Ziyarat, and a City Beyond the Mosque

Visiting Medina is called ziyarat, a devotional visit, and it is deliberately kept distinct from the Hajj, whose rites are fixed to Mecca and its immediate surroundings; a pilgrim who never travels north to Medina has still completed the Hajj in full. Most who make the journey do so anyway, drawn by the Prophet's Mosque and the adjoining Jannat al-Baqi cemetery, where several of Muhammad's family and companions are buried. Two further sites define the city's religious geography.

Quba Mosque, on Medina's southern edge, is traditionally identified as the first mosque built in Islam, raised in the days immediately following the Hijra before Muhammad had even reached the town center, and a special merit is attached to praying there. Mount Uhud, north of the city, is the site of the 625 CE battle in which the Muslims suffered their most serious early defeat and several companions were killed, commemorated today as a place of visitation rather than celebration. The Baqi cemetery has its own difficult history: its domed tombs and markers, standing since Ottoman times, were leveled in 1926 under the newly established Saudi state on grounds that elaborate graves risked veneration bordering on idolatry, a decision that remains a point of contention between Salafi authorities and Muslims from traditions that hold visiting and marking graves in higher regard.