Medina (Islamic Studies)

Introduction

Medina is a town in the Hijaz, a region that runs alongside the Red Sea in what is today the west of Saudi Arabia. It is approximately one hundred miles inland from Yanbuʿ, the nearest major port on the Red Sea, and just over two hundred miles north of Mecca. The town is in a valley, surrounded to the west, south, and east by extensive tracts of volcanic rocks as well as by a number of mountains. The area within this valley is itself, however, fairly flat and parts of it are—by Hijazi standards—relatively amenable to cultivation. Settlement in this valley is attested already by the middle of the first millennium BCE, at which point the area was known by the name Yathrib. There is very little extant contemporary information about Yathrib before the 7th century CE, but it was in the year 622 that the Prophet Muhammad undertook his famous emigration (Ar. hijra) from Mecca to Yathrib, inaugurating a new era in the town’s history. At some point, although it is not clear precisely when, this new significance was marked by a change of name to madinat al-nabi, “the Prophet’s city,” from which is derived the English name Medina. For the three decades following Muhammad’s death in Medina in 632, the town was the center of the new and expanding caliphate, although from the accession of the Umayyad caliph Muʿawiya in 661 onward, Medina was never again the seat of a reigning caliph. The town has remained, however, as an important local administrative and economic center, bolstered to a significant degree by its gradual emergence as a holy city, centered around the Prophet’s Mosque in the middle of the town, which contains Muhammad’s grave. The Prophet’s Mosque in Medina has come to be recognized almost universally among Muslims as the Islamic world’s second holiest site, after the Kaaba in Mecca, and it is a pilgrimage destination for an ever-increasing number of Muslims from around the world. This bibliography concentrates in particular on all these aspects of Medina’s history as well as finishing with some further suggestions of readings on Medina’s wider significance for Muslims outside of Arabia.

General Overviews and Topography

The second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam (Bearman, et al. 1954–2006), perhaps the most fundamental reference work for Islamic history and studies in general, contains a number of important entries on many aspects of Medina’s history. Likewise, a handful of chapters in the New Cambridge History of Islam (Cook 2010) provide more analytical surveys of key developments in Medina’s history. There are a number of geographical surveys of Medina and its surrounding area, of which perhaps the most useful remains Makki 1982. Wüstenfeld 1873 is an admirable and still useful compilation of material on Medina’s topography from medieval Arabic sources. Lecker 2010 (cited under Topography) offers a useful map of Medina, with a particular focus on sites important in the town’s pre- and very early Islamic history, but al-Husayni 2005 is the most comprehensive historical map of the town. Three very helpful guides in Arabic to a number of significant historical sites in the town, some of which survived until fairly recently, are ʿAbd al-Ghani 1999, al-Ansari 1935 and al-Bakri and Taha 2004.

ʿAbd al-Ghani, Muhammad Ilyas. Al-Masājid al-athariyya fī al-Madīna al-munawwara. 2d ed. Medina: Matabiʿ al-Rashid, 1999.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A useful survey of many historic mosques in Medina that are mentioned in biographies of Muhammad and in the town’s local histories.
Find this resource:

al-Ansari, ʿAbd al-Qaddus. Āthār al-Madīna al-munawwara. Medina: al-Maktaba al-ʿIlmiyya, 1935.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A good, if now slightly dated, introductory discussion of a range of historic sites in Medina, including (but not limited to) residential courts, villas, forts, and mosques, as well as many natural topographic sites that are mentioned in historical sources, including wadis, lava tracts, and mountains. It includes some photographs.
Find this resource:

al-Bakri, Muhammad Anwar, and Hatim ʿUmar Taha. Baqīʿ al-Gharqad. Medina: Maktabat al-Halabi, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A history (with some photographs) of Medina’s principal cemetery, called Baqiʿ al-Gharqad, the historic tombs in which have now been destroyed.
Find this resource:

Bearman, Peri, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, et al., eds. Encyclopaedia of Islam. 12 vols. 2d ed. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1954–2006.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Contains a number of entries, some quite substantial, on the history and topography of Medina and its hinterland, as well as on many of the important personalities involved in its history. For an introductory article, see “al-Madīna” by W. M. Watt and R. B. Winder. A third edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam is now underway, but only a relatively small number of articles have been published to date.
Find this resource:

Cook, Michael, ed. The New Cambridge History of Islam. 6 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A collection of introductory overviews of a wide range of topics in the history of the Islamic world. Thoughtful surveys of Arabia’s history from the 7th to 21st centuries, which help to contextualize Medina’s history, can be found in Volumes 1 (chapter by Ella Landau-Tasseron), 2 (chapter by Esther Peskes) and 5 (chapters by David Commins and Paul Dresch).
Find this resource:

Esin, Emel. Mecca the Blessed, Madinah the Radiant. New York: Crown, 1963.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An aging overview of the history of Mecca and Medina, but with many important images and photographs.
Find this resource:

al-Husayni, ʿAbd Allah. Al-Kharīṭa al-athariyya li-l-Madīna al-munawwara. Cairo: Majmuʿat Najjar li-l-Tijara wa-al-Tibaʿa, 2005.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The most significant and comprehensive map to date of Medina, including many of the historic sites mentioned in medieval sources.
Find this resource:

Makki, Mohamed S. Medina, Saudi Arabia: A Geographic Analysis of the City and Region. Amersham, UK: Avebury, 1982.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An important and accessible topographical, geological, and climatological study of Medina and its hinterland.
Find this resource:

Wüstenfeld, Ferdinand. Das Gebiet von Medina: Nach arabischen Geographen beschrieben. Göttingen, Germany: Verlag der Dieterichschen Buchhandlung, 1873.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Although now very old, this remains an important introduction to the material about Medina’s topography that can be found in medieval Arabic geographies and some of the town’s local histories.
Find this resource:

Guide to the Sources

Medina has been an important center of scholarship since the 8th century, and this is reflected to an extent in the relatively large number of written sources that deal with the town’s history. In particular, a significant tradition of local history writing emerged in Medina in the very early 9th century and then continued to thrive throughout much of the premodern period. Due to a number of factors—including the relative youth of archaeology as a discipline in Saudi Arabia, enormous modern redevelopment in the city around the Prophet’s Mosque, and official reluctance to sponsor survey work in the region—archaeological and material evidence is much thinner for Medina (and most of the Hijaz) than for many other significant historical cities in the Islamic world.

