Мәдина қаласы: Ислам тарихының алтын бесігі

Medina, officially Al Madinah al Munawwarah (المدينة المنورة, ) and also commonly simplified as Madīnah or Madinah (المدينة), is the capital of Medina Province in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia. It is one of the oldest and most important places in Islamic history. One of the most sacred cities in Islam, the population as of 2022 is 1,411,599, making it the fourth most populous city in the country. Around 58.5% of the population are Saudi citizens and 41.5% are foreigners. Located at the core of the Medina Province in the western reaches of the country, the city is distributed over , of which constitutes the city's urban area, while the rest is occupied by the Hejaz Mountains, empty valleys, agricultural spaces and older dormant volcanoes. Medina is generally considered to be the "cradle of Islamic culture and civilization". The city is considered to be the second holiest of three key cities in Islamic tradition, with Mecca and Jerusalem serving as the holiest and third holiest cities respectively. Al Masjid al Nabawi is of exceptional importance in Islam and serves as burial site of the prophet Muhammad, by whom the mosque was built in 622 CE (first year of the Hijrah). Observant Muslims usually visit his tomb, or rawdhah, at least once in their lifetime during a pilgrimage known as Ziyarat, although this is not obligatory. known as the Hijrah. Medina was the capital of a rapidly increasing Muslim caliphate under Muhammad's leadership, serving as its base of operations and as the cradle of Islam, where Muhammad's ummah —composed of Medinan citizens (Ansar) as well as those who immigrated with Muhammad (Muhajirun), who were collectively known as the Sahabah—gained huge influence. Medina is home to three prominent mosques, namely al Masjid an Nabawi, Quba Mosque, and Masjid al Qiblatayn, with the Quba Mosque being the oldest in Islam. A larger portion of the Qur'an was revealed in Medina in contrast to the earlier Meccan surahs. Much like most of the Hejaz, Medina has seen numerous exchanges of power within its comparatively short existence. The region has been controlled by Jewish Arabian tribes (up until the fifth century CE), the ʽAws and Khazraj (up until Muhammad's arrival), Muhammad and the Rashidun (622–660), the Umayyads (660–749), the Abbasids (749–1254), the Mamluks of Egypt (1254–1517), the Ottomans (1517–1805), the First Saudi State (1805–1811), Muhammad Ali of Egypt (1811–1840), the Ottomans for a second time (1840–1918), the Sharifate of Mecca under the Hashemites (1918–1925) and finally is in the hands of the present day Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (1925–present).

Before the advent of Islam, the city was known as Yathrib (يَثْرِب; ). The word Yathrib appears in an inscription found in Harran, belonging to the Babylonian king Nabonidus (6th century BCE) and is well attested in several texts in the subsequent centuries. The name has also been recorded in Āyah (verse) 13 of Surah (chapter) 33 of the Qur'an. and is thus known to have been the name of the city up to the Battle of the Trench. According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad later forbade calling the city by this name.

Sometime after the battle, Muhammad renamed the city Taybah (the Kind or the Good) (; طَيْبَة) and Tabah (طَابَة) which is of similar meaning. This name is also used to refer to the city in the popular folk song, "Ya Taybah!" (O Taybah!). The two names are combined in another name the city is known by, Taybat at Tabah (the Kindest of the Kind).

The city has also simply been called Al Madinah (i. e. 'The City') in some ahadith Ibn Khordadbeh later reported that during the Persian Empire's domination in Hejaz, the Banu Qurayza served as tax collectors for the Persian Shah. The situation changed after the arrival of two new Arab tribes, the 'Aws or Banu 'Aws and the Khazraj, also known as the Banu Khazraj. At first, these tribes were allied with the Jewish tribes who ruled the region, but they later revolted and became independent.

