Qualla: Quba Mosque

Quba Mosque: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wurzelgnohm, CC0. Before Medina was Medina, before the great mosque at its center, there was Quba. When the Prophet Muhammad completed his migration from Mecca in 622, the very first thing he is said to have done on arriving was to lay the foundation stone of a mosque in this village on the city's southern edge. By tradition that makes Masjid Quba the oldest mosque in the world, the place where the practice of building houses of prayer in Islam began. Muhammad set the first stone; his companions, the future caliphs Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman among them, laid the next.

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Image: Wurzelgnohm | CC0

Quba Mosque: The First Stone

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aiman titi, CC BY-SA 3.0. The stories of how the site was chosen carry the texture of a real moment remembered many ways. Some accounts say the spot was a yard where Muhammad's host in Quba dried his dates; another holds it was where a woman named Labba had tethered her donkey; a later tradition, echoing ...

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Image: Aiman titi | CC BY-SA 3.0

Quba Mosque: The Reward of a Pilgrimage

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aiman titi, CC BY-SA 3.0. Quba's special standing comes from the Prophet's own devotion to it, preserved in his sayings. He told his followers that whoever performs ablution at home and then comes to pray in the Mosque of Quba earns a reward like that of an Umrah, the lesser pilgrimage to Mecca. That prom...

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Image: Aiman titi | CC BY-SA 3.0

Quba Mosque: Rebuilt for the Modern Age

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ashashyou, CC BY-SA 4.0. The mosque that stands today is not the humble walled enclosure of the seventh century. The original was a simple square court with a roofed prayer area on the qibla side, expanded by later rulers over the centuries. Then, in the 1980s, it was rebuilt almost entirely. King Fahd l...

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Image: Ashashyou | CC BY-SA 4.0

Quba Mosque: Still Growing

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0. Quba's story is not finished. In April 2022 the Saudi crown prince announced the largest expansion the mosque has ever seen, a project named for King Salman that aims to multiply its area roughly tenfold and lift its capacity toward sixty-six thousand. Rather than enlarge the his...

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Image: Diego Delso | CC BY-SA 4.0