The Hijrah Route, Makkah to Quba, 622 CE

'A'ishah ﵂ relates that the Prophet ﷺ came to her father at noon, an hour at which he never came, and told him that permission to leave had been given; Abu Bakr ﵁ had fed two camels for four months against this day (Sahih al-Bukhari 3905). The two men left Makkah by night and turned south, away from the road to Madinah, to a cave near the top of Mount Thawr. Ibn Hajar ﵀ harmonises the reports into a departure on a Thursday at the end of Safar, with the nights of Friday, Saturday and Sunday spent in the cave (Fath al-Bari 7:278 and 7:287); a report from 'Urwah ﵀ gives two nights, Sahih al-Bukhari three.

The cave is the part of the story that the Qur'an itself recalls (al-Tawbah 9:40), and the part that later tellings embroidered most. The spider and the doves appear in no geometry of the model; their grading is given with the stop below. The mountain in the model is smoothed by the coarse terrain, so its summit reads lower than the 760 m published for it.

The guide, a man of Banu al-Dil who 'was on the religion of the disbelievers of Quraysh', brought the two camels to the cave on the morning after the third night, and the four set out, 'Amir ibn Fuhayrah ﵁ with them, while the guide 'took them along the coast road' (Sahih al-Bukhari 3905). Hisham ibn al-Kalbi ﵀ dates the setting out to the night before Monday, the first of Rabi' al-Awwal.

No early source describes the way out of Makkah in detail. Ibn Ishaq ﵀ writes only that the guide took them below Makkah, then along the shore, and across the road below 'Usfan. Al-Biladi ﵀ reads 'the coast road' as the Tihamah plain rather than the waterline and runs the first night inland, west from Thawr and across the Jeddah track with al-Hudaybiyyah on the riders' left; the model draws his line and shows the literal shore route faint beside it. Both meet at the spring of al-Ghawla' below 'Usfan. The next day, when the heat came, Abu Bakr ﵁ spread a skin in the shade of a rock for the Prophet ﷺ to rest (Sahih al-Bukhari 3615); al-Biladi ﵀ places that halt near al-Daff, a spot the hadith does not name.

At Qudayd, in the land of Khuza'ah, the travellers stopped at the tents of Umm Ma'bad. Her story, with the weak sheep and the description of the Prophet ﷺ that she gave her husband, is told by al-Hakim ﵀ and al-Tabarani ﵀ and is famous in the books of sirah, though its chains are graded differently, as the stop below explains. Umm Ma'bad and Abu Ma'bad are named here without an honorific, because their acceptance of Islam is reported only later.

Ibn Sa'd ﵀ puts the pursuit of Suraqa ibn Malik on the Tuesday, at Qudayd; al-Biladi ﵀ places it further north, where the route comes down into Wadi Duran. Suraqa rode out for the reward of Quraysh, and turned back with a safe-conduct written on leather after his horse sank into the ground (Sahih al-Bukhari 3906). He is named without an honorific at the pursuit, since he accepted Islam nearly eight years later at al-Ji'ranah, when he brought the document back (Ibn Ishaq, in the translation of Guillaume, p. 226).

North of Qudayd the guide kept east of al-Juhfa, within sight of it, and turned inland at al-Kharrar, away from the coast and the usual road. From here Ibn Ishaq ﵀ names valley after valley: Liqf and its waterhole, the ravines of Mijaj and Dhu al-Ghadwayn, Dhu Kashr, al-Ajrad (which al-Biladi ﵀ reads as Ujayrid), and Ta'hin. Al-Biladi ﵀ found most of these names still used for side ravines between Wadi al-Far' and al-Qaha, and judged the choice deliberate: the shortest line that stayed out of sight and used hidden waters.

From al-Qaha the route climbs to the hardest stretch of the journey. Ibn Ishaq ﵀ takes the party down to al-'Arj, where a mount lagged and Aws ibn Hujr of Aslam lent them a camel, and then over Thaniyyat al-'A'ir, to the right of Rakubah, into the valley of Ri'm. Al-Biladi ﵀ thought the passage through al-'Arj a pointless detour, and ran the line straight from al-Hafat to the pass; drawn over the same waypoints, the detour adds about 13 km. The model draws his line and shows the al-'Arj reading as the faint alternative; the switch in the scene settings draws either as the main line.

The head of Wadi Ri'm, at about 1,100 m, is the highest ground of the whole journey in the terrain data. From there the valley runs down to al-'Aqiq, and the route turns north past the slope of Jabal 'Ayr toward the lava plain south of Madinah.

The Muslims of Madinah had gone out every morning to wait for the riders and gone home in the heat. The Prophet ﷺ arrived among Banu 'Amr ibn 'Awf at Quba on a Monday (Sahih al-Bukhari 3906), stayed there some nights, fourteen in the report of Anas ﵁, and founded its mosque. On a Friday he left Quba and prayed the first Friday prayer in the bed of Wadi Ranuna, among Banu Salim ibn 'Awf, before riding on into Madinah (Ibn Ishaq, in the translation of Guillaume, p. 228).

The sources agree on the order of the days more than on their dates. The arrival was on a Monday; Ibn Hajar ﵀ says this is what is relied on, and that whoever said Friday is irregular. For the day of the month he lists the 1st, the 2nd, the 7th, the 8th, the 12th, the 13th and the middle of Rabi' al-Awwal (Fath al-Bari 7:287). The 12th is the date in the text of Ibn Hisham ﵀; the 8th is the one Ibn Hajar ﵀ derives, and the one that falls on a Monday on the tabular calendar.

The Gregorian dates on this page are reconstructions. The months before 10 AH were not yet fixed to the tabular scheme, and the old practice of intercalation (nasi'), not abolished until 10 AH, could shift any equivalent by days or more, so the page gives only 'September 622 CE'. The dated line of each stop says when a day is reconstructed.

Every waypoint of the line has a coordinate from OpenStreetMap or, where nothing is mapped, a position derived from a description in the sources, with its reasoning recorded. Each is labelled high, medium or low confidence, or assumption. Where the sources name a place and it is mapped with medium or high confidence the line is solid; between such places it is dashed. Assumed spots carry a ring instead of a marker, sized to what the description allows. The line joins its waypoints in straight stretches over the terrain; it has not yet been snapped to the valley floors, so it cuts across bends and ridges, and its length, about 410 km, is a lower bound. The official walking trail on the route, launched in 2025, is published as 470 km.

The terrain is modern public elevation data resampled every 450 m, exaggerated ×2 for legibility. At that scale the cave, the tents and the camp sites have no geometry, and no person is ever depicted. Nothing on the ground is later than 622 except the terrain itself, and the modern roads and towns are not drawn.