| 1884 Perron map MEDINA, SAUDI ARABIA, #166 |
Nice small map titled Medine, from wood engraving with fine detail and clear impression. Overall size approx. 18.5 x 16.5 cm, image size approx. 11 x 10.5 cm. From La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes, 19 vol. (1875-94), great work of Elisee Reclus. Cartographer is Charles Perron.
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. With Mecca, it is
one of Islam's two holiest cities.
Medina is celebrated as the place from which Muhammad conquered all of Arabia
after his flight from Mecca (622 CE), and 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.
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.
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 foreigners from aircraft landing there.
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 Muḥammad 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 ʿAbdul-ʿAziz
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 qafas (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-Rawdha) in which the first simple mosque
was built.
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-Baqiyyah (Baki
al-Gharkad) 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.
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
Abi-kariba 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. The Yemeni Jews, who in 1949 emigrated to
Israel, are mostly descendants of the Arabs then converted. 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;
commonly 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 Saʿūd 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 Saʿūd, and in 1925 the city fell to the Saʿūd dynasty.