Toward the end of the 5th century, the Jewish rulers lost control of the city to the two Arab tribes. The Jewish Encyclopedia states that "by calling in outside assistance and treacherously massacring at a banquet the principal Jews", Banu Aus and Banu Khazraj finally gained the upper hand at Medina. However, according to Scottish scholar, William Montgomery Watt, the clientship of the Jewish tribes is not borne out by the historical accounts of the period prior to 627, and he maintained that the Jewish populace retained a measure of political independence. and the residents of Yathrib. When the king was passing by the oasis, the residents killed his son, and the Yemenite ruler threatened to exterminate the people and cut down the palms. According to Ibn Ishaq, he was stopped from doing so by two rabbis from the Banu Qurayza tribe, who implored the king to spare the oasis because it was the place "to which a prophet of the Quraysh would migrate in time to come, and it would be his home and resting place." The Yemenite king thus did not destroy the town and converted to Judaism. He took the rabbis with him, and in Mecca, they reportedly recognized the Ka'bah as a temple built by Abraham and advised the king "to do what the people of Mecca did: to circumambulate the temple, to venerate and honor it, to shave his head and to behave with all humility until he had left its precincts." On approaching Yemen, tells Ibn Ishaq, the rabbis demonstrated to the local people a miracle by coming out of a fire unscathed and the Yemenites accepted Judaism. Eventually the Banu 'Aws and the Banu Khazraj became hostile to each other and by the time of Muhammad's Hijrah (emigration) to Medina in 622, they had been fighting for 120 years and were sworn enemies The Banu Nadir and the Banu Qurayza were allied with the 'Aws, while the Banu Qaynuqa sided with the Khazraj. They fought a total of four wars. In Yemenite Jewish sources, another treaty was drafted between Muhammad and his Jewish subjects, known as Kitāb Dimmat al Nabi, written in the 3rd year of the Hijra (625), and which gave express liberty to Jews living in Arabia to observe the Sabbath and to grow out their side locks. In return, they were to pay the jizya annually for protection by their patrons, while the Muslims would pay the Zakat tax.

In the year 625, Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, a senior chieftain of Mecca who later converted to Islam, led a Meccan force against Medina. Muhammad marched out to meet the Qurayshi army with an estimated 1,000 troops, but just as the army approached the battlefield, 300 men under 'Abd Allah ibn Ubayy withdrew, dealing a severe blow to the Muslim army's morale. Muhammad continued marching with his now 700 strong force and ordered a group of 50 archers to climb a small hill, now called Jabal ar Rummaah (The Archers' Hill) to keep an eye on the Meccan's cavalry and to provide protection to the rear of the Muslim's army. As the battle heated up, the Meccans were forced to retreat. The frontline was pushed further and further away from the archers and foreseeing the battle to be a victory for the Muslims, the archers decided to leave their posts to pursue the retreating Meccans. A small party, however, stayed behind; pleading the rest to not disobey Muhammad's orders. Seeing that the archers were starting to descend from the hill, Khalid ibn al Walid commanded his unit to ambush the hill and his cavalry unit pursued the descending archers were systematically slain by being caught in the plain ahead of the hill and the frontline, watched upon by their desperate comrades who stayed behind up in the hill who were shooting arrows to thwart the raiders, but with little to no effect. However, the Meccans did not capitalize on their advantage by invading Medina and returned to Mecca. The Madanis (people of Medina) suffered heavy losses, and Muhammad was injured.

In 627, Abu Sufyan led another force toward Medina. Knowing of his intentions, Muhammad asked for proposals for defending the northern flank of the city, as the east and west were protected by volcanic rocks and the south was covered with palm trees. Salman al Farsi, a Persian Sahabi who was familiar with Sasanian war tactics recommended digging a trench to protect the city and Muhammad accepted it. The subsequent siege came to be known as the Battle of the Trench and the Battle of the Confederates. After a month long siege and various skirmishes, the Meccans withdrew again due to the harsh winter. During the siege, Abu Sufyan contacted the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza and formed an agreement with them, to attack the Muslim defenders and effectively encircle the defenders. It was however discovered by the Muslims and thwarted. This was in breach of the Constitution of Medina and after the Meccan withdrawal, Muhammad immediately marched against the Qurayza and laid siege to their strongholds. The Jewish forces eventually surrendered. Some members of the Aws negotiated on behalf of their old allies and Muhammad agreed to appoint one of their chiefs who had converted to Islam, Sa'd ibn Mu'adh, as judge. Sa'ad judged that all male members of the tribe should be killed and the women and children enslaved. This action was conceived of as a defensive measure to ensure that the Muslim community could be confident of its continued survival in Medina. The French historian Robert Mantran proposes that from this point of view it was successful—from this point on, the Muslims were no longer primarily concerned with survival but with expansion and conquest. In the ten years following the hijra, Medina formed the base from which Muhammad and the Muslim army attacked and were attacked, and it was from here that he marched on Mecca, entering it without battle in 630. Despite Muhammad's tribal connection to Mecca, the growing importance of Mecca in Islam, the significance of the Ka'bah as the center of the Islamic world, as the direction of prayer (Qibla), and in the Islamic pilgrimage (Hajj), Muhammad returned to Medina, which remained for some years the most important city of Islam and the base of operations of the early Rashidun Caliphate. Under the first three caliphs Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman, Medina was the capital of a rapidly increasing Muslim Empire. During the reign of 'Uthman ibn al Affan, the third caliph, a party of Arabs from Egypt, disgruntled at some of his political decisions, attacked Medina in 656 and assassinated him in his own home. Ali, the fourth caliph, changed the capital of the caliphate from Medina to Kufa in Iraq for being in a more strategic location. Since then, Medina's importance dwindled, becoming more a place of religious importance than of political power. Medina witnessed little to no economic growth during and after Ali's reign. During Mamluk reign, the Masjid an Nabawi caught fire twice. Once in 1256, when the storage caught fire, burning the entire mosque, and the other time in 1481, when the masjid was struck by lightning. This period also coincided with an increase in scholarly activity in Medina, with scholars such as Ibn Farhun, Al Hafiz Zain al Din al 'Iraqi, Al Sakhawi and others settling in the city. These suburbs also had walls and gates. The Ottoman sultans took a keen interest in the Prophet's Mosque and redesigned it over and over to suit their preferences.

