Conclusion

The Quba’ mosque is one of the most significant mosques in Islam and its civilization. It is
the fourth mosque to which a journey can be undertaken for religious purposes (that is to say,
locally once inside the city of Madinah) the first three being the holy mosque in Makkah, the
Prophet’s mosque in Madinah, and the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. At the same time, the
Quba’ mosque is one of a few legitimate places of visitation in Madinah, whose authenticity
is based on the traditions and practices of the Prophet himself. In short, the Quba’ mosque
was the first mosque built by the Prophet, embodying genuine freedom, progress and victory.
Building the mosque marked the success of the migration (hijrah) from Makkah to Madinah,
which stood for a new birth and a new beginning, due to which the earliest and most
exemplary generation of Muslims decided to use the revolutionary episode as the starting
point for the Islamic hijri calendar. As if the Quba’ mosque emanated the message to the
effect that a new era of the Prophet’s mission, in particular, and that a new age in the
development of human civilization, in general, had begun.
No wonder that no sooner had the Prophet arrived and settled in Madinah – which
hitherto was called Yathrib – than he changed the name of the latter to “Madinah”, which
means “the city”. The word “Madinah” is derived from the verb “madana” which means “to
arrive in a city”, “to inhabit a place” and “to settle in a place”. The verb is generally
intransitive. The transitive verb of the first form is “maddana”, which means “to establish and
build a city”, “to urbanize”, “to advance and civilize” and “to refine and cultivate”. The
reflexive verb of the above transitive form - a verb whose direct object is the same as its
subject – is “tamaddana”, which means “to become civilized, cultured and refined”. From the
same root word the following terms are derived: “tamaddun” which means “civilization”,
“madani” which means “civilian, civic and urban”, and “tamdin” which means “an act of
civilizing, urbanizing and cultivating”. Thus, linguistically, Madinah means “the city”, but
technically - when all derivative words are taken into consideration – it means “a place of
civilization, urbanization, progress and cultural refinement”.
The Prophet’s message was clear: the ultimate objective of Islam was the realization
of a true and unadulterated progress, happiness and success as much in this world as in the
Hereafter. The hijrah was undertaken because the context of the city of Makkah alone was
increasingly proving unfeasible for the achievement of the above purpose. Hence, other
alternatives had to be considered, with the city of Madinah emerging as the best and most
viable option. It ticked all the right boxes.
So, therefore, the Quba’ region and its mosque - where the Prophet had arrived first,
had organized the community, and had founded the first multipurpose institution of Islam (the
mosque) - functioned as the gateway to everything Madinah represented. It was the latter’s
microcosm. As a community development centre, the Quba’ mosque signified a watershed in
the history of Islam and its civilization. It was a threshold between the old Makkan sphere
and a new revolutionary one in Madinah. It was a portal to the future, and by extension, to
infinity. This could be one of the reasons why the Prophet used to frequent the Quba’
mosque, advising his followers to follow suit, and reminding that a visit to and a prayer in the
mosque is equivalent to umrah or the lesser pilgrimage. Which connotes that travelling to the
Quba’ mosque, in point of fact, means revisiting an essential aspect of the origins and
beginnings of everything Islamic. It connotes not going, but returning and also journeying
back in time. It connotes a pilgrimage – a private spiritual odyssey - par excellence.
After the Prophet and his companions (sahabah), in their capacity as the makers and
eyewitnesses of the history and legacy of the Quba’ mosque, people worked painstakingly to
preserve the incredible status of the mosque. They did so by honouring and, whenever
possible, uplifting its religiosity, historicity and architecturality. They did so, furthermore, by
replenishing the milieu and by renewing the “clothing” whose aim was to frame and aid the
mosque’s ever-vibrant spirit and purpose. Unquestionably, the Quba’ mosque’s historical
legacy was always the result of a subtle interplay between the permanency of quintessence
and canons and the impermanency of the exigencies of time and space factors. It was a
marvel that consisted of the abiding soul and transient body. It was a locus where heaven and
earth convened, with the human agency subsisting at the convergence point and striving to
attend to the enticement of the infinite potentials of the former and the sobriety of the
practical necessities of the latter.
However, since a great many people’s emotional, socio-political and religious
proclivities sometimes got the better of them, particular components of the idea and the
historical as well as architectural reality of the Quba’ mosque became compromised. There
were yet instances of persons and their thinking patterns which were inclined to converting
the powerful and living truth of the Quba’ mosque into the lethargic and lifeless
misrepresentation of a mere legend or even a myth. Just as the entire Hijaz region, including
the holy city of Madinah and its Quba’ district, often served as the battlefield of armies,
socio-political ideologies and systems, the Quba’ mosque, in equal measure, served as a
scene of recurring confrontations of ideas, philosophies, principles and policies. Regardless
of which components exactly were the causes and which ones the effects, and which ones
were home-made and which ones imported, the veracity remains that the Quba’ mosque
flourished in times of peace and wellbeing, and suffered in times of instabilities and
depression. The correlations were reciprocal and commensurate.
This book was an attempt to project the trajectory of the Quba’ mosque’s religiosity,
historicity and architecturality from the Prophet’s time to the modern era, concentrating on
the most prominent epochs and their protagonists. The primary sources for the book were of
two kinds: the classical history writings about Madinah, and an array of travel and
exploration literature produced by Muslim and non-Muslim scholars, travellers and explorers.
A number of authorities especially in the fields of historiography, travel and exploration have
been selected on account of them exemplifying their respective epochs and circumstances.
The book’s scope entailed the total religiosity, historicity and architecturality of the Quba’
mosque as witnessed, understood and reported at once by Muslim scholars, historians and
travellers and non-Muslim travellers and explorers. Examining the notion and phenomenon of
the Quba’ mosque as much “as it was” as “as it was seen”, the book - it goes without saying -
is an analysis of a compendium of historical realities and human perceptions, tracking down
where the two converged and where and why they separated.
Discussing the trail of the mosque’s historical ups and downs, expectedly, has been
concluded by presenting the contributions of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. While in
recent years the mosque was subjected to some unparalleled architectural expansions and
refinements, it at the same time was made to undergo a series of cleansing processes
wherewith some persisting elements of pseudo-religiosity and pseudo-historicity were done
away with forever. This way, the mosque came full circle, as it were, and was set on a path
towards restoring its fundamental purity, function and beauty. What is expected next is a new
generation of Muslim historians, explorers and travellers who will capture the new spirit of
the Quba’ mosque and align it with the latter’s rich - and simultaneously challenging -
historical legacies.