Masjid Quba
Simple mud-brick founding site of Islam's first mosque, rebuilt into a marble complex of four minarets.
This guide to Masjid Quba in Medina begins on a Monday in 622, when a Jewish resident of the palm groves spotted two exhausted travelers on camelback and shouted across the fields that what people had been waiting for had arrived. The travelers were Muhammad and his companion Abu Bakr, fleeing Mecca, stopping to rest among the Bani Amr ibn Auf clan before continuing into Medina. Rather than resting, he spent about ten days building, and companions later described watching him carry stone after stone on his own back, his back visibly bent under the weight and dust caking his clothes. Stand at the entrance and picture a fugitive founder doing manual labor beside the men he led.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.