Ansar, or
Auxiliaries, their guardians; the ground was offered to him in free
gift, but he insisted upon purchasing it, paying more than its value.
Having caused the soil to be levelled and the trees to be felled, he
laid the foundation of the first Mosque.
In those times of primitive simplicity its walls were made of rough
stone and unbaked bricks: trunks of date-trees supported a palm-stick
roof, concerning which the Archangel Gabriel delivered an order that it
should not be higher than seven cubits, the elevation of Moses's
temple. All ornament was strictly forbidden. The Ansar, or men of
Al-Madinah, and the Muhajirin, or Fugitives from Meccah, carried the
building materials in their arms from the cemetery Al-Bakia, near the
well of Ayyub, north of the spot where Ibrahim's Mosque now stands, and
the Apostle was to be seen aiding them in their labours, and reciting
for their encouragement,
"O Allah! there is no good but the good of futurity,
Then have mercy upon my Ansar and Muhajirin!"
The length of this Mosque was fifty-four cubits from North to South,
and sixty-three in breadth, and it was hemmed in by houses on all sides
save the Western. Till the seventeenth
[p.361]month of the new aera the congregation faced towards the
Northern wall. After that time a fresh revelation turned them in the
direction of Meccah, Southwards: on which occasion the Archangel
Gabriel descended and miraculously opened through the hills and wilds a
view of the Ka'abah, that there might be no difficulty in ascertaining
its true position.
After the capture of Khaybar in A.H. 7, the Prophet and his first three
successors restored the Mosque, but Moslem historians do not consider
this a second foundation. Mohammed laid the first brick, and Abu
Hurayrah declares that he saw him carry heaps of building materials
piled up to his breast. 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.
