Medina

SAUDI ARABIA
WRITTEN BY:
 John Bagot Glubb
 Assʿad Sulaiman Abdo
See Article History
Alternative Titles: Al-Madīnah, Al-Madīnah al-Munawwarah, Al-Madina, Madīnat
Rasūl Allāh, Yathrib

Medina, Arabic Al-Madīnah, formally Al-Madīnah al-Munawwarah

(“The Luminous City”) or Madīnat Rasūl Allāh (“City of the
Messenger of God [i.e., Muhammad]”), ancient Yathrib, city
located in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia, about 100 miles
(160 km) inland from the Red Sea and 275 miles from Mecca by
road. It is the second holiest city in Islam, after Mecca.

Medina, Saudi Arabia: Prophet's MosqueThe Prophet's Mosque, showing the green dome
built above the tomb of Muhammad, Medina, Saudi Arabia.Omar Chatriwala (CC-BY-2.0)
(A Britannica Publishing Partner)
Medina is celebrated as the place from
which Muhammad established the Muslim community (ummah) after
his flight from Mecca (622 CE) and is where his body is entombed.
A pilgrimage is made to his tomb in the city’s chief mosque. Only
Muslims are allowed to enter the city. Pop. (2010) 1,100,093.
Physical And Human Geography
Landscape

City site

Medina lies 2,050 feet (625 metres) above sea level on a

fertile oasis. It is bounded on the east by an extensive lava field, part
of which dates from a volcanic eruption in 1207 CE. On the other
three sides, the city is enclosed by arid hills belonging to the Hejaz
mountain range. The highest of these hills is Mount Uḥud, which
rises to more than 2,000 feet above the oasis.
City layout

Because Medina is a sacred area, only Muslims are permitted to

enter. The airport, however, lies just outside the sacred limits, and a
good view of the city can be obtained by non-Muslims from aircraft
landing there.

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In Turkish times there was a small military landing ground at
Sultanah, to the south near the garrison’s barracks, but the area is
now occupied by the king’s palace and its extensive satellites. There
too are the ruins of the tomb of ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, the celebrated
conquerer for early Islam of Palestine and Egypt. The tomb
of Aaron is located on the highest point of Mount Uḥud.
Other religious features of the oasis include the mosque of Qubāʾ,
the first in Islamic history, from which the Prophet was vouchsafed a
view of Mecca; the Mosque of the Two Qiblahs, commemorating the
change of the prayer direction from Jerusalem to Mecca, at al-Rimāḥ;
the tomb of Ḥamza, uncle of the Prophet and of his companions who
fell in the Battle of Uḥud (625), in which the Prophet was wounded;
and the cave in the flank of Uḥud in which the Prophet took refuge on
that occasion. Other mosques commemorate where he donned his
armour for that battle; where he rested on the way thither, and where
he unfurled his standard for the Battle of the Ditch (Al-Khandaq); and
the ditch itself, dug around Medina by Muhammad, in which the
rubble of the great fire during the reign (1839–61) of
Sultan Abdülmecid I was dumped. All these spots are the object of
pious visitation by all Muslims visiting Medina; they are forbidden to
non-Muslims. In addition the city is also the site of the Islamic
University, established in 1961.
But the cynosure of all pilgrims is the Prophet’s Mosque, which
Muhammad himself helped to build. Additions and improvements
were undertaken by a succession of caliphs, and the chamber of the
Prophet’s wives was merged in the extension during the time of the
Umayyad caliph al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik. Fire twice damaged the
mosque, first in 1256 and again in 1481, and its rebuilding was
variously undertaken by devout rulers of several Islamic countries.
Sultan Selim II (1566–74) decorated the interior of the mosque with
mosaics overlaid with gold. Sultan Mahmud II built the dome in 1817
and in 1839 painted it green, this being the accepted colour of Islam.
Sultan Abdülmecid I initiated a project for the virtual reconstruction of
the mosque in 1848 and completed it in 1860. This was the last
renovation before the modern expansion planned by King ʿAbd al-
ʿAzīz in 1948 and executed by King Saud in 1953–55. The mosque
now includes a new northern court with its surrounding colonnades,
all in the same style as the 19th-century building but of concrete
instead of stone from the neighbouring hills. The qafaṣ (cage), to
which female worshippers were formerly restricted, has been
dismantled, while, apart from minor repairs, the southern (main) part
of the mosque has remained intact. It comprises the three
ornamental iron structures representing the houses of the Prophet
and containing respectively (according to general consensus) the
tomb of the Prophet himself under the great green dome, those of the
first two caliphs, Abū Bakr and ʿUmar, and that of the Prophet’s
daughter Fāṭimah. A specially adorned section of the pillared
southern colonnade represents the palm grove (al-Rawḍah) in which
the first simple mosque was built.
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Prophet's MosqueProphet's Mosque, Medina, Saudi Arabia.Ali Imran
The Prophet's MosqueThe Prophet's Mosque, Medina, Saudi Arabia.AP

