The Quba Mosque, on the southern edge of Medina, is held by tradition to be the first mosque built in Islam, founded by Muhammad at the very beginning of the Muslim community.
Founded on the Hijra
When Muhammad and his followers made the Hijra, the emigration from Mecca that marks the start of the Muslim calendar in 622, he stopped at Quba on the approach to Medina before entering the city itself. Tradition holds that he founded the mosque there and took part in laying its first stones, making it the earliest mosque of the new community, built before the Prophet's Mosque in Medina. The Quran's reference to a mosque "founded on piety from the first day" is traditionally understood to point to Quba.
The reward of prayer there
A saying attributed to Muhammad holds that one who purifies oneself at home and then comes to Quba and prays two units of prayer earns the reward of a lesser pilgrimage, an umra, which keeps the mosque a constant destination for those already in Medina and gives visiting it a particular devotional value. It is thus woven into the wider pattern of visitation associated with the holy city.
A closed and expanding sanctuary
Like the rest of the Medina sanctuary, Quba is closed to non-Muslims. A very large expansion begun under the present Saudi state is enlarging the mosque many times over, part of the broader reshaping of the holy cities to accommodate ever greater numbers of pilgrims. It remains an active place of worship deeply embedded in the sacred geography of Medina.