As the Ottomans' hold over their domains broke loose, the Madanis pledged alliance to Saud bin Abdulaziz, founder of the First Saudi state in 1805, who quickly took over the city. In 1811, Muhammad Ali of Egypt, Ottoman commander and Wali of Egypt, commanded two armies under each of his two sons to seize Medina, the first one, under the elder Towson Pasha, failed to take Medina. But the second one, a larger army under the command of Ibrahim Pasha, succeeded after battling a fierce resistance movement. Husayn largely won the war due to his alliance with the British. In anticipation of the plunder and destruction to follow, Fakhri Pasha secretly dispatched the Sacred Relics of Muhammad to the Ottoman capital, Istanbul. As of 1920, the British described Medina as "much more self supporting than Mecca." After the Great War, the Sharif of Mecca, Sayyid Hussein bin Ali was proclaimed King of an independent Hejaz. Soon after, the people of Medina secretly entered an agreement with Ibn Saud in 1924, and his son, Prince Mohammed bin Abdulaziz conquered Medina as part of the Saudi conquest of Hejaz on 5 December 1925 which gave way to the whole of the Hejaz being incorporated into the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Critics have described this as "Saudi vandalism" and claim that 300 historic sites linked to Muhammad, his family or companions have been lost in Medina and Mecca over the last 50 years. The most famous example of this is the demolition of al Baqi. Jeddah Regional Climate Center

Medina's importance as a religious site derives from the presence of two mosques, Masjid Quba'a and al Masjid an Nabawi. Both of these mosques were built by Muhammad himself. Islamic scriptures emphasize the sacredness of Medina. Medina is mentioned several times in the Quran; two examples are Surah At Tawbah (verse 101) and Al Hashr (verse 8). Medinan suras are typically longer than their Meccan counterparts and they are also larger in number. Muhammad al Bukhari recorded in Sahih Bukhari that Anas ibn Malik quoted Muhammad as saying: "Medina is a sanctuary from that place to that. Its trees should not be cut and no heresy should be innovated nor any sin should be committed in it, and whoever innovates in it an heresy or commits sins (bad deeds), then he will incur the curse of God, the angels, and all the people."

According to Islamic tradition, a prayer in The Prophet's Mosque equates to 1,000 prayers in any other mosque except the Masjid al Haram where one prayer equates to 100,000 prayers in any other mosque. The mosque is currently being expanded to be able to hold more than 4,000 worshippers.

Three of these historic six mosques were combined recently into the larger Masjid al Fath with an open courtyard.<blockquote>"The people will leave Medina in spite of the best state it will have, and none except the wild birds and the beasts of prey will live in it, and the last persons who will die will be two shepherds from the tribe of Muzaina, who will be driving their sheep towards Medina, but will find nobody in it, and when they reach the valley of Thaniyat al Wada'h, they will fall down on their faces dead."]] As of 2018, the recorded population of Medina province was 2,188,138, Being a destination of Muslims from around the world, Medina witnesses illegal immigration after performing Hajj or Umrah, despite the strict rules the government has enforced. However, the Central Hajj Commissioner Prince Khalid bin Faisal stated that the numbers of illegal staying visitors dropped by 29% in 2018.

