Putin probably has mongol blood in him.under genghis khan, mongols conquered russia after crossing the ural mountains and were in hungary already. and there was nothing in their way to conquer the rest of europe. It was all flat land, like the fertile yellow river plains in china.
But genghis died suddenly, on his way to attack china( poisoned or assinated ?) after a succesful carnage of middle east that wiped out the islamic civilisation based in baghdad.( mecca was a backwater nobody wanted).mecca became prominent only recently in my opinion.nothing in islamic history gave mecca any prominent role. No caliphs nor sultan wrote about doing pilgrimage in mecca. They were busy attacking damascus or granada or samarkand.