlooking the city of Makkah, and the cave of Hira at its summit — the place where, in 610 CE, the first words of the Quran were revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.

The Makkah Prize was a competition of rare ambition: to create a work of art worthy of that moment, that place, and that meaning. Ahmed Allawi was among the artists who answered the call.

The Site

The proposed installation was conceived for a site of extraordinary presence: a mountain looking directly down over Makkah, with a structure 182 metres in length and 19 metres in height. At this scale, the work was not simply art placed in a landscape. It was the landscape — a new layer of meaning laid over one of the most sacred geographies on earth.

To stand at the Cave of Hira is to stand at the point where history divided. Before and after. Silence and word. Darkness and the first light of revelation. Any artistic response to this site must carry that weight without diminishing it.

The Concept: From One Cave to Seven Continents

Allawi's central idea was simple, and for that reason, profound: how did Islam travel from this single cave to the seven continents of the world?

The cave of Hira is small — a narrow cleft in rock, barely large enough to shelter a man in contemplation. From that intimate, silent space, a message emerged that would reach every corner of the earth, carried by faith, by language, by trade routes, by scholarship, by the lives of millions of people across fourteen centuries.

The installation gave this journey a form.

The Materials: Ceramic and Stainless Steel

The work was conceived in two materials, each chosen for what it carries beyond its physical properties.

Ceramic — the earth itself, shaped by hand and transformed by fire — formed the body of the installation. Allawi's ceramic panels carried the colours of the seven continents: the deep ochres of Africa, the cool blues of Europe, the warm reds of the Americas, the lush greens of Asia, the austere whites of the polar regions. Each continent was given its own colour, its own presence within the work. Together, they formed a map of faith — not a geographical map, but a spiritual one.

Stainless steel mesh formed the connective tissue of the installation — a vast web stretching across the structure, linking the continents, carrying the light, and referencing something ancient and miraculous.

The Spider's Web

In Islamic tradition, the spider holds a place of profound significance. When the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, fled from Makkah to Madinah and took shelter in the Cave of Thawr, it is narrated that Allah commanded a spider to spin its web across the entrance. The pursuers, seeing the unbroken web, turned away — convinced that no one could have entered without disturbing it. A fragile thread of silk became a shield of divine protection.

Allawi's stainless steel mesh — industrial in material, delicate in visual effect — evoked this web directly. Stretched across the full scale of the installation, it asked the viewer to hold two truths simultaneously: the immense and the intimate, the monumental and the fragile, the global reach of a civilisation and the single thread that, at a critical moment, protected its founder.

Colour as Theology

The decision to differentiate the continents through colour was not decorative. It was theological.

Islam is not a religion of one people, one culture, one geography. It was revealed in Arabic, in a specific place and time, but its address was universal — to all of humanity, across all of the earth. The seven colours of the seven continents within the ceramic panels made this universality visible. The stainless steel web that connected them made it felt.

From one cave. To every shore.

A Competition Among Giants

The Makkah Prize brought together more than 154 artists and designers from across the globe — a gathering of international creative talent responding to a site of unparalleled spiritual significance. To have been among them, and to have contributed a concept of this depth and technical ambition, represents one of the defining moments of Allawi's career as a public artist.

The work was never built. Many competition entries are not. But the idea — the image of Islam as a spider's web of light, woven from a single sacred point and cast across every continent — endures as one of the most powerful concepts in Allawi's practice.

Ahmed Allawi is an Iraqi contemporary artist based in Doha, Qatar. His practice spans bronze sculpture, ceramics, Arabic calligraphy, and large-scale public art. For enquiries about public commissions and large-scale installations, please visit the commissions page. Read more about Arabic calligraphy in his work or his ceramic practice.