The First Year in Madinah

The Prophet ﷺ and Abu Bakr RA arrived at Quba, the outermost settlement of Madinah facing Makkah, entering on a Monday in the 14th year of the dawah (the 1st year of the Hijrah). Each day beforehand, the Ansar had gone out toward Quba to await him, staying until the midday heat forced them back, until word spread that he was near and they rushed out in throngs, hundreds of them, to receive him; a Jewish man of Yathrib, sighting the two travelers from atop a palm tree, was first to call out, "O Arabs, your king has arrived!" Al-Bara' ibn Azib RA, an Ansari eyewitness, recalled that over 500 armed and dressed Ansar came out, with women climbing onto rooftops and children thronging around to see. The Prophet ﷺ and Abu Bakr RA then waited about a week at Quba for Ali RA, Aisha RA, and Asma RA to arrive, before entering central Madinah together, reportedly on a Friday. The Prophet ﷺ let his camel walk freely, saying it should be left alone because Allah had taken charge of it; wherever it sat down would be the site of his masjid and house. It sat on an open plantation-drying ground. He asked whose relatives among his family were closest by, and Khalid ibn Zayd (Abu Ayyub al-Ansari), of the Banu al-Najjar, came forward (the Prophet ﷺ's great-grandmother was of that same clan, making Abu Ayyub roughly his sixth cousin), so the Prophet ﷺ chose to stay with him until his own house was built. The poem Tala'al-badru alayna is popularly said to have greeted him on this arrival; scholars differ over whether it belongs here or to his return from Tabuk.

Placed here because: First week of Rabi' al-Awwal, 622 CE.

After arriving at Quba around high noon on a Monday, the Prophet ﷺ stayed at the house of Kulthum ibn al-Hidm RA, an elderly man of Banu Amr ibn Awf; the first sahabi to die in Madinah after the Prophet ﷺ's arrival. It is also said he stayed at the house of Sa'd ibn Khaythama RA, a bachelor; some reports reconcile this by saying he spent the night at Kulthum RA's house (a married man with children) and the day at Sa'd RA's house (a bachelor, so guests could visit without difficulty). Abu Bakr RA stayed at the house of another of the Ansar.

Placed here because: A few days in Rabi' al-Awwal 1 AH, before entering the city.

The Prophet ﷺ began building the first masjid in Madinah, Masjid Quba, once Ali RA arrived in Quba (2-3 days after the Prophet ﷺ's own arrival). The first stone was laid by the Prophet ﷺ himself, then Ali RA and Abu Bakr RA continued, and the Ansar took over from there. The Prophet ﷺ left for central Madinah on the Friday morning before its completion, so although Masjid Quba was the first masjid begun, Masjid al-Nabawi was the first he completed and prayed in himself. (There was already a makeshift masjid the Ansar used for Jumu'ah, most likely the house of As'ad ibn Zurarah RA.) In one hadith in Abu Dawud, the people of Quba, asked why Allah praised them uniquely in the Qur'an, explained that (unlike most people at the time, who only wiped themselves) they had a practice of washing with water after using the restroom.

Placed here because: Wednesday to Thursday, Rabi' al-Awwal 1 AH, during the stay at Quba.

After a few days in Quba helping build the masjid, the Prophet ﷺ announced on Thursday night that he would enter central Madinah the next morning. Leaving Quba that Friday morning, he stopped in the area of Banu Salama and delivered his own first Jumu'ah khutbah, even though the Ansar, through Mus'ab ibn Umayr RA, had already been holding Jumu'ah before his arrival. He then continued into central Madinah, where the camel-kneeling episode and his stay with Abu Ayyub al-Ansari RA followed.

Placed here because: Friday morning, Rabi' al-Awwal 1 AH, on the way from Quba into the city.

