Madina Dates Market

This guide to the Madina Dates Market walks you through the stalls behind Medina's most famous export: the small, black-skinned Ajwa date, prized on the strength of a hadith recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari. It traces how that fame has outrun the actual harvest, pushing some sellers to pass off cheaper dates as the real thing, oiled until they gleam under the market lights. A real Ajwa can sell for as much as forty dollars a kilogram, in a market loud with shouted prices and scales that rarely stop moving.