The Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah is one of the three Greatest Mosques
in Islam. The Prophet said about them A Muslim should not travel to any
mosque to pray except these three Mosques. No wonder, it was the mosque
which was built by the prophet on a land which he bought and built it
with the assistance of other Muslims. It was the first Islamic call
center, and is also the first school in Islam. It is the Mosque that has
the Mihrab, the Minbar and the Prophet’s room in which he lived with his
wives and it is the place where his body was buried and his two
companions Abu-Bakr and Omar.
When the prophet (P.B.U.H.) migrated
from Makkah he stayed in Quba, an outskirt of Madinah for three days and
built a mosque and ordered Ammar bin Yasser to lead people in prayer
there before he continued his journey to Madinah. On his way people used
to stand on the way of his she-camel so that they get the honor of
hosting him in their houses but he told them that the she-camel is
ordered by God to stop on a certain place it will not stop anywhere
except there. The camel stopped and kneeled on a piece of land belonging
to two orphans from Bani Al Najjar, so the Prophet said he would buy it
from them and he did so though they offered it to him free of charge but
he insisted and paid 10 Gold Dinars for the plot of land.
Most of
his companions who were present at that time participated in building the
mosque from local materials, he himself used to take brick and other
materials until the mosque was built and the direction of the prayer was
at first towards Jerusalem. The mosque had three doors. One towards the
South when the Qibla was towards Jerusalem, one towards the East known as
the Prophet’s Door and sometimes called Ottoman’s Door also which was
later called Gabriel Door, the third door was towards the West known as
Atika Door (Atikah bint Abdullah bin Yazeed bin Mu’awiyah today known as
Mercy Door.
When the Kiblah – the direction of prayer-was changed
towards Ka’aba in Makkah, another door towards the North was opened. On
the 7th year of Hijra, the mosque was expanded because it was too small
for the great number of people who attended it. The expansion was on the
East and the West. Caliph Omar expanded it on the mosque and added three
new doors to it to make the number of the doors six. During the Era of
the Abbasid Caliph Al Mahdi in the year (161-165) the number of doors was
increased to 24 doors.
Later on, in the Mamluk era, most of these
doors were blocked, and only the main four doors were maintained, namely:
the door of the Jibril, the door of Women, the door of Greeting, and the
door of Mercy, and the longest and most beautiful door was the door of
Greeting, and those doors had shutters of the walnut wood, with brass
inscriptions.