port of Yambu—under the name of W. Idam. Southwards from
Medina the plain extends unbroken, but with a slight rise, as
far as the eye can reach. The convergence of torrent-courses
in the neighbourhood of Medina makes this one of the best-watered
spots in northern Arabia. The city lies close to one of
the great volcanic centres of the peninsula, which was in violent
eruption as late as A.D. 1266, when the lava stream approached
within an hour’s distance of the walls, and dammed up W. Kanat.
The result of this and older prehistoric eruptions has been to
confine the underground water, so important in Arabian tillage,
which can be reached at any point of the oasis by sinking deep
wells. Many of the wells are brackish, and the natural fertility
of the volcanic soil is in many places impaired by the salt with
which it is impregnated; but the date-palm grows well everywhere,
and the groves, interspersed with gardens and cornfields,
which surround the city on all sides except the west, have been
famous from the time of the Prophet. Thus situated, Medina
was originally a city of agriculturists, not like Mecca a city of
merchants; nor, apart from the indispensable trade in provisions,
has it ever acquired commercial importance like that which
Mecca owes to the pilgrimage.[1] Landowners and cultivators
are still a chief element in the population of the city and suburbs.
The latter, who are called Nakhāwila, and more or less openly
profess the Shī‛a opinions, marry only among themselves. The
townsmen proper, on the other hand, are a very motley race.[2]
New settlers remain behind with each pilgrimage; attracted by
the many offices of profit connected with the mosque, the stipends
paid by the sultan to every inhabitant, and the gains to be derived
by pilgrim-cicerones (Muzawwirs) or by those who make it a
business to say prayers at the Prophet’s mosque for persons who
send a fee from a distance, as well as the alms which the citizens
are accustomed to collect when they go abroad, especially in
Turkey. The population of the city and suburbs may be from
16,000 to 20,000.
The city proper is surrounded by a solid stone wall,[3] with towers and four massive gateways of good architecture, forming an irregular oval running to a kind of angle at the north-west, where stands the castle, held by a Turkish garrison. The houses are good stone buildings similar in style to those of Mecca; the streets are narrow but clean, and in part paved.[4] There is a copious supply of water conducted from a tepid source (ez-Zarkā) at the village of Kuba, 2 m. south, and distributed in underground cisterns in each quarter.[5] The glory of Medina, and the only important building, is the mosque of the Prophet, in the eastern part of the city, a spacious enclosed court between 400 and 500 ft. in length from north to south, and two-thirds as much in breadth. The minarets and the lofty dome above the sacred graves are imposing features; but the circuit is hemmed in by houses or narrow lanes, and is not remarkable except for the principal gate (Bab al-Salam) at the southern end of the west front, facing the sacred graves, which is richly inlaid with marbles and fine tiles, and adorned with golden inscriptions. This gate leads into a deep portico, with ten rows of pillars, running along the southern wall. Near the farther end of the portico, but not adjoining the walls, is a sort of doorless house or chamber hung with rich curtains, which is supposed to contain the graves of Mahomet, Abu Bekr and Omar. To the north of this is a smaller chamber of the same kind, draped in black, which is said to represent the tomb of Fatima. Both are enclosed with an iron railing, so closely interwoven with brass wire-work that a glimpse of the so-called tombs can only be got through certain apertures, where intercessory prayer is addressed to the prophet, and pious salutations are paid to the other saints.[6] The portico in front of the railing is not ineffective, at least by nightlight. It is paved with marble, and in the eastern part with mosaic, laid with rich carpets; the southern wall is clothed with marble pierced with windows of good stained glass, and the great railing has a striking aspect; but an air of tawdriness is imparted by the vulgar painting of the columns, especially in the space between the tomb and the pulpit, which has received, in accordance with a tradition of the Prophet, the name of the Garden (rauḍa), and is decorated with barbaric attempts to carry out this idea in colour.[7] The throng of visitors passing along the south wall from the Bab al-Salam to salute the tombs is separated from the Garden by an iron railing. The other three sides of the interior court have porticoes of less depth and mean aspect, with three or four rows of pillars. Within the court are the well of the Prophet, and some palm-trees said to have been planted by Fatima; this “grove” is separated from the rest of the court by a wooden partition.
