The Caliphs, Each In The Turn Of His
Succession, Placed A Brick Close To That Laid By The Prophet, And Aided
Him In Raising The Walls.
Al-Tabrani relates that one of the Ansar had
a house adjacent which Mohammed wished to make part of the place of
prayer; the proprietor was promised in exchange for it a home in
Paradise, which he gently rejected, pleading poverty.
His excuse was
admitted, and Osman, after purchasing the place for ten thousand
dirhams, gave it to the Apostle on the long credit originally offered.
This Mosque was a square of a hundred cubits. Like the former building,
it had three doors: one on the South side, where the Mihrab al-Nabawi,
or the "Prophet's Niche," now is; another in the place of the present
Bab al-Rahmah; and the third at the Bab Osman, now called the Gate of
Gabriel. Instead of a Mihrab or prayer-niche,[FN#34] a large block of
stone directed the congregation; at first it was placed against the
Northern wall
[p.362]of the Mosque, and it was removed to the Southern when Meccah
became the Kiblah.
In the beginning the Prophet, whilst preaching the Khutbah or Friday
sermon, leaned when fatigued against a post.[FN#35] The Mambar,[FN#36]
or pulpit, was the invention of a Madinah man, of the Benu Najjar. It
was a wooden frame, two cubits long by one broad, with three steps,
each one span high; on the topmost of these the Prophet sat when he
required rest. The pulpit assumed its present form about A.H. 90,
during the artistic reign of Al-Walid.
In this Mosque Mohammed spent the greater part of the day[FN#37] with
his companions, conversing, instructing, and
[p.363]comforting the poor. Hard by were the abodes of his wives, his
family, and his principal friends. Here he prayed, at the call of the
Azan, or devotion-cry, from the roof. Here he received worldly envoys
and embassies, and the heavenly messages conveyed by the Archangel
Gabriel. And within a few yards of the hallowed spot, he died, and
found a grave.
The theatre of events so important to Al-Islam could not be
allowed-specially as no divine decree forbade the change-to remain in
its pristine lowliness. The first Caliph contented himself with merely
restoring some of the palm pillars, which had fallen to the ground:
Omar, the second successor, surrounded the Hujrah, or Ayishah's
chamber, in which the Prophet was buried, with a mud wall; and in A.H.
17, he enlarged the Mosque to 140 cubits by 120, taking in ground on
all sides except the Eastern, where stood the abodes of the "Mothers of
the Moslems.[FN#38]" Outside the Northern wall he erected a Suffah,
called Al-Batha-a raised bench of wood, earth, or stone, upon which the
people might recreate themselves with conversation and quoting poetry,
for the Mosque was now becoming [a] place of peculiar reverence to
men.[FN#39]
The second Masjid was erected A.H. 29, by the third Caliph, Osman, who,
regardless of the clamours of the people, overthrew the old walls and
extended the building
[p.364]greatly towards the North, and a little towards the West; but he
did not remove the Eastern limit on account of the private houses. He
made the roof of Indian teak,[FN#40] and the walls of hewn and carved
stone. These innovations caused some excitement, which he allayed by
quoting a tradition of the Prophet, with one of which he appears
perpetually to have been prepared. The saying in question was,
according to some, "Were this my Mosque extended to Safa"-a hill in
Meccah-"it verily would still be my Mosque"; according to others, "Were
the Prophet's Mosque extended to Zu'l Halifah[FN#41] it would still be
his." But Osman's skill in the quotation of tradition did not prevent
the new building being in part a cause of his death. It was finished on
the first Muharram, A.H. 30.
At length, Al-Islam, grown splendid and powerful, determined to surpass
other nations in the magnificence of its public buildings.[FN#42] In
A.H. 88, Al-Walid[FN#43] the First, twelfth Caliph of the Benu Ummayah
race, after building, or rather restoring, the noble "Jami' al-Ammawi"
(cathedral of the Ommiades) at Damascus, determined to
[p.365]display his liberality at Al-Madinah. The governor of the place,
Umar bin Abd Al-Aziz, was directed to buy for seven thousand Dinars
(ducats) all the hovels of raw brick that hedged in the Eastern side of
the old Mosque. They were inhabited by descendants of the Prophet and
of the early Caliphs, and in more than one case, the ejection of the
holy tenantry was effected with considerable difficulty. Some of the
women-ever the most obstinate on such occasions-refused to take money,
and Omar was forced to the objectionable measure of turning them out of
doors with exposed faces[FN#45] in full day. The Greek Emperor, applied
to by the magnificent Caliph, sent immense presents, silver lamp
chains, valuable curiosities,[FN#46] forty loads of small cut stones
for pietra-dura, and a sum of eighty thousand Dinars, or, as others
say, forty thousand Miskals of gold. He also despatched forty Coptic
and forty Greek artists to carve the marble pillars and the casings of
the walls, and to superintend the gilding and the mosaic work. One of
these Christians was beheaded for sculpturing a hog on the Kiblah wall;
and another, in an attempt to defile the roof, fell to the ground, and
his brains were dashed out. The remainder Islamized, but this did not
prevent the older Arabs murmuring that their Mosque had been turned
into a Kanisah, a Christian idol-house.
The Hujrah, or chamber, where, by Mohammed's permission, Azrail, the
Angel of Death, separated his
[p.366]soul from his body, whilst his head was lying in the lap of
Ayishah, his favourite wife, was now for the first time taken into the
Mosque.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 126 of 154
Words from 127944 to 128965
of 157964
