MED- M E D 819 what was done at this time to mark off the graves. Ibn
- Abd Ilabbih, in the beginning of the 10th century ( IM,
Cairo ed., iii. 36G), 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 khaluk. This may be supplemented from Istakhri, who calls it a lofty house without a door. That there are na 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 sy.) and Samhudf 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 of the coffin suspended by magnets is totally unknown to Moslem tradition. The smaller chamber of Fatima is pretty modern. In the time of Ibn Jubair and of Ibn Bituta (unless the latter, as is so often the case, is merely copying his predecessor) there was only a small marble trough north of the rauda (or grave) which is said to be the house of Fatima or her grave, but God only knows." It is more probable that Fatima was buried in the Baki, where her tomb was also shown in the 12th century (Ibn Jubair, p. 198 sq.). The mosque was again extended by El-Mahdl (781 A.D.), and was burned down in 1256. Of its appearance before the fire we have two authentic accounts by Ibn Abd Fiabbih early in the 10th century, and by Ibn Jubair, who visited it in 1184. The old mosque had a much finer and more regular appearance than the present one; the interior walls were richly adorned with marble and mosaic arabesques of trees and the like, and the outer walls with stone marquetry ; the pillars of the south portico (seven teen in each row) were in white plaster with gilt capitals, the other pillars were of marble. Ibn Abd Rabbih speaks of eighteen gates, of which in Ibn Jubair s time, as at present, all but four were walled up. There were then three minarets. After the fire which took place just at the time of the fall of the caliphate, the mosque long lay ia a miserable condition. Its repair was chiefly due to the Egyptian sultans, especially to Kait Bey, whose restoration after a second fire in 1481 amounted almost to a complete reconstruction. Of the old building nothing seems to have remained but some of the columns and part of the walls ; and, as the minarets have also been rebuilt and two new ones added, the architectural character is now essentially Egyptian. The great dome above the tomb, the railing rounl it, and the pulpit, all date from Kait Bey s restoration. The suburbs, which occupy as much space as the city proper, and are partly walled in, lie south-west of the town, from which they are separated by an open space, the halting-place of caravans. Through the suburbs runs the watercourse called W. Buthan, a tributary of W. Kanat, which the Yanbu road crosses by a stone bridge. The suburbs are the quarter of the peasants. Thirty or forty families with their cattle occupy a single courtyard (hosh), and form a kind of community often at feud with its neighbours. The several clans of Medina must have lived in much the same way at the time of the Prophet. The famous cemetery called Baki el-Gharkad, the resting- place of a multitude of the " companions " of the Prophet, lies immediately to the west of the city. It once con tained many monuments, the chief of which are described by Ibn Jubair. Burckhardt in 1815 found it a mere waste, but some of the mosques have since been rebuilt. History. The story of the Ainalekites in Yathrib and of their conquest by the Hebrews in the time of Moses is purely fabulous, see Nbldeke, Ueler die Amalckiter, 1864, p. 36. The oasis, when it first comes into the light of history, was held by Jews, among whom emigrants from Yemen afterwards settled. From the time of the flight of Mohammed (622 A. D.) till the Omayyads removal the seat ot empire from Medina to Damascus, the town springs into historic prominence as the capital of the new power that so rapidly changed the fate of the East. Its fall was not less rapid and complete, and since the battle of Harra and the sack of the city in 683 it lias never re gained political importance. The history of Medina in this perioj will be told in the articles MOHAMMED and MOHAMMEDAN EMPIRE Mohammed invested the country round Medina with an inviolable character like that of the Ilaram round Mecca ; but this provision has never been observed with strictness. After the fall of the caliphs, who maintained a governor in Medina, the native emirs enjoyed a fluctuating measure of independence, interrupted by the aggressions of thesherifs of Mecca, or controlled by an intermittent Egyptian protectorate. The Turks after the conquest of Egypt held Medina for a time with a firmer hand ; but their rule grew weak, and was almost nominal long before the Wahhdbis took the city in 1804. A Turko-Egyptian force retook it in 1812, and the Turks still maintain a pasha with a military establishment, while the cadi and chief agha of the mosque (a eunuch) are sent from Constanti nople. But the internal government is largely in Arab hands, and is said to be much better than that of Mecca. Siurces. Medina has been described from personal observation liy Burckhardt who visited it in 1815, and Burton, who made the pilgrimage in 1853. Sadlicr on his journey from fcati f to Yanbu (1819) was not allowed to enter the holy city Borckhardt was prevented by ill health from examining the city and country with his usual thoroughness. Little is added to our information by the report of AW il-Razzdk, who performed the pilgrimage in 1878, on a medical commi.-sion from the English Government The chief Arabic authority besides Ibn Abd Kabbih and Ibn Jub.dr is Samluidi , of whose history Wiistenfeld published an abstract in the Gb ttingen Ahhanc/ntnyen, vol. ix., 1S61. It goes down to the end of the 15IH c; ntuiy. The topography of the country about Medina is interesting lioth his torically and geographically ; Bckri, Yjfkiit, and other Arabic geographers supply much material on this topic, but complete)- European accounts arc wanting to per mit of its full utilization. Medina now offers a more promising, but also a more perilous, field for an explorer than Mecca. (W. ] . S.) MEDINA SIDONIA, a town of Spain, in the province of Cadiz, and about 21 miles by road westward from that city, stands at a height of 600 feet above the sea-level, on an isolated hill surrounded by a cultivated plain. Apart from its picturesque airy situation it has nothing to interest the traveller; the streets are narrow, steep, and dirty, and its buildings and ruins are unimportant. The occupations of the inhabitants are connected chiefly with the agriculture and cattle-breeding carried on in the surrounding district ; bricks and pottery are also made to some extent. The population in 1877 was 12,231. Medina Sidonia has been identified by some with the Asiao of Pliny, but it is uncertain whether Jerez is not more probably the locality referred to by that name. Under the Visigoths the place was erected into a bishopric (Assidonia), and attained some im portance ; in the beginning of the 8th century it was taken by Tarik. In the time of Edrisi the province of Shaduna or Shidona included, among other towns, Seville and Carmona ; later Arab geographers place Shaduna in the province of Seville. The town gives its title to the ducal house of Guzman el Bueno, the hero of Tarifa (1292). MEDITERRANEAN SEA. The southern shores of Europe are separated from the northern shores of Africa by the Mediterranean Sea. It extends in a generally east and west direction from longitude 5 21 W. to 36 10 E. Its length from Gibraltar to its eastern extremity in Syria is about 2100 miles. Its breadth is very various, being 400 miles from the mouth of the Rhone to the Algerian coast, 500 miles from the Gulf of Sidra to the entrance to the Adriatic, and 250 miles from the mouth of the Nile to the south coast of Asia Minor. From the very indented nature of its coasts, the general mass of the water is much cat up into separate seas, which Lave long borne distinctive names, as the Adriatic, the yEgean, the Sea of Marmora, the Black Sea, &c. The area of the whole system, including the Sea of Azoff, is given by Admiral Smythe as 1,149,287 square miles. If we deduct that of the Black Sea and Sea of Azoff, 172,506 square miles, we have for the area of the Mediterranean proper 976,781, or, roughly speaking, a million of square miles. The Mediterranean is sharply divided into two great
principal basins, the western and the eastern or Levant