The Prophet ﷺ's camel knelt on a plantation-drying ground owned by two orphan brothers, Sahal and Suhayl, who had inherited it from their father. The Prophet ﷺ insisted on paying its due price rather than accepting it as a gift. The date palms on the land were cut down and used for the masjid's front and back walls, with the sahaba building the other walls from clay brick; the Prophet ﷺ personally took part in the construction, carrying bricks alongside the sahaba. It took about two weeks to build (reported in al-Bayhaqi's Dala'il), and was roughly 100x130 feet. It had three public doors: Bab al-Rahma (south), Bab Jibril (west), and Bab al-Nisa' (east, assigned after Umar RA suggested men and women not share an entrance), plus private entrances from adjoining houses, including Abu Bakr RA's and the Prophet ﷺ's own house (Aisha RA's). The roof at first covered only the northern portion (then facing the Jerusalem qibla); after the qibla changed to Makkah that area became the back of the masjid and was known as al-Suffa. A full roof was later added, though only to block the sun; Sahih Bukhari records that it still leaked, since the Prophet ﷺ prayed on the rain-muddied ground on the 22nd of Ramadan, likely 8 AH. Of the later Rashidun, Abu Bakr RA made no changes; Umar RA solidified the structure with wooden pillars, a waterproof roof, and expanded it by 10-15 rows; Uthman RA expanded it by about 50% more.

Placed here because: Begun on arrival, about two weeks of building.

After spending 2-3 weeks building the masjid, the Prophet ﷺ began building his own houses. At the time he had two wives, Sawda RA and Aisha RA, and both of their houses were built adjoining the masjid; the only two of his wives' houses ever directly connected to it (his later wives were married years afterward, by which point other houses filled that block). Sawda RA, an elderly lady senior to the Prophet ﷺ in age, gifted her night with him to Aisha RA out of her desire to please him; so while the Prophet ﷺ would visit and spend time with Sawda RA by day, Aisha RA's house was the only one he actually lived and spent the night in.

Placed here because: Shortly after the mosque, 1 AH.

Among the earliest things the Prophet ﷺ did after arriving in Madinah, some scholars say even before the masjid was built, was to institute the muakha: pairing each Muhajir with an Ansari as a brother. Over 100 such pairs were made, and the Prophet ﷺ chose each pairing himself, matching people who shared much in common, e.g. Abu Bakr RA (a nobleman of the Muhajirun) with Kharijah ibn Zayd RA (a nobleman of the Ansar). Anas ibn Malik RA recalled that the Prophet ﷺ literally sat down and carried out the muakha in his household's area of Madinah. In this early stage the pairing was so complete that the brothers even inherited from one another, until Allah abrogated this after the Battle of Badr in Surah al-Anfal [8:75]. The Ansar had already been so generous that they offered to split their land, wealth, and even their households with the Muhajirun; the Prophet ﷺ made du'a for them but declined the offer, so that the Muhajirun would work for their own livelihood rather than depend on free gifts that could later sow resentment between the two groups' descendants. The practice of muakha continued throughout the Madani period, not only at its outset: the Prophet ﷺ paired Ja'far ibn Abi Talib RA with Mu'adh ibn Jabal RA when Ja'far arrived in Madinah in the 7th year of the Hijrah, and reportedly paired Muawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan with an Ansari after his conversion following the Conquest of Makkah [8 AH].

Placed here because: ~ Beginning of 1 AH; its order against the Constitution is not fixed by the lectures.

Not long after the Prophet ﷺ arrived in Madinah, built the first mosques, and paired the Muhajirun with the Ansar through the muakha, he ﷺ promulgated a written constitution governing the whole of Yathrib. It named around 40 Muslim subtribes of the Quraysh (Muhajirun) and Yathrib (the Aws, the Khazraj, and their sub-clans) as well as roughly a dozen Jewish tribes, and set out terms for the pagans of Yathrib who remained at this stage. Notably the document still calls the city "Yathrib," not yet "Madinah," and does not yet use the later terms "Muhajirun"/"Ansar" as fixed titles, a sign, along with its archaic language and its listing of many now-obscure subtribe names, that it is an early and authentic document. It is preserved in full by Ibn Ishaq, though without a complete chain of narrators (isnad); Musnad Imam Ahmad separately preserves one phrase of it with an isnad. The constitution can be grouped into clauses for the Muslims, for the Jews, for the pagans, and for the community as a whole.

Placed here because: ~ Early Madani period, 1 AH; told in Ep. 33 after the mosque and the brotherhood.

