IN the Islamic calendar, Thursday, November 20, 1979 was the first day of the year 1400, the start of a new century. It was also the day that a force of armed Muslim zealots led by a 43-year-old Saudi called Juhayman al Utaybi and a strange young man called Mohammed Abdullah, who saw himself as the Mahdi (the Islamic redeemer), took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca. They believed that once they had seized Islam's holiest place it would prompt the Saudi people to rise and sweep away the corrupt, pro-western regime of King Khaled and replace it with a pure Muslim state which, led by the Mahdi, would conquer the world for Islam.

"Thus began a drawn-out battle that would drench Mecca in blood," writes Yaroslav Trofimov in the introduction to his book, "marking a watershed moment for the Islamic world and the West. Within hours, this outrage would prompt a global diplomatic crisis, spreading death and destruction thousands of miles away. American pilots and European commandos would all have to be involved in restoring the shrines of Islam to the House of Saud. American lives would be lost, and America would find itself more isolated than ever in the increasingly hostile Muslim universe."

Well, maybe. My own view is that the Islamic world had been restless and bitter ever since the West encouraged the remnants of European Jewry to replace Muslim Palestine with the state of Israel in 1948. But Trofimov is right to argue that the events of November 1979 have been more or less forgotten in the West and written out of the history books of the Arab world. This excellent and readable account of the tragic affair goes some way to putting that right.

When the fundamentalists struck at the Grand Mosque the Saudi regime of King Khaled didn't know what to do. If Saudi troops stormed the mosque - Islam's holiest place - would they be committing a great blasphemy? If troops were killed would they die as religious martyrs or would they burn in hell? Serious questions which only a fatwah from the country's religious leaders could resolve.

And, according to Trofimov, those leaders drove a hard bargain. Here's how he describes what was agreed: "There should be no more women on TV, no more licentious movies, no more alcohol. The social liberalisation that had begun under King Faisal should be halted and, where possible, rolled back. And billions of Saudi petrodollars should be put to good use, spreading the rigid Wahhabi Islam around the planet."

It's a deal that the rest of us are still trying to live with as Saudi-funded schools, mosques and propaganda organs flourish across the planet.

Trofimov's account of the two-week-long battle to regain control of the Great Mosque makes gripping reading.

From the outset it was a hard fight. Assault after assault on the mosque was driven back by the Islamist rebels. Snipers high up in the Grand Mosque's minarets laid down a withering fire that killed dozens of police and soldiers until their positions were attacked with American-built rockets.

Even when the army's armoured personnel carriers managed to burst into the building they were met with a hail of Molotov cocktails that incinerated some of them. The brutal fighting that Trofimov describes resembles nothing so much as the house-to-house, room-to-room battles the Red Army fought with the Wermacht in the ruins of Stalingrad.

Through it all, Mohammed Abdullah, the man the rebels believed to be the Mahdi, the saviour, led a charmed life. "I am the Mahdi, and I do not fear anything," he is reported as saying. "I cannot die." In the end, a grenade shredded the lower part of his body and his corpse fell into the hands of his enemy who used it to make propaganda. His death was a blow from which his followers never recovered.

The Saudi government's firepower, backed by French chemical weapons, put an end to the insurrection. The final battles were fought out in the warren of underground rooms and corridors most of which had been built by the Bin Laden family. Juhayman and the survivors were rounded up and more than 60 of them were executed in eight cities across the country.

One of the ironies of the whole business was that it was the Americans who got the blame. The so-called "Muslim street" couldn't countenance the idea that their fellow-Muslims could desecrate Islam's holiest place. So there were ferocious attacks on American embassies and institutions across the Muslim world, from Pakistan to Tunisia. On the other hand, some Muslims were so inspired by the rantings of Juhayman that they went on to assassinate Anwar Sadat of Egypt and almost kill Pope John Paul II.

It's a fascinating tale full of new material. But I couldn't make up my mind whether the grim battle for the Grand Mosque was quite so important as Trofimov claims. He sees it as one of the modern world's pivotal moments and regards it as "painfully clear" that the "countdown to September 11, to the terrorist bombings in London and Madrid, and the grisly Islamist violence ravaging Afghanistan and Iraq, all began on that warm November morning, in the shade of the Kaaba" (the sacred building at the heart of the mosque).

If nothing else, this intriguing, well written and well researched book reminds us that there was more to the year 1979 than the advent of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. And that we'll be living with a humiliated and unhappy Muslim world for a long time to come.