Then have mercy upon my Anṣār and Muhājirīn.’
“The length of this mosque was fifty-four cubits from north to south, and sixty-three in breadth, and it was hemmed in by houses on all sides save the western. Till the seventeenth month of the new era, the congregation faced towards the northern wall. After that time a fresh ‘revelation’ turned them in the direction of Makkah—southwards; on which occasion the Archangel Gabriel descended and miraculously opened through the hills and wilds a view of the Kaʿbah, that there might be no difficulty in ascertaining its true position.
MASJIDU ʾN-NABI AT AL-MADINAH. (Captain R. Burton.)
“After the capture of K͟haibar in A.H. 7, the Prophet and his first three successors restored the mosque, but Muslim historians do not consider this a second foundation. Muḥammad laid the first brick, and Abu-Hurayrah declares that he saw him carry heaps of building material piled up to his breast. The K͟halīfahs, each in the turn of his succession, placed a brick close to that laid by the Prophet, and aided him in raising the walls. Tabrāni relates that one of the Anṣār had a house adjacent, which Muḥammad wished to make part of the place of prayer; the proprietor was offered in exchange for it a home in Paradise, which he gently rejected, pleading poverty. His excuse was admitted, and ʿUs̤mān, after purchasing the place for 10,000 dirhams, gave it to the Prophet on the long credit originally offered. The mosque was a square of 100 cubits. Like the former building, it had three doors: one on the south side, where the Miḥrābu ʾn-Nabawī, or the ‘Prophet’s niche,’ now is, another in the place of the present Bābu ʾr-Raḥmah, and the third at the Bābu ʿUs̤mān, now called the ‘Gate of Gabriel.’ Instead of a miḥrāb or prayer niche, a large block of stone, directed the congregation. At first it was placed against the northern wall of the mosque, and it was removed to the southern when Makkah became the Qiblah. In the beginning the Prophet, whilst preaching the k͟hut̤bah or Friday sermon, leaned, when fatigued, against a post. The mimbar, or pulpit, was the invention of a Madīnah man of the Banū Najjār. It was a wooden frame, two cubits long by one broad, with three steps, each one span high; on the topmost of these the Prophet sat when he required rest. The pulpit assumed its present form about A.H. 90, during the artistic reign of Walīd.
“In this mosque Muḥammad spent the greater part of the day with his companions, conversing, instructing, and comforting the poor. Hard by were the abodes of his wives, his family, and his principal friends. Here he prayed, hearkening to the Aẕān, or devotion call, from the roof. Here he received worldly envoys and embassies, and the heavenly messages conveyed by the Archangel Gabriel. And within a few yards of the hallowed spot, he died, and found, it is supposed, a grave.
“The theatre of events so important to Islām, could not be allowed—especially as no divine decree forbade the change—to remain in its pristine lowliness. The first K͟halīfah contented himself with merely restoring some of the palm pillars, which had fallen to the ground. ʿUmar, the second successor, surrounded the Ḥujrah, or ʿĀyishah’s chamber, in which the Prophet was buried, with a mud wall, and in A.H. 17, he enlarged the mosque to 140 cubits by 120, taking in ground on all sides except the eastern, where stood the abodes of the ‘Mothers of the Moslems’ (Ummu ʾl-Muʾminīn). Outside the northern wall he erected a ṣuffah, called Batha—a raised bench of wood, earth, or stone, upon which the people might recreate themselves with conversation and quoting poetry, for the mosque was now becoming a place of peculiar reverence to men.
“The second Masjid was erected A.H. 29 by the third K͟halīfah, ʿUs̤mān, who, regardless of the clamours of the people, overthrew the old one, and extended the building greatly towards the north, and a little towards the west; but he did not remove the eastern limit on account of the private houses. He made the roof of Indian teak, and erected walls of hewn and carved stone. These innovations caused some excitement, which he allayed by quoting a tradition of the Prophet, with one of which he appears perpetually to have been prepared. The saying in question was, according to some, ‘Were this my mosque extended to Ṣafā, it verily would still be my mosque’; according to others, ‘Were the Prophet’s mosque extended to Ẕū ʾl-Ḥulafāʾ, it would still be his.’ But ʿUs̤mān’s skill in the quotation of tradition did not prevent the new building being in part a cause of his death. It was finished on the 1st Muḥarram, A.H. 30.
“At length, Islām, grown splendid and powerful, determined to surpass other nations in the magnificence of its public buildings. In A.H. 88, al-Walid the First, twelfth K͟halīfah of the Banī Umayah race, after building the noble Jāmiʿ-Masjid of the Ommiades at Damascus, determined to display his liberality at al-Madīnah. The governor of the place, ʿUmar ibn ʿAbdu ʾl-ʿAzīz, was directed to buy for 7,000 dinars all the hovels of raw brick that hedged in the eastern side of the old mosque. They were inhabited by descendants of the Prophet and of the early K͟halīfahs, and in more than one case, the ejection of the holy tenantry was effected with considerable difficulty. Some of the women (ever the most obstinate on such occasions) refused to take money, and ʿUmar was forced to the objectionable measure of turning them out of doors with exposed faces in full day. The Greek Emperor, applied to by the magnificent K͟halīfah, sent immense presents, silver lamp chains, valuable curiosities, forty loads of small cut stones for pietra-dura, and a sum of 80,000 dinars, or, as others say, 40,000 mishkals of gold. He also despatched forty Coptic and forty Greek artists to carve the marble pillars and the casings of the walls, and to superintend the gilding and the mosaic work.
“One of these Christians was beheaded for sculpturing a hog on the Qiblah wall, and another, in an attempt to defile the roof, fell to the ground, and his brains were dashed out. The remainder apostatized, but this did not prevent the older Arabs murmuring that their mosque had been turned into a kanīsah (or Church). The Ḥujrah, or chamber, where, by Muḥammad’s permission, ʿIzrāʾīl, the Angel of Death, separated his soul from his body, whilst his head was lying in the lap of ʿĀyishah, his favourite wife, was now for the first time taken into the mosque. The raw brick enceinte which surrounded the three graves was exchanged for one of carved stone, enclosed by an outer precinct with a narrow passage between. These double walls were either without a door, or had only a small blocked-up wicket on the northern side, and from that day (A.H. 90), no one has been able to approach the sepulchre. A minaret was erected at each corner of the mosque. The building was enlarged to 200 cubits by 167, and was finished in A.H. 91. When Walīd, the K͟halīfah, visited it in state, he inquired of his lieutenant why greater magnificence had not been displayed in the erection; upon which ʿUmar informed him, to his astonishment, that the walls alone had cost 45,000 dinars.