Literary Sources

Due to the establishment of Medina’s significance across the Muslim world as a holy city, as well as the town’s importance as a center of scholarship and learning throughout much of its history, a relatively large number of Arabic sources discuss its history to at least some extent. The overwhelming focus of these sources is on the history of sites in Medina connected to the career of Muhammad, his companions, and his earliest successors, although there is a significant amount of material relating to political, social, and economic history scattered about. Al-ʿAli 1964 offers an overview of the most detailed sources on Medina’s history composed by the 10th century. The relatively large number of local histories written about Medina in the medieval period are surveyed in al-Jasir 1969–1970. The origins of this tradition of local history-writing in Medina are analyzed in Munt 2012, and the career of the most important of all of Medina’s pre-modern local historians, ʿAli b. ʿAbd Allah al-Samhudi (d. 1506), is discussed in al-Jasir 1972. Nagel 1970 presents a study of a local historian’s account of an important Alid rebellion in Medina in 762 as well as his sources. (On this rebellion, see also Elad 2004, cited under Social And Economic History.) Relatively few non-Muslim commentators from outside of Arabia discussed Hijazi history at all, let alone Medina’s, but Hoyland 1997 includes the odd snippets that are there.

al-ʿAli, Salih Ahmad. “Al-Muʾallafāt al-ʿarabiyya ʿan al-Madīna wa-al-Ḥijāz.” Majallat al-majmaʿ al-ʿilmī al-ʿirāqī 11 (1964): 118–157.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A survey of many of the most detailed Arabic sources on Medina’s history written before the 10th century, including local histories of the town and some works on the Hijaz more broadly.
Find this resource:

Hoyland, Robert G. Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1997.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An overview of a huge number of the earliest non-Muslim sources to discuss the emergence of Islam in the 7th century. At pp. 182–189, there is a discussion of the mid-7th-century East Syrian Khuzistan Chronicle, a rare non-Muslim, non-Arabian observer who mentions Medina (by both that name and Yathrib) within its brief survey of Arabian geography.
Find this resource:

al-Jasir, Hamad. “Muʾallafāt fī taʾrīkh al-Madīna.” Majallat al-ʿarab 4 (1969–1970): 97–100, 262–266, 327–334, 385–388, 465–467.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A fundamental survey of the local histories of Medina written throughout the medieval period. It includes some attempt to reconstruct the contents of lost works as well as an analysis of the manuscripts of some extant histories and the connections between many of these works.
Find this resource:

al-Jasir, Hamad. “Al-Samhūdī: Ashhar muʾarrikhī al-Madīna.” Mujallat al-ʿArab 7 (1972): 161–178.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A study of the life and works of Medina’s most important local historian, ʿAli b. ʿAbd Allah al-Samhudi (d. 1506), whose work is not only a significant piece of Arabic historiography in its own right, but which also preserves a large number of extracts from now-lost earlier works on Medina’s history.
Find this resource:

Munt, Harry. “Writing the History of an Arabian Holy City: Ibn Zabāla and the First Local History of Medina.” Arabica 59 (2012): 1–34.
DOI: 10.1163/157005812X618989Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A study of the origins of Medina’s tradition of local history-writing, based around an examination of the numerous citations in extant sources from the now-lost early 9th-century history by Ibn Zabala (d. c. 814). Argues that Ibn Zabala devised a model of topographical local history-writing, one that went on to become an enormously popular way of writing the history of both Medina and Mecca, as a way of emphasizing best the town’s wider significance within the Islamic world.
Find this resource:

Nagel, Tilman. “Ein früher Bericht über den Aufstand von Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh im Jahre 145h.” Der Islam 46 (1970): 227–262.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A study of the political and religious program of the Alid caliphal claimant Muhammad b. ʿAbd Allah, who rebelled in Medina in 762, based on the account of a Basran historian of Medina, ʿUmar b. Shabba (d. 876). Nagel’s study includes an investigation of ʿUmar’s account and his sources, among their number other important Medinan local historians.
Find this resource:

Material Evidence

There is a relative paucity of archaeological and material evidence to aid the study of Medina’s history compared to other cities in other regions of the Islamic world. Almost no archaeological activity has been permitted in Medina, and there are few historical remains left—especially in the center of the town—for any future work to shine light upon, but for the (rather limited) results of a recent survey in the area to the southwest of the town, see Askubi, et al. 2006 and Askubi 2010; incidentally, the Saudi journal al-Aṭlāl, in which these two reports were published, remains the best place to look for an understanding of other work that has been conducted in the Hijaz more broadly. al-Rashid 2000 presents some other sites near Medina. Heck 1999, cited under Social and Economic History, also discusses the archaeological evidence for precious metal mining in the area of the Hijaz around Medina. The most significant material evidence for the study of Medina’s history comes in the form of inscriptions, both official and graffiti, inscribed on nearby rocks and monuments, and of coins with mint names that connect them to the town. Hamidullah 1939, al-Moraekhi 1995 and al-Rashid 1993 publish and discuss some early Islamic Arabic graffiti from sites near Medina, and al-Rashid 2000 includes the publication of one official inscription from a dam built at the command of the Umayyad caliph Muʿawiya (r. 661–680). Shamma 1995 analyzes a number of coins with mintmarks that connect them to Medina or the Hijaz more broadly. Album 1999 publishes those relevant coins in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

Album, Stephen. Sylloge of Islamic Coins in the Ashmolean. Vol. 10, Arabia and East Africa. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 1999.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Provides an overview (pp. xiii–xiv) of the few known coins with mintmarks that connect them either to Medina or (more commonly) elsewhere in the Hijaz, and publishes (plates 23 and 24) the handful of such coins in the Ashmolean Museum collection in Oxford.
Find this resource:

Askubi, Khalid. “Archaeological Survey of Western al-Madinah al-Munawwarah, 1424H–2004AD Season.” al-Aṭlāl 20 (2010): 151–165.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Provides an overview of the (rather limited) results of a recent archaeological survey of the area to the west and southwest of the modern city of Medina (a follow-up to the survey the results of which were published in Askubi, et al. 2006). The survey is more notable for having taken place than for the finds that have resulted.
Find this resource:

Askubi, Khalid, ʿAyiḍ al-Muzayni, Sulaym al-Taymaʾi, Sayf al-Qahtani, ʿAzzam Rajab, and Farhan al-Zamil. “Al-Musūḥāt al-athariyya fī Wādī al-ʿAqīq janūb al-Madīna al-munawwara, 1422H.” al-Aṭlāl 19 (2006): 95–116.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Presents the results of the first of the surveys led by Khalid Askubi in the Wadi al-ʿAqiq, which approaches Medina from the southwest and then runs alongside the west of the town. As with the second survey published in Askubi 2010, the fact that the survey took place is promising, but the significance of the material discovered is quite limited. There is a much shorter English version of the survey results at pp. 35–37 of the same journal issue.
Find this resource:

Hamidullah, Muhammad. “Some Arabic Inscriptions of Medinah of the Early Years of the Hijrah.” Islamic Culture 13 (1939): 427–439.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Discusses a number of (and publishes the texts of six) Arabic inscriptions found on Jabal Salʿ, a small hill a short distance northwest of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina. The historical commentary that accompanies these texts, placing some of them at least within the lifetime of Muhammad, is generally unconvincing.
Find this resource:

al-Moraekhi, Moshalleh K. “A Critical and Analytical Study of Some Early Islamic Inscriptions from Medina in the Ḥijāz, Saudi Arabia.” PhD diss., University of Manchester, 1995.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Publishes one hundred inscriptions, mostly graffiti, from several sites around Medina. Only five are explicitly dated, four of these to the late 8th and early 9th centuries and one to the 10th century.
Find this resource:

al-Rashid, Saʿd. Kitābāt islāmiyya ghayr manshūra min “Ruwāwat” al-Madīna al-munawwara: Dirāsa wa-taḥqīq. Riyadh: Dar al-Watan, 1993.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A study of fifty-five Arabic graffiti from the small site of Ruwawa, about thirty miles south of Medina, which includes nine texts explicitly dated to the late 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries.
Find this resource:

al-Rashid, Saʿd. Dirāsāt fī al-āthār al-islāmiyya al-mubakkira bi-al-Madīna al-munawwara. Riyadh: Muʾassasat al-Huzaymi li-l-Tijara wa-al-Tawkilat, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Discusses a handful of archaeological remains in Medina’s hinterland, most notably (at pp. 32–60) a dam in the Wadi al-Khanaq (approximately six-to-ten miles southeast of Medina) with an inscription announcing that it was constructed at the command of the Umayyad caliph Muʿawiya (r. 661–680).
Find this resource:

