Medina is considered to be the second holiest city for Muslims, known primarily for its importance in the latter years of Prophet Muhammad’s mission as well as the site of the Mosque of the Prophet which contains his tomb. Medina is located in the Hijaz, approximately 180 km inland from the Red Sea and 200 km north of Mecca. At present, it is a major city in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. 

Pre-Islamic Medina: Before Prophet Muhammad’s migration (hijra) to the city in 622 CE, Medina was known as Yathrib. It was a loosely connected set of fertile oases believed to be inhabited since the time of Abraham. Its economy was primarily agrarian and the settlement pattern corresponded to the locations of wells and springs spread out over a relatively large area. In 6th BCE century, it was settled and cultivated by three Jewish tribes: the Banu Qaynuqa, Banu Qurayza and Banu Nadir but did not become an urban polity as such. Its history before Islam is more closely linked to conflict between rival clans than to its built environment (no pre-nineteenth century map of the city is known to exist). 

As Yathrib and Mecca shared a patron god of the Arabian pantheon named Manat, the pilgrimages south to the Ka‘ba in Mecca (which housed the idols of the Arabian gods) were common. There were two well-worn caravan routes between the oases, both of which stopped at the ancient road between Yemen and Syria, making Medina an active commercial corridor; however, the city did not acquire the stature of a trading centre like Mecca. 

Between 3rd-4th CE centuries, two Yemeni tribes, the Banu Awz and the Banu Khazraj arrived in the Yathrib area. The long-standing conflict between these two clans was resolved only by the diplomacy of Prophet Muhammad, who was invited to mediate, after over a century of open warfare, between the city’s warring factions.  

Medina during the life of Prophet Muhammad: Prophet Muhammad migrated to Yathrib in 622 CE (the Muslim Calendar starts from this year. It is named Hijra after the event of Prophet Muhammad’s hijra, migration, to Medina).  For the community in Medina, he established the Charter of Medina that formed the basis for his leadership and for relations between the region’s various religious and ethnic communities. Yathrib became his base for the rest of his life and came to be known as al-Medina al-Munawwara (the luminous city), Madinat an-Nabi (city of the Prophet) or Medinat Rasul Allah (City of the Messenger of Allah). Medina, which means 'city' in Arabic, is the shortened form of these eponyms. 

Following the Muslim conquest of Mecca in 8 AH / 630 CE, Prophet Muhammad died in 10 AH / 632 CE. By then, the message of Islam had spread across the Middle East and beyond. Thus his tomb became Medina’s most famous landmark. To this day, pilgrims continue to visit Prophet Muhammad’s tomb often immediately after completing the Hajj in Mecca. The house and mosque of the Prophet in Medina, and the religious, political, judicial and social functions it served, inspired the creation of political, educational and welfare institutions all across Muslim lands. The city grew rapidly as the four Rightly Guided Caliphs, Khulafa al-Rashidun, presided over a rapidly expanding Muslim empire. 

Medina during subsequent Muslim Caliphates and Dynasties: After the reign of Imam-Caliph, ‘Ali b. Abi Talib (d. 41 AH / 661 CE), the Umayyads, who had already begun to assemble power in Syria during the reign of the third Caliph, Uthman, claimed the Muslim Caliphate. They shifted their seat of power to Damascus, Syria, in 41 AH / 661 CE and relegated Medina to the status of a provincial town, albeit one of great religious significance. The Umayyad Caliph al-Walid (r. 86-97 AH / 705-715 CE) was the first of many Muslim rulers to expand the Mosque of the Prophet. In 133 AH / 750 CE, the Abbasids assumed the Caliphate and political power shifted from Damascus to Baghdad. They enlarged the Prophet’s Mosque again and built the city wall for defence in the 3rd AH / 9th CE century. While nothing remains of the those walls, historians site them as closely surrounding the Mosque complex. 

Medina and Mecca came under the Fatimid control in the late 4th AH / 10th CE century. As the rivalry between Fatimid Cairo and Abbasid Baghdad grew, Medina came to be somewhat insulated from politics and left to theological pursuits. 

In the ensuing Ayubbid and Mamluk periods (658-923 AH / 1260-1517 CE), Mecca and Medina remained tied to the Cairo Sultanate, which continued the tradition of renovating the Mosque of the Prophet by adding a dome and an ablution fountain. The city’s walls appear to date from Mamluk times. The Mosque continued to dominate the city at this time and the commercial activity of pilgrims remained central to the province’s economy. 

Medina during Ottoman rule: In 923 AH / 1517 CE, the Ottoman Empire wrested control of the city from the Mamluks. The Hijaz came to be administered as an Ottoman suzerainty, with significant autonomy over all matters except foreign policy and defence. In 1804 the Wahhabis, after several invasions of the city, captured Medina. Over the following eight years, the Ottomans, with the help of the ruling Pasha of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, strove to drive the Wahhabis out of Medina. They succeeded in their expedition in 1812 and brought Mecca and Medina back into the Ottoman fold. 

Subsequently, Ottomans exercised more sovereignty over the Hijaz and commissioned ambitious infrastructure developments in the city. Their influence remains apparent in the ruins of forts and in the impressive ‘Hijaz Railway’ to Damascus, that inaugrated in 1908. The modernisation programme that the Ottomans initiated at Mecca and Medina, however, was not extended to the rest of Ottoman Arabia. 

Medina under the rule of the Saudi Kingdom: The House of Saud took over the cities of Mecca and Medina, from the Sharifs in 1925. The initial years of their rule were marked by economic collapse due to the preceding Saudi-Sharif conflict. The population of Medina dwindled to 18,000.

In the 1930s, the discovery of oil changed the fortunes of Saudi Arabia. Ambitious construction projects became the preferred mode of investment. As was the case in the successive reigns of medieval dynasties, all modernisation programmes began with an addition to the Prophet’s Mosque; some old monuments came to be demolished in the process. 

By the early 1960s, the population of Medina had climbed to 72,000. This led to a sweeping urban modernisation campaign that changed the outlook of the city considerably. Wide streets, lined with lighting and trees, were paved and several private homes were demolished to meet the growing demands of housing and the urban infrastructure. In 1961, the Islamic University opened its doors to students from across the world. Until today, the Mosque of the Prophet, now a hundred times its original size with the capacity to accommodate half a million worshippers, remains the centre of the city.  

Citation:

Montgomery, Watt, W., Muhammad at Medina (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956).

Sabini, John, Armies in the Sand: The Struggle for Mecca and Medina (London: Thames and Hudson, 1981). 

Teitelbaum, Joshua, The Rise and Fall of the Hashemite Kingdom of Arabia (New York: New York University Press, 2001). 

Wieczorek, Alfried and Claude W. Sui, To the Holy Lands: Places of Pilgrimage from Mecca and Medina to Jerusalem (Munich: Prestel, 2009).