Home / Quba Mosque
Sacred sitesQuba Mosque, where it all began
Founded by the Prophet Muhammad on his arrival from Mecca in 622 CE, Quba is the first mosque built in Islam — and praying there is said to carry the reward of an Umrah.
The first mosque in Islam
When the Prophet Muhammad reached the oasis of Yathrib at the end of the Hijrah in 622 CE, he did not ride straight into the town. He stopped first at Quba, a village of wells and palm gardens on the southern edge of the oasis, and stayed there for several days as the guest of the Banu Amr ibn Awf. There he laid the foundations of a simple place of prayer — by universal agreement the first mosque ever built in Islam, raised before the Prophet's Mosque itself. Mainstream tradition identifies Quba with the Quranic praise of "a mosque founded upon piety from the first day" (Quran 9:108), and the Prophet is reported to have carried stones for its construction with his own hands.
He never stopped visiting it. Hadith in Bukhari and Muslim record that he would come to Quba every Saturday, riding or walking, and pray there. Another well-known narration, recorded by Ibn Majah and others, gives the visit its enduring draw: whoever purifies himself at home, then comes to Quba and prays in it, has the reward of an Umrah. That single sentence keeps the mosque busy from before dawn until well after night prayer, every day of the year.
From palm trunks to a landmark
Nothing survives above ground of the seventh-century original, which — like the early Prophet's Mosque — was a courtyard of palm trunks and mud brick. The mosque was rebuilt repeatedly: the third caliph Uthman enlarged it, the Umayyad caliph Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz gave it its first minaret, and Ottoman sultans restored it in their turn. The building most visitors recognise dates from 1986, when the Egyptian architect Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil rebuilt it in white stone with four minarets and a cluster of domes — one of the most admired pieces of modern mosque architecture in the kingdom. A further large-scale expansion, announced in 2022 as part of the state's development of the historic mosques, has been enlarging the surrounding complex to hold tens of thousands of worshippers and to landscape the historic orchards and wells around it, including the well associated with Aris, where the Prophet's ring was later lost in Uthman's time.
Visiting Quba
The mosque stands about 6 km south of the Prophet's Mosque and is open around the clock; there is no ticket and no permit — unlike the Rawdah, you simply walk in. It is fully active for the five daily prayers, with a separate women's prayer section. The most rewarded pattern, following the Prophet's own practice, is to make wudu where you are staying, travel to Quba, and pray two rakahs there — many visitors do this on a Saturday morning specifically, echoing the sunnah.
- By road: a taxi or ride-hail from the central district takes about 10 minutes; see getting around Medina.
- On foot: the landscaped Quba Avenue (Qurban Road corridor) runs south from the central area, and walking it — roughly 45–60 minutes — deliberately retraces the Prophet's Saturday route. Go early or after Maghrib in the hot months; summer heat in Medina regularly passes 40 °C.
- On a ziyarat circuit: Quba is the standard first stop on half-day tours that continue to Masjid al-Qiblatayn, the Seven Mosques and Mount Uhud — see the ready-made itineraries.
Quba at a glance
Quba's location, along with every other major site in the city, is plotted on the interactive map.