Shamma, Samir. “ʿAlāqat al-khulafāʾ wa-al-ḥukkām bi-al-Ḥijāz kamā tuẓhiruhā baʿḍ al-nuqūd al-maḍrūba bi-Makka wa-al-Madīna.” Yarmouk Numismatics 7 (1995): 13–35.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A preliminary catalogue of coins with mintmarks that connect them with Medina and (more commonly) other sites in the Hijaz, whether they were struck in that region or elsewhere for that region. Also includes illustrations of those coins in Shamma’s own collection.
Find this resource:

Medina before and during the Prophet’s Career

Medina first came to prominence, of course, with Muhammad’s emigration (Ar. hijra) to the area in 622. This event not only came to be used to set the inaugural year of the Muslim calendar, but also eventually led to the old toponym Yathrib coming to be replaced by madinat al-nabi, “the Prophet’s city,” or Medina. It became the town in which Muhammad founded the first Muslim community (Ar. umma) and, as such, Medina’s history in the century or so before the hijra and the decade of Muhammad’s career there have been important topics studied by those interested in the origins of Islam. In the following subsections of this bibliography, little attention will be paid to most works on the biography of Muhammad himself; as a starting guide for that, see the Oxford Bibliographies article on “Muhammad” by Frank Peters.

General

By far the most productive recent scholar writing in English on the history of Medina before and during Muhammad’s career is Michael Lecker, many but not all of whose numerous articles and books are mentioned in the various sections of this bibliography; Lecker 1998 and Lecker 2005 are useful compilations of a number of his articles on Arabia’s, and especially Medina’s, pre- and early Islamic history. Lecker 1995 is a wide-ranging monograph on the sociopolitical situation in Medina on the eve of Muhammad’s hijra and during the years in which he tried to establish his own political and religious authority in the area. Wellhausen 1889, Watt 1956, and Lecker 1985 offer further thoughts on this topic.

Lecker, Michael. “Muḥammad at Medina: A Geographical Approach.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 6 (1985): 29–62.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Proposes a geographical approach to the study of the establishment of Muhammad’s authority in Medina. Argues that that establishment was a process that played out in different ways in different areas of Medina.
Find this resource:

Lecker, Michael. Muslims, Jews and Pagans: Studies on Early Islamic Medina. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1995.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Builds on the methodology of Lecker 1985, offering a study of the sociopolitical situation in the south of Medina (an area known as al-ʿAliya or al-ʿAwali) to highlight the complex and contested nature of the establishment of Muhammad’s authority there.
Find this resource:

Lecker, Michael. Jews and Arabs in Pre- and Early Islamic Arabia. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A collection of many previously published articles by Michael Lecker on the history of pre- and early Islamic Arabia, including many on Medina.
Find this resource:

Lecker, Michael. People, Tribes and Society in Arabia around the Time of Muḥammad. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A collection of many previously published articles by Michael Lecker on the history of pre- and early Islamic Arabia, including many on Medina.
Find this resource:

Watt, W. Montgomery. Muhammad at Medina. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A classic (although conceptually dated) study of Muhammad’s decade in Medina, worthy of mention here for the amount of attention it dedicates to understanding the local, Medinan context behind the establishment of the first Muslim community.
Find this resource:

Wellhausen, Julius. “Medina vor dem Islam.” In Skizzen und Vorarbeiten. Vol. 4. Edited by Julius Wellhausen, 1–64. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1889.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A very thorough and still valuable study of the tense sociopolitical situation in Medina on the eve of Muhammad’s hijra.
Find this resource:

Jewish Community

Islamic-era sources discuss in some detail the presence of a significant Jewish community in Yathrib/Medina before the arrival of the Prophet there in 622. A great deal of Western scholarship on Islamic origins, especially in the 19th and earlier 20th centuries, made much of the potential for this Jewish community to have had some influence on the emergence of Islamic beliefs and practices; Wensinck 1975 is an influential example of such research. In recent decades, there has been some good work improving our understanding of the history of this community itself. Ever since the 8th century at least, there has been some disagreement on the origins of this Jewish community, many contours of which are covered in Gil 1984; Mazuz 2014 is the most detailed study to date of the customs and beliefs of Medina’s Jewish community. There is some debate over the political strength of this Jewish community within Medina, which is analyzed in Lecker 2005; its cultural significance and power is explored in Lecker 1997. Islamic sources generally agree that by the end of Muhammad’s lifetime, in 632, ten years after his arrival in Medina, the Jewish community was no longer there, its members having either been expelled or executed; Kister 1986 studies the narratives associated with one particularly controversial episode in the history of Muhammad’s relations with Medina’s Jews. Newby 1988 is a wide-ranging study that covers all of these topics to some extent. Finally, virtually all of our information about the Jewish groups in Medina comes from Islamic-era sources written by Muslims, and Schöller 1998 is an important study of those Muslim scholars’ concerns that drove their interest in the history of Medina’s Jewish community.

Gil, Moshe. “The Origins of the Jews of Yathrib.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 4 (1984): 203–224.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Presents an overview of the available information on the origins of Medina’s Jewish community and stresses the significance of disagreements about this question as long ago as the 8th century. Gil suggests himself that the first Jews in the Hijaz may have been refugees fleeing the Romans in the 1st century CE, but that in the centuries thereafter local Arabians also converted to Judaism.
Find this resource:

Kister, Meir J. “The Massacre of the Banū Qurayẓa: A Re-examination of a Tradition.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 8 (1986): 61–96.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Investigates a very large number of sources that provide details about Muhammad’s struggle with the Jewish Banu Qurayza in Medina, which ended with the execution of all their men and the enslavement of the women and children. Suggests that this was an important event in the consolidation of the early Muslim community’s position in Medina, as they profited economically from the confiscation of the Banu Qurayza’s estates, and militarily from the confiscation of their weapons.
Find this resource:

Lecker, Michael. “Zayd b. Thābit, ‘A Jew with Two Sidelocks’: Judaism and Literacy in Pre-Islamic Medina (Yathrib).” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 56 (1997): 259–273.
DOI: 10.1086/468576Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues that literate education in pre-Islamic Medina, for both Jewish and non-Jewish pupils, was delivered primarily by the town’s local Jewish community.
Find this resource:

Lecker, Michael. “Were the Jewish Tribes in Arabia Clients of Arab Tribes?” In Patronate and Patronage in Early and Classical Islam. Edited by Monique Bernards and John Nawas, 50–69. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2005.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues, contrary to many others’ interpretations, that a number of Medina’s Jewish groups remained politically and economically powerful right up to, and in some cases even beyond, Muhammad’s arrival in the area in 622. (This argument is further advanced in Lecker 1995, cited under General.)
Find this resource:

Mazuz, Haggai. The Religious and Spiritual Life of the Jews of Medina. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2014.
DOI: 10.1163/9789004266094Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Offers a detailed study of the fairly meager evidence for the customs and beliefs of Medina’s Jewish community—which mostly comes in the form of Islamic traditions rejecting certain Jewish practices—and argues that that evidence suggests that the Jews of Medina generally followed practices and doctrines commonly found among Rabbinic communities in the Middle East.
Find this resource:

