The Prophet's Mosque as First Built, 1 AH (622 CE)

When the Prophet ﷺ reached Madinah he alighted among Banu al-Najjar, in the courtyard of Abu Ayyub ﵁, and ordered a mosque to be built on a plot nearby. Anas ibn Malik ﵁ describes the plot in Sahih al-Bukhari 428: a walled garden with the graves of pagans, ruins and palm trees. The graves were exhumed, the ruins levelled and the palms cut, the trunks were lined up on the qibla side and the door-jambs were set in stone, while the Companions ﵃ carried the stones and recited verses together with the Prophet ﷺ.

The ground was a date-drying floor that belonged to two orphan boys, Sahl and Suhayl ﵄, in the care of As'ad ibn Zurarah ﵁ (Sahih al-Bukhari 3906). Ibn Sa'd ﵀ adds that the gharqad scrub on it was cut and its standing water drained away, and that As'ad ﵁ had already used an unroofed walled space there for prayer (al-Tabaqat al-Kubra 1:239).

Ibn 'Umar ﵄ gives the materials in Sahih al-Bukhari 446: in the time of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ the mosque was built of mud brick, its roof was palm fronds and its columns were palm trunks. Its size is reported in several ways, which al-Samhudi ﵀ gathered in Wafa' al-Wafa. The report tied to the first build gives about 70 by 60 cubits, some 35 by 30 m; the figure of 100 by 100 cubits, which Ibn Sa'd ﵀ also gives, is taken by al-Samhudi ﵀ as the size after the enlargement that followed Khaybar in 7 AH.

Most of the mosque lay under the open sky. Along the qibla side stood a shade of palm trunks carrying cross-pieces, palm fronds, palm-leaf mats and idhkhir grass, with little or no mud on top, so that the mosque filled with mud when it rained, as al-Samhudi ﵀ reports from Ja'far ibn Muhammad ﵀ and Ibn Shihab ﵀ (Wafa' al-Wafa 1:258 to 1:261). When it was suggested that the roof be plastered, the Prophet ﷺ declined, in the report of Ja'far ibn Muhammad ﵀, and called it an 'arish like the 'arish of Musa ﵇; al-Hasan ﵀ explained that a man who raised his hand could touch its roof (Wafa' al-Wafa 1:258 to 1:261).

For sixteen or seventeen months after the Hijrah the prayer faced north, toward Bayt al-Maqdis in Jerusalem (Sahih al-Bukhari 40), so the qibla wall and the shade were on the north side. The model shows that direction with a faint arrow in the floor. It does not mark a spot where the Prophet ﷺ stood in prayer: the reports that fix such a spot rest on markers measured centuries later, after the mosque had been rebuilt and enlarged.

Ibn Sa'd ﵀ records three doors in the first build: one in the rear wall, one on the west side that was later called Bab 'Atikah or Bab al-Rahmah, and the door on the east side by which the Prophet ﷺ entered, later known as Bab Jibril (al-Tabaqat al-Kubra 1:240; Wafa' al-Wafa 2:212 to 2:214). When the qibla turned, the rear door in the south wall was walled up and a new door was opened opposite it in the north wall, while the east and west doors stayed as they were (Wafa' al-Wafa 1:259).

Together with the mosque, rooms of mud brick were built for the household of the Prophet ﷺ against its east side, roofed with palm trunks and fronds, with their doors opening into the mosque (al-Tabaqat al-Kubra 1:240). In the first two years there were two of them: the room of 'A'ishah ﵂ to the south and the room of Sawdah ﵂ beside it, toward the east door. The rooms of the other wives were added from 3 AH on and are not part of this scene.

Their size comes from people who saw them later. Dawud ibn Qays ﵀ described the room of 'A'ishah ﵂ before it was pulled down in 88 AH, and al-Hasan al-Basri ﵀ remembered touching the roofs of the rooms with his hand in the caliphate of 'Uthman ﵁ (al-Adab al-Mufrad 450 and 451). The model uses those descriptions for the rooms as they stood in 1 and 2 AH, and its place note says so.

In Rajab, or in other reports Sha'ban, of 2 AH the qibla was turned from Bayt al-Maqdis to the Ka'bah in Makkah, and the first full prayer toward the Ka'bah in this mosque was 'Asr (Sahih al-Bukhari 40; al-Tabaqat al-Kubra 1:242). The building followed the prayer. A new shade was built along the south wall, which was now the qibla wall; the rear door in that wall was closed, and a door was opened in the north wall (Wafa' al-Wafa 1:259; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, 13).

The old northern shade was not taken down. It stood from then on at the back of the mosque and sheltered Muhajirun who had no home, the people of the Suffa, as al-Dhahabi ﵀ and Qadi 'Iyad ﵀ describe it in the reports gathered by al-Samhudi ﵀ (Wafa' al-Wafa 1:280 and 2:48). Use the qibla setting in the model to see the building before and after the change.

The mosque stood among the houses and palm gardens of Banu al-Najjar. About 120 m to the south-east, where tradition places it, stood the house of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari ﵁, in which the Prophet ﷺ stayed while the mosque and the rooms were being built. The houses and gardens around the enclosure come from the Madinah model and stand for the pattern the sources describe, not for known buildings.

The written sources give the materials, the rough size, the height of the walls, the doors, the shade and its move, and the first two rooms. They do not give a plan. The number of columns (six to a row, after a weak report quoted by al-Samhudi ﵀), the depth of the shades, the width of the doors, the thickness of the roof and the place of each door along its wall are reconstructions, and each place note says which of its measurements are assumed.

Nothing later than 2 AH is shown: no minbar, which came in 7 or 8 AH, no mihrab niche, minaret, dome, stone column, lamp or pebble floor, and no rooms beyond the first two. The room of 'A'ishah ﵂ is shown as the lived-in room it was in these years. There are no human figures: the Prophet ﷺ and his Companions ﵃ are never depicted.