Bilal Ibn Rabah Mosque

This guide to the Bilal Ibn Rabah Mosque in Medina follows Bilal ibn Rabah, an enslaved man tortured in Mecca for refusing to renounce his faith, whose freedom Abu Bakr later bought. It traces how the Prophet Muhammad chose that same voice to sound Islam's first call to prayer from a rooftop near here, and how Bilal carried it through the battles of Badr, Uhud and the Trench. The guide turns on what happened to his voice in the days right after the Prophet's death. Listen where the mosque now bears his name.