Newby, Gordon Darnell. A History of the Jews of Arabia: From Ancient Times to Their Eclipse under Islam. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An accessible and clearly written survey of a number of issues concerning the Jewish communities of Arabia, including those in Medina.
Find this resource:

Schöller, Marco. Exegetisches Denken und Prophetenbiographie: Eine quellenkritische Analyse der Sīra-Überlieferung zu Muḥammads Konflikt mit den Juden. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1998.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Highlights the contradictory nature of much of the material on the Hijazi Jewish communities found in Muslim sources, and suggests that much of the information these sources provide is driven by a variety of exegetical concerns.
Find this resource:

Wensinck, Arent Jan. Muhammad and the Jews of Medina. Edited and translated by Wolfgang Behn. Freiburg im Breisgau: K. Schwarz, 1975.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A classic study of the impact of Medina’s Jewish community on Muhammad’s career in the town and on the emerging beliefs and practices of the nascent Muslim community. The Dutch first edition was published in 1908.
Find this resource:

Non-Jewish Inhabitants

Alongside the Jewish community in pre-Islamic Medina, there were a number of non-Jewish tribes, principally split into two main groups, the Aws and the Khazraj. It was members of these two groups who apparently provided the earliest local support in Medina for Muhammad’s mission and who invited him to emigrate to the area in 622. The history of the Aws and the Khazraj in pre-Islamic times is generally dominated by conflict, the root causes of which are examined in Hasson 1989. Wellhausen 1889 (cited under General) is also an important study of these conflicts. A few years before the hijra, some groups appear to have tried to reconcile their differences and began to coalesce around individual leaders; one of the more prominent of these was the Khazraji Ibn Ubayy, on whom see Lecker 2003. We hear somewhat less about the religious practices of these non-Jewish inhabitants of pre-Islamic Medina than we do of the inhabitants of other regions (especially Mecca), but one very important source is analyzed in Lecker 1993.

Hasson, Isaac. “Contributions à l’étude des Aws et des Ḫazrağ.” Arabica 36 (1989): 1–35.
DOI: 10.1163/157005889X00214Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A wide-ranging study of the various conflicts between groups of the Aws and the Khazraj, the two of which were by no means always neatly aligned one against the other. Suggests that the availability of cultivable land was one of the main causes of social tension in pre-Islamic Medina.
Find this resource:

Lecker, Michael. “Idol Worship in Pre-Islamic Medina (Yathrib).” Le muséon 106 (1993): 331–346.
DOI: 10.2143/MUS.106.3.2006034Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Analyzes a unique account on the idols and some religious practices of pre-Islamic Medinans compiled by ʿUmar b. Shabba (d. 876) and preserved in al-Maqrizi’s (d. 1442) al-Khabar ʿan al-bashar.
Find this resource:

Lecker, Michael. “King Ibn Ubayy and the Quṣṣāṣ.” In Method and Theory in the Study of Islamic Origins. Edited by Herbert Berg, 29–71. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2003.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Studies in detail the political conflicts in pre-Islamic Medina, in particular the recognition by various groups of certain individuals as “kings” (Ar. muluk, sing. malik). Concludes that shortly before the hijra one of these leaders, ʿAbd Allah ibn Ubayy, was widely recognized among the Khazraj and on the cusp of being recognized as a “king.”
Find this resource:

External Political Influence

Although most of the Hijaz was far beyond the core territories of both the two principal Middle Eastern empires of late antiquity, the Romans and the Persians, as well as largely beyond the authority of the Himyarite rulers of South Arabia, some rulers of these external powers may have attempted to exert influence over the residents of Medina. Kister 1968 and Lecker 2002 discuss the efforts of the Persian rulers and their Lakhmid/Nasrid allies in al-Hira to demonstrate their power in Medina, while Robin and Tayran 2012 publishes a recently discovered inscription from central Arabia in which a 6th-century ruler of South Arabia, Abraha, claims to have established his authority over a number of settlements in the Hijaz, including Yathrib/Medina.

Kister, Meir J. “Al-Ḥīra: Some Notes on Its Relations with Arabia.” Arabica 15 (1968): 143–169.
DOI: 10.1163/157005868X00190Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Discusses the ways in which the pre-Islamic Lakhmid/Nasrid rulers of al-Hira attempted to exert their power over the tribes and towns of central Arabia and the Hijaz, including some analysis of their possible reach as far as Medina.
Find this resource:

Lecker, Michael. “The Levying of Taxes for the Sassanians in Pre-Islamic Medina.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 27 (2002): 109–126.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Builds upon Kister 1968 to analyze in more detail the report that the Jewish tribes of Qurayza and Nadir exercised authority and collected taxes in Medina on behalf of the Sasanian Persian kings.
Find this resource:

Robin, Christian Julien, and Salim Tayran. “Soixante-dix ans avant l’islam: L’Arabie toute entière dominée par un roi Chrétien.” Comptes rendus des séances de l’année: Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (2012): 525–553.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Publishes and discusses a very important recent epigraphic discovery from central Arabia, a text in which Abraha, the 6th-century ruler of South Arabia famous in Islamic-era sources for having organized an attack on Mecca, claims to have established his authority over a number of places and groups in Arabia, including Yathrib/Medina.
Find this resource:

Topography

Arabic sources on Medina’s history include a huge amount of geographical and topographical information, which can be used to study the history of some places in pre- and early Islamic times in considerable detail. Kister 1965 and Lecker 2010 focus on the development of the commercial markets in Medina, while Madani 1973–1974 offers a detailed overview of the tower houses (Ar. uṭūm or āṭām, sing. uṭum) which were renowned features of Medina’s pre-Islamic landscape. Lecker 2009 highlights the possibilities of the geographical approach earlier formulated in Lecker 1985 and Lecker 1995 (both cited under General) in a brief study of two important commercial centers in pre-Islamic Medina that did not long outlive the arrival of Islam.

Kister, Meir J. “The Market of the Prophet.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 8 (1965): 272–276.
DOI: 10.1163/156852065X00110Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Discusses the reasons Muhammad selected the particular location for his market after his arrival in Medina, as well as some later developments to the site during the Umayyad period.
Find this resource:

Lecker, Michael. “Lost Towns: Zuhra and Yathrib.” In L’Arabie à la veille de l’islam: Bilan clinique. Edited by Jérémie Schiettecatte and Christian Julien Robin, 29–35. Paris: De Boccard, 2009.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Analyzes the material available on two apparently important pre-Islamic commercial centers in the northern area of Medina, Zuhra, and Yathrib, which did not last long into the Islamic period. The analysis adds further material demonstrating the varying experiences of different areas in Medina as the early Muslim community consolidated its authority in the region.
Find this resource:

Lecker, Michael. “On the Markets of Medina (Yathrib) in Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Times.” In Islamic Banking and Finance: Critical Concepts in Economics. Vol. 1. Edited by Amer al-Roubaie and Shafiq Alvi, 185–196. London: Routledge, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Studies the varying fates of Medina’s pre-Islamic commercial markets after the hijra, as well as of the Prophet’s establishment of his own market, to help further our understanding of the establishment of the Muslim community’s position in Medina. An earlier version was published in Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 8 (1986): 133–147.
Find this resource:

Madani, ʿUbayd. “Uṭūm al-Madīna al-munawwara.” Majallat kulliyyat al-ādāb bi-jāmiʿat al-Riyāḍ 3 (1973–1974): 213–226.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Perhaps the fullest overview of the tower houses in Medina that achieved some fame in later Muslim accounts of the town’s pre- and very early Islamic history.
Find this resource:

The “Constitution of Medina”

The so-called Constitution of Medina is a document drawn up shortly after Muhammad’s arrival in Medina in an attempt to regulate interaction between the new arrivals and various constituencies in Medina’s population. It is a document of enormous significance in the study of early Islamic history, and only two studies of it are included here (for other references, see the Oxford Bibliographies article “The Constitution of Medina,” by Michael Lecker. These two studies are included here because of their significance for the study of Medina’s history: Serjeant 1962 analyzes the document in light of modern observable South Arabian practices of establishing sacred enclaves on the authority of men from holy families. Lecker 2004 is the most complete study of the document as a whole, and also uses it as a basis for studying the social relations between a number of groups inhabiting early Islamic Medina.

