Madinah in 622–624 CE, at the Time of the Prophet ﷺ

In these years the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ lived beside the mosque he had built among Banu al-Najjar, and the Ansar and the Jewish tribes lived in their hamlets across the oasis, among walled palm gardens. The first mosque is shown as a mud-brick enclosure of about 35 × 30 m on stone footings, with palm-trunk columns, a palm-frond shade and stone doorposts, and the two rooms of Sawdah ﵂ and 'A'ishah ﵂ on its east side. The qibla setting changes it: before Rajab or Sha'ban 2 AH the shade is on the north and the doors face south, east and west; afterwards a shade stands along the south wall, the south door is walled up, a north door opens and the old northern shade becomes the suffa. Masjid Quba, a modest enclosure, changes with it. Around them the model places the hamlets of the Ansar and the Jewish tribes: about seventy stone-and-mud tower-houses (atam), three walled fortresses, some 470 courtyard houses, mostly single-storey and densest around the mosque among Banu al-Najjar, and over a thousand walled palm gardens covering about a sixth of the oasis floor: densest in the 'Aliya to the south, in belts along the wadis and in patches beside the hamlets of the north, with fields and irrigated ground around them. Close up every palm is modelled; from afar the groves are drawn into the ground as canopy. Their extent is an assumption; that the oasis lived from its walled palm gardens is not. There are also the market of Banu Qaynuqa', the open market ground west of the mosque (date uncertain), a few low graves at Baqi' and a crossing over Buthan. Paler tracks join sourced places such as Quba and the mosque; fainter ones are assumed links.

The sections below start at the first mosque and move outward through the oasis: Quba and the first Friday prayer, the prayer place of Banu Salimah, Baqi', the wells, the market ground, the lands of the Jewish tribes, Mount Uhud, the hills and lava fields, and the wadis. Each place has its own note on where it is placed, how it is reconstructed and which sources support it, and each one opens in the 3D model.

Soon after the Hijrah the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ built the mosque on a walled palm garden of Banu al-Najjar. The model shows it before and after the change of qibla in Rajab or Sha'ban 2 AH, with the rooms of his household on its east side. South-east of it, where tradition places it, stands the house of Abu Ayyub ﵁, in which the Prophet ﷺ stayed until the mosque and the rooms were built.

Quba lies in upper Madinah, among Banu 'Amr ibn 'Awf, where the Prophet ﷺ stayed fourteen nights on arrival and the first mosque of the Hijrah was founded. On the way from Quba to the town the first Friday prayer was held in the bed of the valley of Ranuna, and the well of Aris lies at Quba.

Reports place the turning of the qibla at the prayer place of Banu Salimah near Wadi al-'Aqiq; the attribution is disputed, and the form of any structure in 624 is unknown.

The ground of gharqad scrub east-south-east of the mosque received its first burials in these years, so the model shows only a few low graves.

In the wording of al-Tirmidhi, when the Prophet ﷺ came to Madinah it had no sweet water except Rumah. Two wells of these years are in the model: Bir Rumah in lower Wadi al-'Aqiq, which 'Uthman ﵁ secured for the Muslims, and Bayruha', the palm garden and well of Abu Talha ﵁ facing the mosque.

West of the mosque, toward the lowest part of Sal', lay the open trading ground that the Prophet ﷺ designated for the Muslims. Its founding date is not recorded, so the model shows it only as open ground kept clear of houses and palms.

Three Jewish tribes lived in the oasis throughout these years: Banu Qaynuqa', goldsmiths inside the town by the bridge over Wadi Buthan, and Banu al-Nadir and Banu Qurayza among their palm groves and fortresses in the 'Aliya and against the eastern harra. Their later history, the expulsions of Banu Qaynuqa' in 2 AH and Banu al-Nadir in 4 AH and the siege of Banu Qurayza in 5 AH, falls after the period shown, and their quarters are placed from relative descriptions rather than surveyed sites, so their towers and houses are illustrative patterns.

Uhud is the long mountain of red rhyolite that closes the oasis to the north, about 6 km from the mosque. Most readers know it from the battle of Shawwal 3 AH. This model shows 622 to 624 CE, the years before that battle, so it shows the ground and not the fighting: the mountain itself, the small hill of 'Aynayn south of it, and the land between them and the town. No battle feature is modelled, and 'Aynayn keeps its own name here rather than the name it later took from the battle, the hill of the archers (Jabal al-Rumat).

The oasis lies between two plateaus of dark basalt, Harrat Waqim to the east and Harrat al-Wabra to the west, with the hill of Sal' just north-west of the mosque and the mountain of 'Ayr south-west of the oasis, named in hadith as the southern limit of the haram of Madinah.

The valleys of Madinah run north and unite at al-Zughaba. Their pale floors in the model come from drainage computed on the modern elevation data; where the sources describe a historic course that is not mapped, the course is marked as interpretive.

It is a study of the landscape, not a surveyed archaeological reconstruction.

Almost every building except the two mosques, the rooms and the fort of Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf is a placeholder for a pattern the sources describe, not a known building: the number, height and place of each tower, house and garden are assumptions, recorded as such in the settlement evidence. Places without a mapped site, such as the house of Abu Ayyub ﵁, the market ground and the quarter of Banu Qaynuqa', are placed at illustrative anchors and say so. The centre of the first mosque is placed from the room of 'A'ishah ﵂, not from the modern mosque. Places whose fame comes later are labelled with their date, such as Uhud (battle 3 AH); the Eid prayer ground, the trench and every battle feature are left out. There are no domes, minarets or stone columns, and no human figures: the Prophet ﷺ and his Companions ﵃ are never depicted.