The original mosque was a low building of brick, roofed with palm-branches, and much smaller than the present structure. The wooden pulpit from which Mahomet preached appears to have stood on the same place with the present pulpit in the middle of the south portico. The dwelling of the Prophet and the huts of his women adjoined the mosque. Mahomet died in the hut of Ayesha and was buried where he died; Abu Bekr and Omar were afterwards buried beside him. In A.D. 711 the mosque, which had previously been enlarged by Omar and Othman, was entirely reconstructed on a grander scale and in Byzantine style by Greek and Coptic artificers at the command of the caliph Walid and under the direction of Omar Ibn Abd-al-Aziz. The enlarged plan included the huts above named, which were pulled down. Thus the place of the Prophet’s burial was brought within the mosque; but the recorded discontent of the city at this step shows that the feeling which regards the tomb as the great glory of the mosque, and the pilgrimage to it as the most meritorious that can be undertaken except that to Mecca, was still quite unknown. It is not even certain what was done at this time to mark off the graves. Ibn ‛Abd Rabbih, in the beginning of the 10th century (‛Iḳd, Cairo ed., iii. 366), describes the enclosure as a hexagonal wall, rising within three cubits of the ceiling of the portico, clothed in marble for more than a man’s height, and above that height daubed with the unguent called khalūk. This may be supplemented from Iṣṭakhrī, who calls it a lofty house without a door. That there are no gravestones or visible tombs within is certain from what is recorded of occasions when the place was opened up for repairs. Ibn Jubair (p. 193 seq.) and Samhūdī speak of a small casket adorned with silver, fixed in the eastern wall, which was supposed to be opposite the head of the Prophet, while a silver nail in the south wall indicated the point to which the corpse faced, and from which the salutation of worshippers was to be addressed (Burton misquotes). The European fable (mentioned and refuted, e.g. in Histoire des Arabes par l’abbé de Marigny, t. i. p. 46, Paris, 1750) of the coffin suspended by magnets is totally unknown to Moslem tradition. The smaller chamber of Fatima is comparatively modern. In the time of Ibn Jubair and of Ibn Batuta (unless
- ↑ The pilgrimage to Medina, though highly meritorious, is not obligatory, and it is not tied to a single season: so that there is no general concourse at one time, and no fair like that of Mecca.
- ↑ A small number of families in Medina still claim to represent the ancient Ansar, the “defenders” of Mahomet; there are also some Siddiqiyah, claiming descent from Abu Bekr. But in fact the old population emigrated en masse after the sack of Medina by Moslim in 683, and passed into Spain in the armies of Musa. In the 13th century one old man of the Khazraj and one old woman of the Aus tribe were all that remained of the old stock in Medina (Maqqarī, i. 187; Dozy, Mus. d’Espagne, i. 111). The aristocratic family of the Benī Hosain, who claim descent from the martyr of Kerbela, and so from the Prophet, have apparently a better established pedigree.
- ↑ According to Ibn Khallikan (Slane’s trans. iii. 927) the walls are of the 12th century, the work of Jamāl ud-Dīn al-Ispahānī.
- ↑ The Balāt or great paved street of Medina, a very unusual feature in an Eastern town, dates from the 1st century of Islām. (See Wüstenfeld’s abstract of Samhūdī, p. 115.)
- ↑ Kubā is famous as the place where the Prophet lived before he entered Medina, and the site of the first mosque in which he prayed. It lies amidst orchards in the richest part of the oasis.
- ↑ The space between the railing and the tomb is seldom entered except by the servants of the mosque. It contains the treasures of the mosque in jewels and plate, which were once very considerable, but have been repeatedly plundered, last of all by the Wahhābīs in the beginning of the 19th century.
- ↑ The word rauḍa also means a mausoleum, and is applied by Ibn Jubair to the tomb itself. Thus the tradition that the space between the pulpit and the tomb was called by the Prophet one of the gardens of Paradise probably arose from a mistake.
