"This book examines the emergence of Medina as a holy city, focusing on the historical developments of the first three Islamic centuries"--
This is the first book-length study of the emergence of Medina, in modern Saudi Arabia, as a widely venerated sacred space and holy city over the course of the first three Islamic centuries (the seventh to ninth centuries CE). This was a dynamic period that witnessed the evoluti…
Mālik b. al-Ḥārith b. ʿAbd Yaghūth b. Maslama b. Rabīʿa b. al-Ḥārith b. Jadhīma b. Saʿd b. Mālik b. al-Nakhaʿī, known generally as al-Ashtar (d. 37/657–8 or the following year), of the “southern” tribe of Madhḥij, was one of the principal Kufan agitators against the caliphate of…
Adhruḥ (Udhruḥ in much modern scholarship) is a small town in southern Jordan, about fifteen kilometres east of Petra. Ptolemy included an Adrou (Αδρου) among the towns of Arabia Petraea, and Arab geographers confirm that it was a principal town of the surrounding Sharāt region …
The Ḥums (sing. Aḥmasī) were a cultic association in the pre-Islamic period, centred on the Meccan tribe of Quraysh but involving members also of other groups. They are often defined in the sources primarily as a pietist group. Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), for example, defines al-t…
The Kaʿba is a cuboid structure in the centre of Mecca and is the most prominent sacred structure in the Islamic world. Also known as God’s house (bayt Allāh) , it is the direction of prayer (qibla) for Muslims across the world and the focal point of several rituals performed by…
Fadak was an agricultural village in the northern Ḥijāz somewhere near Khaybar, which is about one hundred fifty kilometres from Medina. Fadak was the centre of a long-running dispute between the reigning caliphs and the family of the prophet Muḥammad, which continued through th…
The Dār al-Nadwa (Council House) was a compound in Mecca, north of the Kaʿba, supposedly founded by Quṣayy to host various administrative and ritual functions. Most reports identify it as a meeting place where weighty matters concerning Mecca and Quraysh could be discussed, henc…