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The modernization of Medina has not been so rapid as that
of Jiddah, Riyadh, and other Saudi towns. Building development has
involved the complete dismantlement of the old city wall and the
merging of that historic area with the now built-up pilgrim camping
ground (al-Manakh) and the Anbariyyah quarter, beyond the Abu
Jidaʿ torrent bed, which was formerly the commercial quarter and in
which the Turks established the railway station and terminal yards.
The foundations of the old city wall were found to be lower than the
surface of accumulated silt and rubble, but no attempt has been
made to examine the excavations from the archaeological point of
view. Nor has any archaeological work been done on the ruined sites
of the old Jewish settlements, the largest of which was Yathrib (the
Lathrippa or Iathrippa of Ptolemy and Stephanus Byzantius), which
gave its name to the whole oasis until Islamic times. There are also
several interesting mounds (ʿitm), besides the village of Al-Quraidha,
which would certainly produce historical data of interest. The Islamic
cemetery of al-Baqīʿ (Baqīʿ al-Gharqad) was shorn of all the domes
and ornamentation of the tombs of the saints at the time of the
Wahhābī conquest of 1925; simple concrete graves in place of the
old monuments and a circuit wall have been installed.
People

The residents of Medina are Arabic-speaking Muslims, most of whom

belong to the Sunni branch of Islam. The city is one of the most
populous in Saudi Arabia, and it is common for Muslims who make
the pilgrimage to settle in the city. Farming and pottery making are
important occupations.
Economy

Agriculture

To supplement the income derived from accommodating pilgrims,

Medina has an economy based on the cultivation of fruits,
vegetables, and cereals. The city is especially well known for its date
palms, the fruits of which are processed and packaged for export at a
plant built in 1953.

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Mechanical pumps for irrigation, in use since Turkish times early in
the 20th century, have virtually replaced the old draw wells. Drinking
water is supplied by an aqueduct from a spring at the southern end of
the oasis. In addition to the plentiful supply of subsoil water at no
great depth, a number of important wadis meet in the vicinity of
Medina and bring down torrents of water during the winter rains. Of
these the most notable are the Wadi al-ʿAqīq from the western
mountains and a wadi coming down from the Al-Tāʾif area to the
south.

Industry

Although Medina was known in early Islamic times for metalworking,

jewelry, and armory, those industries were never large-scale, and
most activity was connected with agricultural technology until the
mid-20th century. Principal activities came to include automobile
repair, brick and tile making, carpentry, and metalworking.
Transportation
From 1908 to 1916 Medina was connected with Damascus by the
Hejaz railway, destroyed during World War I. Reconstruction of this
railroad is studied periodically but has never taken place. A railway
has been built, however, between Medina and Jiddah. Asphalt roads
link the city with Jiddah, Mecca, and Yanbuʿ (Medina’s port on the
Red Sea), and another road extends north through the Hejaz and
connects the city to Jordan. Prince Mohammed bin Abdulaziz
International Airport serves passengers flying to and from the city.
History
The earliest history of Medina is obscure, though it is known that
there were Jewish settlers there in pre-Christian times. But the main
influx of Jews would seem to have taken place as the result of their
expulsion from Palestine by the Roman emperor Hadrian about
135 CE. It is probable that the Arab tribes of Aws and Khazraj were
then in occupation of the oasis, but the Jews were the dominant
factor in the population and development of the area by 400 CE. In
that year Abu Karib Asʿad, the Sabaean king of Yemen, visited the
colony and imbibed the lore and teaching of the Jewish rabbis with
the result that he adopted the religion of the Jews and made it the
state religion of Yemen on his return, in supersession of the local
paganism.
On September 20, 622, the arrival of the Prophet Muhammad at
Medina, in flight from Mecca, introduced a new chapter into the
history of the oasis. This flight (hijrah; sometimes transliterated
Hegira) marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar. Soon thereafter
the Jews, at first treated with indulgence, were driven out of all their
settlements in Hejaz. Medina became the administrative capital of the
steadily expanding Islamic state, a position it maintained until 661,
when it was superseded in that role by Damascus, the capital of the
Umayyad caliphs.
After the caliph’s sack of the city in 683 for its fractiousness, the
native emirs enjoyed a fluctuating measure of independence,
interrupted by the aggressions of the sharifs of Mecca or controlled
by the intermittent Egyptian protectorate.
The Turks, following their conquest of Egypt, held Medina after 1517
with a firmer hand, but their rule weakened and was
almost nominal long before the Wahhābīs, an Islamic puritanical
group, first took the city in 1804. A Turko-Egyptian force retook it in
1812, and the Turks remained in effective control until the revival of
the Wahhābī movement under Ibn Saud after 1912. Between 1904
and 1908 the Turks built the Hejaz railroad to Medina from
Damascus in an attempt at strengthening the empire and ensuring
Ottoman control over the hajj, the obligatory Muslim pilgrimage to the
nearby holy city of Mecca. Turkish rule ceased during World War I,
when Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, the sharif of Mecca, revolted and put the
railroad out of commission, with the assistance of the British
officer T.E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”). Ḥusayn later came into
conflict with Ibn Saud, and in 1925 the city fell to the Saʿūd dynasty.