Lecker, Michael. The “Constitution of Medina”: Muḥammad’s First Legal Document. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The most important study, edition, and translation to-date of the so-called Constitution of Medina, which also includes analyses of a range of issues relevant to the social history of pre- and early Islamic Medina.
Find this resource:

Serjeant, Robert B. “Haram and Hawtah: The Sacred Enclave in Arabia.” In Mélanges Taha Husain: Offerts par ses amis et ses disciples à l’occasion de son 70ième anniversaire. Edited by Abdurrahman Badawi, 41–58. Cairo: Dar al-Maʿarif, 1962.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Studies the “Constitution of Medina” in light of modern South Arabian practices of establishing sacred spaces (known as hawtas) around men from holy families, and suggests that there are clear parallels between these observable practices and Muhammad’s actions in the Constitution of Medina to secure his authority in Medina by creating a sacred enclave there.
Find this resource:

Origins of the Prophet’s Mosque

The structure in Medina most famously associated with Muhammad himself is the Prophet’s Mosque in the center of the town. Western scholarship throughout most of the 20th century has understood the origins of this structure to lie in a domestic building that Muhammad had constructed shortly after his arrival in Medina (the “House of the Prophet”), which over time came to acquire some more sacred functions; a good example of this can be found in Creswell 1969 (cited under Sacred Topography). This view was then challenged by Johns 1999, where the reliability of reports about the structure in the Prophet’s lifetime were heavily questioned. Halm 2006 and Ayyad 2013 have both since made the case that these later reports can help us to understand the original structure and its function, but both still argue against the older “house” consensus, suggesting that it was a sacred structure already during Muhammad’s career in Medina (the “Mosque of the Prophet”). Kister 1962 analyzes an interesting tradition that suggests that the mosque in Medina was originally intended to be a very plain structure, in contrast to the famously elaborate Christian churches of the Middle East. Over the century or so after Muhammad’s death in 632, a number of developments almost completely transformed the nature of the structure in Medina, which is one of the reasons its origins are so hard to uncover. References for this later work are covered in the section Sacred Topography.

Ayyad, Essam S. “The ‘House of the Prophet’ or the ‘Mosque of the Prophet’?” Journal of Islamic Studies 24 (2013): 273–334.
DOI: 10.1093/jis/ett053Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues (in part against Johns 1999) that various Arabic reports about the original structure during the Prophet’s lifetime, supplemented by Qurʾanic evidence, can help us to ascertain its early function, and concludes that its function was largely sacred and that it was indeed a mosque.
Find this resource:

Halm, Heinz. “Der Masğid des Propheten.” Der Islam 83 (2006): 258–276.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Accepts the critiques in Johns 1999 of the “House of the Prophet” theory, but contests that article’s rejection of the validity of using later descriptions to understand the plan and function of the earliest structure during the Prophet’s lifetime.
Find this resource:

Johns, Jeremy. “The ‘House of the Prophet’ and the Concept of the Mosque.” In Bayt al-Maqdis: Jerusalem and Early Islam. Edited by Jeremy Johns, 59–112. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Rejects the “House of the Prophet” theory, but also argues that the extant Arabic descriptions of the earliest structure are backward projections based on later understandings of mosque architecture. Concludes that although a sacred function for the earliest structure may be discernable, we cannot see in it a prototype for the many mosques that came to be built across the Islamic world after the conquests.
Find this resource:

Kister, Meir J. “‘A Booth like the Booth of Moses. . .’ A Study of an Early Ḥadīth.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 25 (1962): 150–155.
DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X00056305Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Analyzes an interesting tradition, which is argued to date back to Muhammad’s lifetime, in which the Prophet declares that his mosque only needed to be a plain and unelaborate structure, since the Day of Judgement would arrive soon.
Find this resource:

Umayyad and Abbasid History

After Muhammad’s death in 632, Medina briefly experienced a period as the center of a vast new expanding empire. This all came to an end during the First Civil War (656–661), at the end of which the caliphal center had been shifted to Syria. The overthrow of the Umayyads by the Abbasid family in 749–750 then saw the caliphal center move decisively to Iraq. Medina nonetheless remained an important local administrative and economic center in the Hijaz during the Umayyad and Abbasid periods, and home to a number of notable elite families who traced their ancestry back to the Prophet’s closest Companions. It was also over the period of Umayyad and early Abbasid rule (7th–10th centuries) that ideas about the town’s emergent sanctity were debated and gradually crystallized.

Social and Economic History

Despite losing out as the caliphal center after the conclusion of the First Civil War in 661, Medina remained an important administrative and economic center in the Hijaz. It was the principal administrative town in that province until at least the 9th century, and only in the late 9th and early 10th centuries did its economic significance come to be eclipsed by other centers, such as Mecca and Yanbuʿ. Munt 2015 offers a survey of these economic developments, while Heck 1999 offers a detailed study of the significance of precious metal mining in the Hijaz’s (including Medina’s) economy down to the mid-9th century. Despite the relative insignificance of Hijazi agriculture within the wider caliphate, expansion of landholding by both local elite families and the ruling caliphal dynasty (whose interests often conflicted) is an important feature of Medina’s economic development in the 7th–9th centuries, as analyzed by al-ʿAli 1969 and Kister 1977. Banaji 2010 helpfully puts the Hijaz’s 7th-century economic expansion, and especially the acquisition of estates by the Umayyad family, within a wider context. Ahmed 2011 is the most important study to date of local Medinan elites, while Elad 2004 (and Nagel 1970, cited under Literary Sources) offers a thorough analysis of one occasion in 762 on which many of them united together to rebel against the Abbasid caliph. Rowson 1991 gives a handy indication of how the economic prosperity of the 7th- and 8th-century Hijaz gave Medinan elites the opportunity to patronize a range of artistic endeavors and to create a relatively vibrant social scene. Lassner 1979 remains the clearest indication of Medina’s administrative significance within the early Abbasid caliphate.