The Prophet ﷺ asked the sahaba how the people should be called to salah. Suggestions of a bell (like the Christians) and a shofar/horn were both raised and set aside (there are authentic hadiths that the Prophet ﷺ disliked bells, saying angels do not accompany a caravan that has one). The gathering ended without a decision. That night, Abdullah ibn Zayd RA and, separately, Umar ibn al-Khattab RA both dreamed the same wording for the call to prayer.

Placed here because: ~ Shortly after the arrival in Madinah, 1 AH; the month is not given.

The city was called Yathrib when the Prophet ﷺ arrived, and he renamed it. He had been shown it two years before the Hijrah in a dream of a land of date palms he took for Yamamah or Hajar, and he said that he had been commanded to a town that would devour all towns, which people called Yathrib but which was al-Madinah. Yathrib comes from a root meaning blame, or corruption, and the Qur'an puts the old name only in the mouths of the hypocrites; he called it Madinah, Tabah and Taybah, the pure, and said that whoever called it Yathrib should ask forgiveness. It was the Muhajirun who found it hardest to love. Aisha visited Abu Bakr and Bilal in the fever that struck the newcomers and found both of them moaning: her father saying that a man woke among his family with death nearer than his sandal-strap, and Bilal longing in verse for a night in a valley of Makkan grass, and cursing by name the Quraysh who had driven them out. She went back and told the Prophet ﷺ, and he prayed: O Allah, make Madinah as beloved to us as Makkah, or more; bless us in its measures; take its fever away to Juhfah. Slowly the love came, until the Companions away from the city counted the days until they saw it again, and Ibn Abbas said that whenever the Prophet ﷺ came home from an expedition and saw the silhouette of Madinah he would spur his mount to reach it sooner. Over the years he taught its people what their city was. Uhud was a mountain that loved them and that they loved, one of the mountains of Paradise. The Dajjal would never enter Madinah; two angels would stand at its approaches. No plague would ever come into it, and none has. Faith would return to Madinah as a snake returns to its hole when Islam was in danger; it would be the refuge. Whoever plotted against it would be dissolved as salt dissolves in water. Whoever did wrong in it, or sheltered a wrongdoer, would bear the curse of Allah, the angels and all mankind, and have neither obligatory nor voluntary deed accepted. Madinah was better for them, if they knew it; no one left it in disdain but Allah replaced him with someone better, and whoever bore its hardships would have him as intercessor. And whoever could die in Madinah should, for he would intercede for whoever died there; Baqi' al-Gharqad, where Jibril once sent him at night to pray for the dead, holds ten thousand Companions and all of his wives but Khadija. Above all he made it a sanctuary. Your servant Ibrahim declared Makkah a Haram, he prayed, and I am Your servant, and I declare Madinah a Haram; and he asked that Madinah be given twice the blessing of Makkah, a hadith on which Imam Malik, a Madani, built his view that his city was the holier, while most scholars declined to rank the two. Makkah had been sacred since the heavens and the earth were made, and held the first house built for the worship of Allah; Madinah became sacred by his prayer. In a Haram what is lawful elsewhere becomes forbidden: no weapons are carried, no army enters, no game is hunted, no green thing is cut, and even a lost object must be left where it lies. Ibn Umar said that in the days of ignorance a man would see his father's killer circling the Ka'bah and not touch him, so well did the Arabs know what the Haram of Makkah meant. There are only two such places in the world. Jerusalem is blessed and its prayer is multiplied, but no scholar has ever called it a Haram in law; every Haram is blessed, but not every blessed land is a Haram.

Placed here because: ~ Ep. 32: Aisha RA visited Abu Bakr and Bilal in their fever "after she arrived in Madinah", and the Prophet ﷺ prayed that Madinah be loved; the rest of what he taught about the city came over the years.