As with most cities in Saudi Arabia, Islam is the religion followed by the majority of the population of Medina. Sunnis of different schools (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali) constitute the majority, while there is a significant Shia minority in and around Medina, such as the Nakhawila. Outside the haram, there are significant numbers of Non Muslim migrant workers and expats.

Similar to that of Mecca, Medina exhibits a cross cultural environment, a city where people of many nationalities and cultures live together and interact with each other on a daily basis. This only helps the King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Quran. Established in 1985, the biggest publisher of Quran in the world, it employs around 1100 people and publishes 361 different publications in many languages. It is reported that more than 400,000 people from around the world visit the complex every year. Every visitor is gifted a free copy of the Qur'an at the end of a tour of the facility. It also includes the Hejaz Railway Museum. The Dar Al Madinah Museum opened in 2011 and it uncovers the history of Medina specializing in the architectural and urban heritage of the city. There is no archeology or architecture from the time of Mohammed, except what remains of a few stone defensive towers The Holy Qur'an Exhibition houses rare manuscripts of the Quran, along with other exhibitions that encircle the Masjid an Nabawi. The Madinah Arts Center, founded in 2018 and operated by the MMDA's Cultural Wing, focuses on modern and contemporary arts. The center aims to enhance arts and enrich the artistic and cultural movement of society, empowering artists of all groups and ages. As of February 2020, before the implementation of social distancing measures and curfews, it held more than 13 group and solo art galleries, along with weekly workshops and discussions. The center is located in King Fahd Park, close to Quba Mosque on an area of

In 2018, the MMDA launched Madinah Forum of Arabic Calligraphy, an annual forum to celebrate Arabic calligraphy and renowned Arabic calligraphers. The event includes discussions about Arabic calligraphy, and a gallery to show the work of 50 Arabic calligraphers from 10 countries. The Dar al Qalam Center for Arabic Calligraphy is located to the northwest of the Masjid an Nabawi, just across the Hejaz Railway Museum. In April 2020, it was announced that the center was renamed the Prince Mohammed bin Salman Center for Arabic Calligraphy, and upgraded to an international hub for Arabic Calligraphers, in conjunction with the "Year of Arabic Calligraphy" event organized by the Ministry of Culture during the years 2020 and 2021. Other projects launched by the MMDA Cultural Wing include the Madinah Forum of Live Sculpture held at Quba Square, with 16 sculptors from 11 countries. The forum aimed to celebrate sculpture as it is an ancient art, and to attract young artists to this form of art.

Historically, Medina's economy was dependent on the sale of dates and other agricultural activities. As of 1920, 139 varieties of dates were being grown in the area, along with other vegetables. Religious tourism plays a major part in Medina's economy, being the second holiest city in Islam, and holding many historical Islamic locations, it attracts more than 7 million annual visitors who come to perform Hajj during the Hajj season, and Umrah throughout the year. Medina has two industrial areas, the larger one was established in 2003 with a total area of 10,000,000 m2, and managed by the Saudi Authority for Industrial Cities and Technology Zones (MODON). It is located from Prince Mohammed bin Abdulaziz International Airport, and from Yanbu Commercial Port, and has 236 factories, which produce petroleum products, building materials, food products, and many other products. The Knowledge Economic City (KEC) is a Saudi Arabian joint stock company founded in 2010. It focuses on real estate development and knowledge based industries. The project is under development and is expected to highly increase the number of jobs in Medina by its completion.

The Ministry of Education is the governing body of education in the al Madinah Province and it operates 724 and 773 public schools for boys and girls respectively throughout the province. Taibah High School is one of the most notable schools in Saudi Arabia. Established in 1942, it was the second largest school in the country at that time. Saudi ministers and government officials have graduated from this high school.

Taibah University is a public university providing higher education for the residents of the province, it has 28 colleges, of which 16 are in Medina. It offers 89 academic programs and has a strength of 69210 students as of 2020. The Islamic University, established in 1961, is the oldest higher education institution in the region, with around 22000 students enrolled. It offers majors in Sharia, Qur'an, Usul ad Din, Hadith, and the Arabic language. The university offers Bachelor of Arts degrees and also Master's and Doctorate degrees. The admission is open to Muslims based on scholarships programs that provide accommodation and living expenses. In 2012, the university expanded its programs by establishing the College of Science, which offers Engineering and Computer science majors. Al Madinah College of Technology, which is governed by TVTC, offers a variety of degree programs including electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer sciences and electronic sciences. Private universities at Medina include University of Prince Muqrin, the Arab Open University, and Al Rayyan Colleges.