Year of the Elephant. As a result, Mecca, which was soon to enter into the full light of history, was saved and the Quraysh gained greater respect among the other tribes as the people of God because their prayers were answered.
The momentous nature of this year was not only, however, in the miraculous saving of the Ka’bah, but most of all in the birth of the person who, forty years later, would be visited by the archangel Gabriel in Mecca and who would rid the Ka’bah of all the dross of forgetfulness of the One which, over the centuries, had covered its original face. Muhammad ibn Abd Allah—upon whom be blessings and peace—was born to Aminah in Mecca and was given this name by God’s command. His grandfather, Abd al-Muttalib, took the new-born child immediately to the Ka’bah where he offered prayers to God. Thus, the life and later message of the Prophet became intertwined with the Ka’bah from the earliest moments of his earthly life and a link was established which, according to Islam, will last until the Day of Judgement.
The Prophet in Mecca and Medina
The life of the Prophet of Islam was spent nearly completely in the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina where his barakah is ubiquitous for pious Muslims to this day. It was in Mecca that he was nurtured and raised, while spending some time in the care of the nomadic tribes in the areas around the city as was the tradition of the time. It was in Mecca that he gained fame as a just and trustworthy person and was bestowed with the title of al-Amin, the Trusted One, even before being chosen as prophet. It was in this city that he married Khadijah and where his children were born. In fact, the foundations of his house were visible in Mecca until the recent expansions of the Great Mosque. It was from here that he led the caravans of Khadijah, his wealthy and faithful wife, to Syria and back. It was in the hills around this city that he took refuge to be alone with God, and it was on the top of one of these hills, al-Hira, which stands just outside today’s Mecca, that in the year 610 he was visited by the archangel Gabriel and the first verses of the Noble Qur’an were revealed to him.
The advent of the revelation, of course, transformed the life of the Prophet completely, placing upon his shoulders the responsibility of establishing God’s religion based upon the doctrine of Divine Unity (al-tawhid) amidst a society given to idolatry and in a tribe which derived its power from idol worship. Although his message was accepted immediately by his beloved wife Khadijah, trusted friend Abu Bakr, and intimate cousin and future son-inlaw Ali, it was in the middle of his own city of Mecca that the Prophet was to encounter the most severe challenges, opposition, humiliation and threats, and experience the bitterness of being the object of enmity of so many of the members of his own Quraysh tribe. But also it was here that he persevered and succeeded in creating the nucleus of the first Islamic society.
It was also from the blessed city of Mecca that God chose to have him ascend during the Nocturnal Journey (al-miraj) with the help of the archangel Gabriel, from Mecca to Jerusalem and from Jerusalem to the Divine Throne. Jerusalem was the first direction of prayer for Muslims (al-qiblah al-ula) and then, while the Prophet was in Mecca, God ordered that city to become the qiblah. The miraj reconfirmed for all later generations of Muslims the spiritual connection between Jerusalem and Mecca, the first and second qiblah and the center of monotheism as a whole and Islamic monotheism respectively; two cities whose spiritual reality will, according to Islamic teachings, become reunited at the end of time, while being deeply interconnected here and now.
The Prophet was to leave a Mecca in deep enmity against him, where even his life was now threatened, for the hospitality of the city which was to take his name and become known as the City of the Prophet, Madinat al-nabi. He was to return to his city of birth several years later to perform the pilgrimage in peace and finally to enter Mecca in triumph in the moment which marked the crowning achievement of his earthly life. He was to order Ali and Bilal to rid the Ka’bah of the idols of the Age of Ignorance (al-jahiliyyah) and to re-establish it as the primordial temple dedicated to the One God. His final departure from Mecca left that city as the unquestionable center of the new religious universe created by the Qur’anic revelation. At once the site of the Ka’bah, the birthplace of the Prophet, the place of the first revelation of the Qur’an and the qiblah of all Muslims, Mecca thus became and remains the holiest of Islamic cities.
It was, however, the city of Yathrib to the north that opened its arms to the Prophet at a moment when his life and that of the nascent Islamic community were threatened by the intractable enmity of the Quraysh in Mecca. The Prophet thus set out with his trusted companion Abu Bakr for what was to become Medina, having sent his followers, known as al-muhajirun, literally “the immigrants”, in small groups before him to that city with a few to follow afterwards. It was at the outskirts of Medina, at the site of the present Quba Mosque, where he performed his prayers. It was to the present site of this mosque that his camel was to take him—by its own will so as to avoid contention between different groups that wanted to offer him hospitality at their homes.
Medina was integrated by the Prophet into the first fully fledged Islamic society, to become henceforth the model for all later Islamic societies. The Prophet had a Constitution prepared for the city which is the earliest Islamic political document. Here, he established norms which were to become models for later Islamic practice and promulgated laws which became foundational to Islamic Law or al-Shari’ah. While the revelation continued in Medina, the community became transformed from a small number of scattered adherents to a fully organized society, the heart of a vast religious universe which was in the process of formation. But the challenge of Meccan forces against Islam continued and Medina and its environs were witness to crucial battles which decided the fate of the new community. The first great battle (al-ghazz) was al-Badr, in which a vastly outnumbered Muslim army overcame the Meccan army with the help of angels, according to traditional sources, at a site just outside of Medina. The battle of Uhud, in which the Muslims were defeated and the Prophet injured without the Meccans pursuing their victory, likewise took place close to the present limits of the city, while the site of the battle of Khaybar, in which Ali showed exemplary valor, is not far away. Medina was even besieged once and saved only by the wise decision of Salman al-Farsi, the first Persian to embrace Islam, to dig a ditch around the city, hence the name of the battle as al-Khandaq or “the Ditch”.
The wilderness stretching to the north of Medina forms a striking contrast to the desert area lying at the center and east of the Arabian peninsula. The Hijaz region, in which both Mecca and Medina are located, has mountains extending both north and south, some continuing to be volcanically active.
Gurun membentang di utara Madinah menyajikan pemandangan jauh berbeda terhadap padang pasir yang terhampar di sisi tengah dan timur jazirah Arab. Wilayah Hijaz tempat kota Mekkah dan Madinah berada memiliki pegunungan yang memben-tang ke utara dan selatan. Beberapa gunung berapi masih tampak aktif.
It was in and around Medina that both successes and failures took place militarily as well as socially and politically, but while the failures were shortlived and overcome by never-ending hope and reliance of the Prophet upon God, the successes increased and the strength of the Islamic community augmented from day to day until gradually all of Arabia became united under the banner of Islam during the lifetime of the Prophet, with Medina serving as the sociopolitical capital and center of this newly integrated world. The man who rode with his close friend Abu Bakr from Mecca to the city of Yathrib became within a decade in that city, which had now become Medina, the prophet-king of the whole of Arabia and the founder of a new religious civilization and society whose boundaries were to stretch in less than a century from China to France. And it was to this city, in which God had bequeathed upon him the mastery and dominion of a whole world, that he returned from his city of birth, Mecca, to spend the last few months of his life. Furthermore, it was there in Medina that he died in 10/632 to be buried in his own apartment next to the mosque which he had ordered to be built, the Masjid al-nabi or Mosque of the Prophet, that is the prototype of all later mosques. Medina, therefore, became the second sacred city of Islam, reflecting to this day, and despite the loss in recent years of much of its traditional architecture and
