Wadi 'Aqiq

This guide to Wadi al-Aqiq in Medina opens with Muhammad resting at Mu'arras on his way out of the city, when a voice he says came from his Lord tells him to pray in this valley and take up his pilgrimage vow there. It follows the fifty-two-kilometer valley's name back to an old word for quartz, the companion Umar who preserved the story, and the caliphs and companions who later built along its banks and piped its water north. It also traces Urwah ibn al-Zubair's castle, its walls still visible today, and the Umayyad governors who drew from the valley's water long after the Prophet's time.