Ahmed, Asad Q. The Religious Elite of the Early Islamic Ḥijāz: Five Prosopographical Case Studies. Oxford: Prosopographica et Genealogica, 2011.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Studies in detail variations in the social and political clout across the first three Islamic centuries of five elite Medinan families descended from five of the Prophet’s closest Companions, demonstrating in particular the significance of marriage links in the maintenance (and perhaps improvement) of their status.
Find this resource:

al-ʿAli, Salih Ahmad. “Milkiyyāt al-arāḍī fī al-Ḥijāz fī al-qarn al-awwal al-hijrī.” Majallat al-ʿarab 3 (1969): 961–1005.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A very thorough overview of much of the evidence for elite agricultural estate-building in Medina in the 7th and early 8th centuries. This Arabic article is a significant expansion upon an earlier English publication, “Muslim Estates in Hidjaz in the First Century AH,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 2 (1959): 247–61.
Find this resource:

Banaji, Jairus. “Late Antique Legacies and Muslim Economic Expansion.” In Money, Power and Politics in Early Islamic Syria: A Review of Current Debates. Edited by John F. Haldon, 165–179. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Offers a narrative of Middle Eastern economic expansion in the early period of Islamic rule, and contextualizes that expansion against the late antique background. Banaji addresses Medina’s 7th-century economic expansion at pp. 169–170, and in particular the interest of Umayyad caliphs (especially Muʿawiya) in acquiring estates around the town, and the article as a whole offers a useful broader context for understanding Medina’s early Islamic economic history.
Find this resource:

Elad, Amikam. “The Rebellion of Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ḥasan (Known as al-Nafs al-Zakīya) in 145/762.” In ʿAbbasid Studies: Occasional Papers of the School of ʿAbbasid Studies, Cambridge, 6–10 July 2002. Edited by James Montgomery, 147–198. Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A detailed study of the rebellion of the Alid Muhammad b. ʿAbd Allah in Medina in 762, his background and program, and the significant (although not universal) levels of support he achieved among many of Medina’s local elites.
Find this resource:

Heck, Gene W. “Gold Mining in Arabia and the Rise of the Islamic State.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 42 (1999): 364–395.
DOI: 10.1163/1568520991208626Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Presents an impressive array of material and literary evidence detailing the significance of precious-metal mining in the Hijaz for the region’s (including Medina’s) economic growth over the late pre- and early Islamic periods, down to the mid-9th century. Also suggests that this mining activity was in large part behind the financial and economic strength of the early Islamic state.
Find this resource:

Kister, Meir J. “The Battle of the Ḥarra: Some Socio-Economic Aspects.” In Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet. Edited by Myriam Rosen-Ayalon, 33–49. Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1977.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Outlines exhaustively a range of sources on the causes of the Medinan revolt against the Umayyads in 683, which culminated in the Battle of the Harra, and demonstrates the role played by the Umayyad caliph Muʿawiya’s aggressive accumulation of landed estates in Medina in encouraging the Medinans’ decision to rebel.
Find this resource:

Lassner, Jacob. “Provincial Administration under the Early ʿAbbāsids: Abū Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr and the Governors of the Ḥaramayn.” Studia Islamica 49 (1979): 39–54.
DOI: 10.2307/1595315Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Nicely outlines the administrative and political significance of Medina to the caliphs in the first decades of Abbasid rule by demonstrating the importance attached by the caliph al-Mansur (r. 754–775) to ensuring that the town was governed by relatively close members of his own family. Also touches prominently upon the rebellion in Medina of Muhammad b. ʿAbd Allah in 762, and thus supplements Elad 2004.
Find this resource:

Munt, Harry. “Trends in the Economic History of the Early Islamic Ḥijāz: Medina during the Second/Eighth Century.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 42 (2015): 201–247.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Scrutinizes the evidence for economic activity in Medina and the northern Hijaz, and argues that the town saw a period of significant relative economic prosperity over the 8th century and into the 9th century, before serious problems began to arise in the late 9th and 10th centuries.
Find this resource:

Rowson, Everett. “The Effeminates of Early Medina.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 111 (1991): 671–693.
DOI: 10.2307/603399Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A study of the somewhat elusive “effeminates” (Ar. mukhannathun) who played such a significant role in the development of musical activities in Medina over much of the Umayyad period. The article also provides plenty of evidence for the expansion in cultural and musical activities in Medina that resulted from the relative economic prosperity of its elites in the late 7th and 8th centuries.
Find this resource:

Sacred Topography

The development of most lasting significance in Medina’s history during the Umayyad and Abbasid periods is undoubtedly its emergence as a widely recognized sacred space and holy city across the Islamic world, a development that also had an important impact on the town’s own topography as sacred sites connected to the memory of the Prophet’s career were established in many areas. Munt 2014 offers a detailed analytical overview of many issues related to Medina’s emergence as a holy city. The most famous sacred site in Medina is, of course, the Prophet’s Mosque, which contains Muhammad’s grave, and it was over the Umayyad and Abbasid centuries that this structure came to acquire its definitive ceremonial form. There are a number of important studies that touch upon aspects of the development of this structure, including Sauvaget 1947, Jairazbhoy 1962, Creswell 1969, Bisheh 1979, Halevi 2007, and Bloom 2013. Behrens 2007 (cited under Post-Abbasid History) is also a significant contribution to this topic.

Bisheh, Ghazi Izzeddin. “The Mosque of the Prophet at Madīnah throughout the First-Century A.H. with Special Emphasis on the Umayyad Mosque.” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1979.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Offers a very thorough overview of the evidence for developments in the structure of the Prophet’s Mosque over the 7th and very early 8th centuries, with a particular focus on the most significant phase in its establishment as a sacred shrine, the work undertaken by the caliph al-Walid b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 705–715).
Find this resource:

Bloom, Jonathan M. The Minaret. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013.
DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637256.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A study of the origins and then development in the style of minarets across the Islamic world. Includes, at pp. 49–54, a section arguing that the decision to provide the mosque with four corner towers during the work ordered by al-Walid b. ʿAbd al-Malik was specifically aimed at emphasizing the building’s significance as a commemoration of the Prophet.
Find this resource:

Creswell, K. A. C. Early Muslim Architecture: Umayyads, A.D. 622–750. 2d ed. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon, 1969.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A classic but still enormously useful overview of a number of significant architectural monuments built and developed over the Umayyad period, including the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina.
Find this resource:

Halevi, Leor. Muhammad’s Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A study of the development of burial and mourning rites across the Islamic world and includes, at pp. 191–96, a useful overview of the evidence for the controversy surrounding al-Walid b. ʿAbd al-Malik’s massive overhaul of the Prophet’s Mosque in the early 8th century.
Find this resource:

Jairazbhoy, R. A. “The History of the Shrines at Mecca and Medina.” Islamic Review (January–February 1962): 19–34.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A fairly thorough and straightforward overview of the architectural development of al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina.
Find this resource:

Munt, Harry. The Holy City of Medina: Sacred Space in Early Islamic Arabia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Analyzes a range of issues in Medina’s emergence and development as a holy city over the 7th–9th centuries, including debates over the validity of its haram and of pilgrimage to sites in the town, and the actions of caliphs and their governors in patronizing work on the town’s infrastructure and individual sacred sites. Argues that all these developments are linked to the interests of various parties of caliphs and religious scholars in claiming the legacy of the Prophet.
Find this resource:

Sauvaget, Jean. Le mosquée omeyyade de Médine: Étude sur les origines architecturales de la mosquée et de la basilique. Paris: Vanoest, 1947.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Remains the most wide-ranging study of the architectural history of the Prophet’s Mosque within the wider context of the development of mosque architecture in the Islamic world. The focus is, as the title suggests, largely on al-Walid’s early-8th-century structure, but the work does cover earlier and later developments as well.
Find this resource:

