Province
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The Prophet's Mouque
| Lit by the setting sun during Maghrib there are few places on earth more beautiful than the Prophet's Mosque (Masjid an-Nabawi) nor any more aptly named than Madinah al Munawwarah, the city of light |
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The Mosque of the Prophet was built in Madinah in 1H (622) by the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) and the nascent Muslim community.
The mosque was situated next to the Prophet's house, and it consisted of a square enclosure of 30x35m, built with palm trunks and mud walls.
It was accessed through three doors, Bab Rahmah to the south, Bab Jibril to the west and Bab al-Nisa' to the east. Within this enclosure, the Prophet (pbuh) created a shaded area to the south called the suffrah and aligned the prayer space facing north towards Jerusalem.
After the revelation of Surat al-Baqara, the qibla direction was set to the south in order to face Masjid al-Haram, or, the Ka'aba in the city of Makkah.
Seven years later, the mosque was doubled in size to accommodate the increasing number of Muslims. After the death of the Prophet, the mosque was again enlarged to twice its size.
In 88H (707), Umayyad (Omar) Caliph al-Walid tore down the old structure, in order to build a larger mosque measuring 84x100m, with stone foundations and a teak roof supported on stone columns. The new mosque included the house of the Prophet (pbuh) under which he was buried. The Mosque of the Prophet was never intended as his tomb.
There were numerous renovations and reconstructions over the next thousand years and today it stands as an impressive place of worship with a rectangular plan over two floors. The main prayer hall occupies the entire first floor. It has a flat paved roof adorned with twenty-four domes raised on square bases. The roof is also used for prayer during peak times, when the twenty-four domes slide out on metal tracks to shade areas of the roof, creating light wells for the prayer hall. At these times, the courtyard of the Ottoman mosque is also shaded with umbrellas affixed to freestanding columns.
The walls are composed of a series of windows topped by pointed arches with black and white decoration. There are six minarets attached to the new extension, and four others frame the Ottoman structure. The mosque is lavishly decorated with multicolored marble and stones. The columns are of white marble with brass capitals supporting slightly pointed arches, built of black and white stones. The column pedestals have ventilation grills that regulate the temperature inside the prayer hall. The mosque enclosure is one hundred times bigger than the first mosque built by the Prophet (pbuh) and can accommodate more than half a million worshippers.
Not far away is the Masjid al-Qiblatayn (Quba'a, Qiba Mosque - or the Mosque of the two Qiblas). It was also originally build by the Prophet (pbuh) and his Companions. Aisha said of this mosque that the Prophet (pbuh) himself had said, "Who made ablution in his home and came to Qiba' and prayed in it will be considered to have performed a whole Umra". This mosque has two prayer indicators, one towards Jerusalem, to which the Prophet (pbuh) had originally instructed the believers to pray, and the other facing Makkah. |
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