[Sūrah xxii. 25]: “From the Sacred Mosque which we have appointed to all men, alike for those who abide therein, and for the stranger.”
[Sūrah xlviii. 25]: “These are they who believed not, and kept you away from the Sacred Mosque, as well as the offering which was prevented from reaching the place of sacrifice.”
[Sūrah xlviii. 27]: “Now hath God in truth made good to His Apostle the dream in which he said, ‘Ye shall surely enter the Sacred Mosque, if God will, in full security, having your heads shaved and your hair cut: ye shall not fear; for He knoweth what ye know not; and He hath ordained you, beside this, a speedy victory.’”
AL-MASJIDU ʾL-JĀMIʿ (المسجد الجامع). Lit. “The collecting mosque.” A title given to the chief mosque of any city in which people assemble for the Friday prayer and k͟hut̤bah. [[KHUTBAH].]
MASJIDU ʾL-K͟HAIF (مسـجـد الخيف). A mosque at Minā, three miles from Makkah. Here, according to the Arabs, Adam is buried, “his head being at one end of a long wall, and his feet at another, whilst the dome covers his omphalic region.” (Burton’s Pilgrimage, vol. ii. p. 203.)
MASJIDU ʾN-NABĪ (مسجد النبى). “The Prophet’s Mosque” at al-Madīnah. It is held to be the second mosque in Islām in point of seniority, and the same, or, according to others the first, in dignity, ranking with the Sacred Mosque at Makkah.
The following is Captain R. F. Burton’s account of its history:—
“Muḥammad ordered to erect a place of worship there, sent for the youths to whom it belonged and certain Anṣār, or auxiliaries, their guardians; the ground was offered to him in free gift, but he insisted upon purchasing it, paying more than its value. Having caused the soil to be levelled and the trees to be felled, he laid the foundation of the first mosque.
“In those times of primitive simplicity its walls were made of rough stone and unbaked bricks, and trunks of date-trees supported a palm-stick roof, concerning which the Archangel Gabriel delivered an order that it should not be higher than seven cubits, the elevation of Solomon’s temple. All ornament was strictly forbidden. The Anṣār, or men of Medinah, and the Muhājirīn, or fugitives from Mecca, carried the building materials in their arms from the cemetery Bakīʿ, near the well of Aiyūb, north of the spot where Ibrahīm’s mosque now stands, and the Prophet was to be seen aiding them in their labours, and reciting for their encouragement:
‘O Allah! there is no good but the good of futurity;