Post-Abbasid History

If the history of Medina in the Umayyad and Abbasid periods is poorly studied relative to the late pre-Islamic period and the decade of the Prophet’s career in the town, that of post-Abbasid Medina (at least down to the 20th century) has been even less comprehensively researched. There are some more works on the Hijaz as a whole, or on Mecca in particular, in this period, references to some of which can be found in the Oxford Bibliographies article “Hijaz” by William Ochsenwald; only a few works on the Hijaz more broadly that touch significantly on Medina’s history are included here. Mortel 1991 and Mortel 1994 provide between them a narrative history of the political history of the Medinan Sharifs from the 10th century to the end of the Mamluk period in the early 16th century. Faroqhi 2014 offers one of the clearest analyses of Ottoman oversight of the annual hajj rites in the 16th and 17th centuries, which includes a number of significant considerations of aspects of Medina’s history in that period. Ochsenwald 1984, in an analysis of Ottoman rule in the Hijaz in the 19th century, does something similar. El Bakri 2014 is the most recent contribution to the history of Medinans’ experiences of the First World War and the Sharifian siege of the Ottoman force in the town from 1916 to 1919. Behrens 2007, in a discussion centered around the history of the Prophet’s Mosque, presents one of the fullest studies to date of the town’s history under Saudi rule. Yamani 2004 discusses the ways in which the inhabitants of the modern Hijaz (including, of course, in Medina) have constructed local identities within the context of Najdi Saudi rule, while Ende 1997 looks at the Shiʿi minority in Medina in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Behrens, Marcel. “Ein Garten des Paradieses”: Die Prophetenmoschee von Medina. Würzburg: Ergon, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A wide-ranging study of a number of aspects of Medina’s political, economic, social, and cultural history, centered around a discussion of the Prophet’s Mosque from its foundation until the present day. Although chronologically broad in conception, much of the book focuses on the period after the Saudi conquest of the Hijaz.
Find this resource:

El Bakri, Alia. “‘Memories of the Beloved’: Oral Histories from the 1916–19 Siege of Medina.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 46 (2014): 703–718.
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743814001020Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Offers an interesting take on the history of the Sharifian siege of the Ottoman force in Medina from 1916 to 1919, based on the Saudi historian Ahmad Murshid’s interviews with many Medinans, some of whom had experienced the siege themselves and some of whom were descendants of those who had.
Find this resource:

Ende, Werner. “The Nakhāwila, a Shiite Community in Medina: Past and Present.” Die Welt des Islams 37 (1997): 263–348.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A detailed study of the history of Medina’s relatively small Shiʿi community during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Find this resource:

Faroqhi, Suraiya. Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj under the Ottomans, 1517–1683. 2d ed. London: I.B. Tauris, 2014.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An accessible study of the Ottomans’ oversight of the annual hajj pilgrimage in the 16th and 17th centuries, which includes plenty of discussion about their governance of Medina.
Find this resource:

Mortel, Richard. “The Origins and Early History of the Ḥusaynid Amirate of Madīna to the End of the Ayyūbid Period.” Studia Islamica 74 (1991): 63–78.
DOI: 10.2307/1595897Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Offers the principal narrative overview in English of the origins of Medina’s local Sharifian dynasty in the 10th century and the political history of the town from that point to the mid-thirteenth century.
Find this resource:

Mortel, Richard. “The Ḥusaynid Amirate of Madīna during the Mamlūk Period.” Studia Islamica 80 (1994): 97–123.
DOI: 10.2307/1595853Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Offers a narrative overview of the political history of Medina during the era of the Mamluk sultans.
Find this resource:

Ochsenwald, William. Religion, Society and the State in Arabia: The Hijaz under Ottoman Control, 1840–1908. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Discusses the Ottomans’ exercise of power in the Hijaz in the 19th century, with a particular focus on the intersection between religion and politics.
Find this resource:

Yamani, Mai. Cradle of Islam: The Hijaz and the Quest for an Arabian Identity. London: I.B. Tauris, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An analysis of the ways in which residents of the Hijaz since the Saudi conquest have sought to establish and/or maintain local identities and the potential conflicts between these identities and those promoted by the ruling (Najdi) Saudi dynasty.
Find this resource:

Medina’s Wider Significance

Medina’s emergence in the early Islamic centuries as a widely recognized holy city with a number of sacred spaces connected to the memory of the Prophet’s career in the town ensured that its history came to be of far more than local significance. This section of this bibliography focuses on some of the ways in which that significance has had an important impact outside of the Arabian peninsula.

In Religious Literature and Islamic law

Many cities in the Islamic world were considered by medieval Muslim scholars to possess particular merits and distinctions, known in Arabic as fadaʾil; for three overviews of this phenomenon, which touch upon Medina’s fadaʾil, see von Grunebaum 1962, Gruber 1975, and Kister 1996. Medina’s emergence as a holy city mean that a number of fadaʾil came to be attached it to it by scholars working across the Islamic world. Casewit 1991 offers an introduction to the most commonly encountered of these, while Arazi 1984 explains how claims to unique distinctions for Medina often conflicted with those advanced for Mecca. The legacy of Medina’s 7th- and 8th-century Hadith scholars and jurists in the development of Islamic law came to be acclaimed among many Sunni groups around the Islamic world; Dutton 1999, Melchert 1999, and Brockopp 2002 offer some perspectives on the significance of this legacy.

Arazi, Albert. “Matériaux pour l’étude du conflit de préséance entre la Mekke et Médine.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 5 (1984): 177–235.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A very wide-ranging study of, on the one hand, the socioeconomic origins of literature about Medina’s fadaʾil, and, on the other, of the significance of the literary conflict caused by those who promoted Medina’s unique distinctions above Mecca’s.
Find this resource:

Brockopp, Jonathan E. “Competing Theories of Authority in Early Mālikī Texts.” In Studies in Islamic Legal Theory. Edited by Bernard G. Weiss, 3–22. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2002.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Looks at how early Maliki scholars, the eponymous founder of whose school of law, Malik b. Anas (d. 795), was a famous Medinan jurist, justified their legal authority, including the ways in which they made use of Medina’s history as the site of the career of the Prophet and his Companions.
Find this resource:

Casewit, Daoud Stephen. “Faḍāʾil al-Madīnah: The Unique Distinctions of the Prophet’s City.” Islamic Quarterly 35 (1991): 5–22.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An introduction to the most common claims for Medina’s unique distinctions (Ar. fadaʾil) that can be found in widely-known Hadith collections.
Find this resource:

Dutton, Yasin. The Origins of Islamic Law: The Qurʾan, the Muwaṭṭaʾ and the Medinan ʿAmal. Richmond, UK: Curzon, 1999.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A detailed study of the origins and early development of the school of Islamic law that formed around the Medinan jurist Malik b. Anas (d. 795), and that placed an emphasis on the historic legacy of Medina’s scholars, who were active in the town in which Muhammad and his Companions had established the first Muslim community.
Find this resource:

Gruber, Ernst A. Verdienst und Rang: Die Faḍāʾil als literarisches und gesellschaftliches Problem im Islam. Freiburg im Breisgau: K. Schwarz, 1975.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A detailed introduction to medieval literature about the distinctive merits (fadaʾil) of certain texts, people, and places, the latter including Medina.
Find this resource:

Grunebaum, Gustave E. von. “The Sacred Character of Islamic Cities.” In Mélanges Taha Husain: Offerts par ses amis et ses disciples à l’occasion de son 70ième anniversaire. Edited by Abdurrahman Badawi, 25–37. Cairo: Dar al-Maʿarif, 1962.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues for a tripartite hierarchy of sanctity of cities in the Islamic world and suggests that Medina’s sanctity has been based primarily upon its soteriological significance.
Find this resource:

