Qualla: Prophet's Mosque

Prophet's Mosque: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Meshari Alawfi, CC BY 4.0. When the Prophet Muhammad reached Medina in 622, the camel he rode, Qaswa, knelt on a plot of open ground, and there he resolved to build. The land belonged to two orphaned brothers, Sahl and Suhayl, who offered it as a gift; Muhammad refused to take it for free and insisted the price be paid, because they were children. What rose on that spot became al-Masjid an-Nabawi, the Prophet's Mosque, the second-holiest site in Islam after the sanctuary in Mecca. It is also the place where, beneath a dome painted a deep, unmistakable green, Muhammad himself is buried.

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Image: Meshari Alawfi | CC BY 4.0

Prophet's Mosque: A Mosque Built by Hand

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aiman titi, CC BY-SA 3.0. The first mosque was a modest thing, and the Prophet helped build it. An open-air rectangle of mud-brick walls, its roof of palm trunks and beaten clay rose barely over head height, and palm-leaf thatch gave the only shade. It took about seven months to finish. This was far more ...

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Image: Aiman titi | CC BY-SA 3.0

Prophet's Mosque: Layers of Empire

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit بلال الدويك, CC BY-SA 3.0. Every dynasty that ruled the Islamic world left its mark here, expanding and adorning the mosque in turn. The caliph Umar enlarged it; Uthman rebuilt it in stone. The great transformation came under the Umayyad caliph al-Walid I around 706, who brought in mosaicists and craftsmen...

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Image: بلال الدويك | CC BY-SA 3.0

Prophet's Mosque: The Green Dome

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kaliper1, CC BY-SA 4.0. The single most recognizable feature of the mosque was a comparatively late addition. The dome over the Prophet's tomb was built in 1818 during the reign of the Ottoman sultan Mahmud II, and in 1837 it was painted the green that gave it its name, the Kubbat al-Khadra. Beneath it ...

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Image: Kaliper1 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Prophet's Mosque: An Ocean of Pilgrims

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 4.0. The mosque of today would astonish its founders. Successive Saudi kings have expanded it on a colossal scale, and a project completed under King Fahd in the 1990s, with escalators and dozens of courtyards, was followed by still grander plans, until the structure is built to hold ...

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Image: CC BY-SA 4.0