Prophet's Mosque

House of worship built on the site of Muhammad's house in Medina, considered one of the three holiest places of Islam. It was originally a simple brick structure surrounding an enclosed courtyard where people gathered to hear Muhammad. Muhammad later built roofed galleries to shelter his visitors, and in 628 a pulpit was added to raise him above the crowd. In 706 Caliph al-Walid I pulled down the original building and built a mosque on the site, which contains Muhammad's tomb. The mosque served as the model for later Islamic architecture.

The Prophet's mosque was modest and rustic with neither dome nor minaret--both later regional accretions--but it provided the underlying ideas and basic purposes informing the spirit so elegantly expressed in the mosques of later Islamic civilization.

Islam and the Cultural Imperative by Abd-Allah, Umar Faruq / Cross Currents

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