Sirah
Construction of the First Mosque at Madinah
Site of al-Masjid an-Nabawi in the first weeks after the Hijrah
1 AH / 622 CE
Educational historical reconstructionWhere
Site of al-Masjid an-Nabawi, Madinah
24.4672, 39.6112 · View on OpenStreetMap
Background
After the migration of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions from Makkah to Yathrib, known thereafter as al-Madinah al-Munawwara, in the autumn of 622 CE, the construction of a mosque on a small open plot in the city was among the first communal acts of the new community. According to Ibn Ishaq's Sirah and al-Bukhari's traditions, the site was chosen at the place where the Prophet's camel, al-Qaswa', knelt; the land was purchased from two orphan boys, Sahl and Suhayl, who had been using it as a date-drying threshing floor. The original building was deliberately modest: walls of sun-baked mud brick on basalt fieldstone foundations, roofed with palm fronds laid over reed mats on supports of palm trunks, an open central courtyard, and a shaded portico on the northern side oriented toward Jerusalem, the qibla of the early Madinian community before the documented change to Makkah in the second year after the Hijrah. Adjacent apartments for the Prophet's family adjoined the eastern wall. The whole project was carried out with communal participation. The building has been continuously expanded and reconstructed for fourteen centuries; the present-day al-Masjid an-Nabawi, with its great central courtyards, the Green Dome, and the ten minarets, retains essentially nothing visible of the original 1 AH structure, although the original location is preserved within the contemporary mosque's footprint. This scene depicts the construction phase in the first weeks after the arrival in Madinah.
What you see
A flat, sandy clearing in the middle of a date palm oasis. Dense palm groves frame the site on three sides; the volcanic basalt fields of the Madinian harrah are visible in the far distance. The setting is the Yathrib oasis on the Hijazi plateau, not the rocky valley of Makkah.
A rectangular footprint roughly thirty to thirty-five metres on a side is being laid out on the ground, marked with palm-trunk stakes and lengths of plaited cord. Foundations of stacked, rough basalt fieldstone are being set along the trench lines.
Walls are being raised in mud brick, sun-baked clay bricks stacked and bonded with wet mud mortar. The wall thickness is modest, no decorative facing, no ashlar masonry, no carved capitals.
Tall, straight date palm trunks are being lifted into position as pillars along the interior. The roof material being prepared at the edge of the site is bundles of palm fronds laid over reed mats, not tile, not shingle, not dome construction.
The interior is one large open-air courtyard with a shaded portico on the northern side. There is no dome, no minaret, no qibla mihrab niche, none of the architectural features that the building would acquire over the following fourteen centuries.
People from the community are at work together, carrying baskets of mud and bundles of palm fronds. The work is communal rather than directed by a building guild. There are no inscribed foundation stones and no formal patron's plaque, this is not a royal or caliphal commission, it is the construction of a community gathering space at the moment of that community's formation.
The orientation of the prayer area faces north, toward Jerusalem (Bayt al-Maqdis). This is the original qibla in the year after the Hijrah, before the change to Makkah, which would not occur until about Shaʿban of the second year after the Hijrah.
Adjacent to the building site, on the eastern edge of the plot, simple rooms of similar mud brick and palm construction are being marked out, modest residential apartments for the Prophet's family, attached to but distinct from the prayer space, in the configuration the early sources describe.
Primary sources
Ibn Ishaq / Ibn Hisham, Sirat Rasul Allah (compiled 8th-9th c.): Foundational biographical compilation. Source for the choice of site (the camel's resting place), the purchase from Sahl and Suhayl, the use of the plot as a prior threshing floor, the construction materials, and the communal participation. The textual basis for almost every later account.
Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Salat and Kitab Manaqib al-Ansar (9th c.): Hadith collection. Several reports describe the construction materials and the deliberate modesty of the first building, including the Prophet's reported preference for the simplest possible structure.
al-Waqidi, Kitab al-Maghazi and Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqat al-Kubra (9th c.): Used as cross-references on the early Madinian topography and the configuration of the Prophet's living quarters adjoining the prayer area.
Further reading & cross-references
Ali ibn Ahmad al-Samhudi, Wafa al-Wafa bi-Akhbar Dar al-Mustafa (16th c.): The definitive historical-topographical work on Madinah, written by a long-resident scholar with access to earlier Madinian source material now lost. Used for the location, original dimensions, and reconstruction phases of the mosque over the first centuries.
W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Medina (Oxford, 1956): Standard academic English treatment of the early Madinian period. Used for the framing of the mosque as both prayer space and the political-administrative center of the new community.
K.A.C. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture (Penguin, 1932 / 1958): Classic study of early Islamic architecture. Used for the architectural reconstruction of the first mosque, including the absence of features (dome, minaret, mihrab niche) that became conventional later.
Guess places like this in GeoSiyer
Drop into a 360° scene from Islamic history and pin where — and when — it happened.
Play GeoSiyer