Jeddahculture & etiquette

Mecca sits about 80 km inland, and the whole built-up city lies inside the Haram boundary that non-Muslims may not enter. Police checkpoints on the Makkah expressway verify this and direct non-Muslim drivers onto the bypass. The practical consequences catch people out: never book a Haramain train ticket to or from Makkah station if you are not Muslim, set navigation apps to avoid routing you through the city on the way to Taif, and expect your Muslim colleagues to make Umrah trips you simply cannot join. Madinah is different — the restricted zone there is the central Haram area, not the whole city, and the Haramain station sits outside it.

Jeddah is the arrival point for millions of pilgrims a year, and King Abdulaziz International Airport has a terminal built for nothing else. In the weeks around Hajj and through Ramadan, the Makkah road, the airport approaches and the northern arteries clog in ways that are unrelated to rush hour, and some routes close entirely. Schedule flights, deliveries and anything time-critical around the Hijri calendar rather than the Gregorian one — it shifts about eleven days earlier each year, so the dates move.

Rain is rare but arrives in violent bursts, and the city's stormwater network is still being retrofitted — the Jeddah Stormwater Drainage Programme had drainage covering about 46% of the city by the end of 2024, with a stated target of 75% by 2028. Deadly floods hit in 2009, 2011 and again in November 2022 and January 2023. Ground-floor flats, basement parking and underpasses are where the damage happens. Ask a prospective landlord bluntly whether the street has flooded and whether the building's drainage has been upgraded, and avoid underpasses altogether during a storm.

In September 2025 rents inside Riyadh's urban boundary were frozen for five years. Jeddah was not included. What Jeddah did get, along with the whole Kingdom, is automatic lease renewal unless one party gives at least 60 days' notice before expiry, and a rule that a landlord wanting to raise the rent must request it through Ejar at least 90 days before the contract ends. REGA's board can extend the Riyadh measures to other cities later, but as things stand you should negotiate a Jeddah lease assuming increases are possible.

Centuries as a pilgrimage port left Jeddah with Hadhrami, Indonesian, Indian, Turkish and East African families who have been here for generations, and the city carries that in its food, its dialect and its manners. Dress is more relaxed on the Corniche, mixed social life is unremarkable, and the pace is slower. None of this changes the law: alcohol is illegal, public decency rules apply, and Ramadan daytime eating in public is still out. Read it as a difference in temperature, not in rules.

Riyadh's summer is dry heat you can walk through for ten minutes. Jeddah's is Red Sea humidity that makes 38°C feel unbearable and keeps night-time temperatures high. Air conditioning runs year-round and your electricity bill reflects it. The upside is the winter, which is close to perfect from November to March and is when the Corniche, the diving and outdoor life in the city actually happen.