Madinah · a Light

The Prophet's mosque began with palm trunks and a gravel floor

When the Prophet ﷺ reached Yathrib in 622 he bought a plot used for drying dates and built on it: mud brick walls, columns of palm trunks, a roof of palm fronds that leaked, a floor of earth and gravel. A shaded bench along one wall, the Suffa, housed companions who had nowhere else. Umar and Uthman enlarged it. The Umayyad governor rebuilt it between 707 and 709, adding the concave prayer niche and minarets and taking in the room where the Prophet ﷺ was buried. A dome was raised over that room in 1279 and painted green in 1837. The building now holds more than a million people, around a plot bought for drying dates.

Al-Masjid al-Nabawi, Madinah · 622 CE onward