Initially the Prophet ﷺ was commanded to pray facing Bayt al-Maqdis (Jerusalem), and did so throughout his time in Makkah, reportedly positioning himself so the Ka'bah was also in line, a kind of "double qibla." When he emigrated to Madinah, due north of Makkah with Bayt al-Maqdis further north still, he had to turn his back to the Ka'bah to face Jerusalem. As tensions grew with the Jews of Madinah, who had at first given the Prophet ﷺ real hope, believing in the same God, the same line of prophets, Paradise, Hell, and Judgment Day, and having a chief rabbi, Abdullah ibn Salam RA, who converted, the Prophet ﷺ began wishing to face Makkah instead. He could not change it by his own will: it is narrated that he once told Jibril AS, "O Jibril, I wish to pray facing Makkah," and Jibril AS replied that he was only a slave commanded by Allah, and that the Prophet ﷺ should make du'a. The Prophet ﷺ then began making du'a earnestly, by night and by day, looking up to the sky, something he did only at times of extreme distress. Allah then revealed the command in Qur'an 2:144 to turn towards Masjid al-Haram, followed by further verses in the opening of the second juz. The Jews and even some Muslims and mushrikun were confused, since abrogation (naskh) itself was a new concept; some Jews openly mocked the change, and Allah responded that piety is not about which direction one faces (2:177) and that no amount of proof would make the People of the Book follow the Muslims' qibla, or vice versa (2:145). The sahaba also asked whether those who had died praying towards Bayt al-Maqdis would have their prayers accepted, prompting the revelation that Allah would never let their faith go to waste (2:143), a verse later used by scholars such as Imam Bukhari as evidence that salah is inseparable from iman.

Placed here because: Fifteen to sixteen months after the Hijrah.

When the qibla changed the front of the Prophet ﷺ's mosque became its back, and he had the old front roofed over with palm branches, not yet against rain, for a purpose. The first emigrants had each been taken into an Ansari household until they could stand on their own feet, but the Muhajirun and the converts kept coming until the households were full, and around Ramadan of the second year, after Badr, the overflow was given the shaded platform at the back of the mosque: the Suffa, and its people, Ahl al-Suffa. Sometimes there were five or ten of them and sometimes seventy, and they were among the elite of the Companions in Qur'an, in night prayer and in learning, men who had given up everything and lived in a public shelter in the mosque. Abu Hurairah, of Daws, was the most famous; Abu Dharr, Suhayb, Bilal and Ibn Mas'ud lived there, and Ansar like Hanzala and Ka'b ibn Malik left their own homes to join them. They were desperately poor. Some had so little to wear that the Prophet ﷺ told the women of the congregation not to lift their heads from prostration until the men had risen. Most of them went two days at a time without food, and would fall from weakness when he came in to lead the prayer. Whatever was given to him in charity went to them, and whatever was given to him as a gift he shared with them; he would ask one Companion or another to take some of them home for supper, and Sa'd ibn Ubadah sometimes fed eighty at once. When Hasan was born he told Fatima to give charity to the People of the Suffa, and years later, when she came asking for one servant from a batch of prisoners to help with the housework, he answered that he could not give her a servant while the bellies of the People of the Suffa were caved in for hunger; by Allah, he would sell every prisoner and spend it on them. They were never off his mind. Abu Hurairah admitted that he would stop a Companion leaving the mosque with a question he knew the answer to better than the man did, only to keep him talking as far as his door in the hope of being asked in to eat. Once the Prophet ﷺ found him faint with hunger and took him home, and asked Aisha whether there was anything; a neighbour had sent a cup of milk. Abu Hurairah's heart lifted, and then the Prophet ﷺ told him to go and call the People of the Suffa, thirty or forty of them, and he obeyed with a sinking heart, and was handed the cup and told to take it round. Each man drank his fill, and Abu Hurairah wondered what would be left, until only he and the Prophet ﷺ remained; sit, the Prophet ﷺ said, and drink; and he drank, and was told to drink again, and again, the cup as full as when it started, until he swore there was no room left in him, and the Prophet ﷺ took the cup and drank last. A rope was later strung between two of the Suffa's pillars so that dates could be hung on it and taken without anyone having to ask, a custom that survived in the mosque for thirteen centuries. Abu Hurairah said that the people complained he narrated too much, but that he had been a poor man who stayed at the Prophet ﷺ's side for the sake of a full stomach while the Muhajirun were busy in the market and the Ansar with their land; and it was the Suffa that made him, in the end, the most prolific narrator of the Prophet ﷺ's words.

Placed here because: Ep. 34: after the qibla change the old front was roofed; "the Suffa was probably built around Ramadan; and it was only after Badr this concept of the People of the Suffa became known."