The Green Dome: The History of Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina

Above the city of Medina, rising over the vast white expanse of the Prophet's Mosque, sits a dome painted a deep, unmistakable green. For Muslims it is one of the most beloved sights in the world, because of what lies beneath it: the chamber that holds the resting place of the Prophet Muhammad.

The Prophet's Mosque

Masjid an-Nabawi, the Mosque of the Prophet, was founded by Muhammad himself in the year 622, after the migration from Mecca to Medina that marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. The first building was modest in the extreme: walls of mud brick, a roof of palm trunks and fronds, an open courtyard, with part of it set aside as shelter for the poorest of the community. Over fourteen centuries it has been rebuilt and enlarged again and again, by caliphs and sultans and modern kings, until it became one of the largest mosques in the world, able to hold enormous crowds during the pilgrimage seasons.

The chamber beneath the dome

When the Prophet died in 632, he was buried in the chamber of his wife Aisha, which adjoined the mosque, and that chamber was later enclosed as the mosque grew around it. The first two caliphs of Islam, Abu Bakr and Umar, were buried beside him. The space is among the most revered in the Muslim world, and pilgrims who come to Medina visit the mosque to offer their greetings at the resting place of the Prophet.

Why the dome is green

The dome itself is far younger than the mosque. A dome was first raised over the chamber in the thirteenth century, under the Mamluks, and like the rest of the building it was rebuilt several times after fire and decay. Its famous colour came later still: it was painted green in the early nineteenth century, in the Ottoman period under the sultan Mahmud the Second. The green has since become so bound up with the image of Medina that it is hard to picture the city without it, though for most of Islamic history the dome was not green at all, and for long stretches there was no dome there to colour.

The Green Dome print belongs to the Riwayah Sacred Spaces collection. You can view the print.

The Prophet's Mosque is one of the three great sanctuaries of Islam. For the others, see the sacred sites of Islam.