Kister, Meir J. “Sanctity Joint and Divided: On Holy Places in the Islamic Tradition.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 20 (1996): 18–65.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A wide-ranging study of medieval traditions about the distinctive merits (Ar. fadaʾil) of various cities and towns in the Islamic world (including Medina), especially of those traditions which sought either to unite the claims of more than one place or to raise a conflict between the claims of competing towns.
Find this resource:

Melchert, Christopher. “How Ḥanafism Came to Originate in Kufa and Traditionalism in Medina.” Islamic Law and Society 6 (1999): 318–347.
DOI: 10.1163/1568519991223801Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues for a process of historical back-projection through which traditionalist Iraqi jurists claimed a Medinan origin for their jurisprudence.
Find this resource:

Pilgrimage to Medina

Over the centuries following Muhammad’s death in 632, Medina became a prominent site of pilgrimage for Muslims coming from all over the Islamic world, frequently added on before or after a pilgrimage to Mecca for the hajj. Medina’s emergence as a pilgrimage destination, however, was controversial at times, as analyzed in Kister 1969, Schöller 2004, and Munt 2014 (the latter cited under Sacred Topography). A number of narratives by pilgrims to Medina (almost always in conjunction with the hajj to Mecca) are extant, especially from recent centuries, but also from earlier periods; Farahani 1990 is offered here as one example of this literature in English translation and Behrens 2007 (cited under Post-Abbasid History) includes a discussion of Medinan pilgrimage practices (particularly in the early modern and modern eras) based on other travel accounts as well. For further discussion of travel and pilgrimage narratives, see the Oxford Bibliographies articles Pilgrimage and Religious Travel and Tomb of Muhammad. Many rulers sent regular gifts and donations (known as surra in Arabic and surre in Turkish) to Mecca and Medina with the pilgrimage caravans each year; Faroqhi 2014 (cited under Post-Abbasid History) offers a discussion of this practice during the Ottoman period. İpek 2006 and al-Mojan 2013 offer discussions of the donation of textiles to adorn specific sites within the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, together with an overview of extant examples.

Farahani, Mirza Mohammad Hosayn. A Shiʿite Pilgrimage to Mecca, 1885–1886: The Safarnâmeh of Mirzâ Moḥammad Ḥosayn Farâhâni. Edited, translated, and annotated by Hafez Farmayan and Elton L. Daniel. London: Saqi, 1990.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An English translation of a fairly detailed Persian personal narrative of a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina in 1885–86 by the Iranian notable Mirza Muhammad Husayn Farahani (b. 1847–d. 1912).
Find this resource:

İpek, Selin. “Ottoman Razva-i Mutahhara Covers Sent from Istanbul to Medina with the Surre Processions.” Muqarnas 23 (2006): 289–316.
DOI: 10.1163/22118993-90000104Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An art-historical study of the extant textiles in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul originally produced for donation by Ottoman sultans to the Prophet’s tomb in Medina and sent with the pilgrimage caravans.
Find this resource:

Kister, Meir J. “‘You Shall Only Set Out for Three Mosques’: A Study of an Early Tradition.” Le muséon 82 (1969): 173–196.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Analyzes the evidence for early disagreements about the legitimacy or benefits of pilgrimage to sites other than the Kaaba in Mecca, with quite a bit of attention paid to disputes about pilgrimage to Medina and the Prophet’s Mosque.
Find this resource:

al-Mojan, Muhammad H. “The Textiles Made for the Prophet’s Mosque at Medina: A Preliminary Study of Their Origins, History and Style.” In The Hajj: Collected Essays. Edited by Venetia Porter and Liana Saif, 184–194. London: British Museum, 2013.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Situates the Ottoman practice of sending textiles with the pilgrimage caravans to adorn sites in the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina within a broader historical context. Also offers a study of some extant examples, almost all from the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, but also including one from the Public Library of King ʿAbd al-ʿAziz in Medina.
Find this resource:

Schöller, Marco. The Living and the Dead in Islam: Studies in Arabic Epitaphs. Vol. 2, Epitaphs in Context. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
One volume in a very broad study of Arabic epitaphs and burial practices, including (at pp. 45–82) medieval debates (mostly, though not exclusively, of the 12th century onward) about the legitimacy of performing a pilgrimage to Muhammad’s grave in Medina.
Find this resource:

Medina in Art

Artistic representations of Medina in any medium seem to have been fairly rare before the late medieval period, although Flood 2012 includes a brief discussion of an image of the Prophet’s Mosque that dates back to the 9th or 10th century. A relatively large number of hajj certificates from Syria, dated between 1084 and 1310, were discovered in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus in 1893 (and soon after moved to Istanbul). Some of these contain depictions of various holy sites in Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem, for which see Aksoy and Milstein 2000 and Sourdel and Sourdel-Thomine 2006. From the 16th century onward, depictions of Medina, usually alongside Mecca, become a common feature of Ottoman art in a range of media, including pilgrimage certificates, manuscripts, and tiles; Maury 2013 offers an overview of tile images of Mecca and Medina. Finally, Facey and Grant 1996 includes a discussion of the earliest photographs of the holy cities of the Hijaz, which date back to the 19th century.

Aksoy, Şule, and Rachel Milstein. “A Collection of Thirteenth-Century Illustrated Hajj Certificates.” In M. Uğur Derman Festschrift: Papers Presented on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday. Edited by İrvin Cemil Schick, 101–134. Istanbul: Sabanci Universitesi, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Presents an analysis of the depictions of holy sites in Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem found on some of the hajj certificates dating between 1084 and 1310 discovered in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus in 1893.
Find this resource:

Facey, William, and Gillian Grant. Saudi Arabia by the First Photographers. London: Stacey International, 1996.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An overview of the earliest photographers of the territories comprising what is now Saudi Arabia, including photographs of Mecca and Medina taken by the Egyptian Colonel Muhammad Sadiq over two expeditions in 1861 and 1880.
Find this resource:

Flood, Finbarr Barry. “Faith, Religion, and the Material Culture of Early Islam.” In Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition, 7th–9th Century. Edited by Helen C. Evans and Brandie Ratliff, 244–257. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An article accompanying the catalogue of the 2012 exhibition Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition (7th–9th Century) held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. On pp. 249–250, Flood offers an image and brief discussion of what is probably the oldest extant image of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, dated to the 9th or 10th century and preserved on a paper scroll held in Dar al-Kutub in Cairo.
Find this resource:

Maury, Charlotte. “Depictions of the Haramayn on Ottoman Tiles: Content and Context.” In The Hajj: Collected Essays. Edited by Venetia Porter and Liana Saif, 143–159. London: British Museum, 2013.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Offers an overview of the style, content, and context of Ottoman-era depictions on tiles of the two holy cities of Arabia, Mecca and Medina.
Find this resource:

Sourdel, Dominique, and Janine Sourdel-Thomine. Certificats de pèlerinage d’époque ayyoubide: Contribution à l’histoire de l’idéologie de l’Islam au temps des croisades. Paris: L’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 2006.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An edition, translation and study of the hajj certificates from the 11th–14th centuries discovered in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus in 1893. Includes a discussion of the images of holy sites in Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem found on some of the certificates.