The chapter
The first patch of free Muslim earth was not a palace or a fort. At Quba, on the southern approach to Yathrib, the Prophet ﷺ halted for several days among Banu Amr ibn Awf, the reports count from four to over ten nights, and there laid the foundations of the first masjid ever built for this ummah. He carried stones with his own hands, and prayed in it, and the Qur'an itself issued the building's certificate: "A masjid founded upon taqwa from the first day is more worthy that you stand within it, in it are men who love to purify themselves, and Allah loves those who purify themselves."
"Founded on taqwa from the first day": the phrase became the standard against which the Qur'an condemned its dark twin, the mosque of harm built later by the hypocrites near Tabuk's season, raised as "harm and disbelief and division." Two buildings with identical architecture and opposite foundations: the Qur'an teaches that a structure is judged by its founding intention, not its minaret.
The Prophet's ﷺ attachment to Quba never faded. Ibn Umar reports in the Sahihayn that he visited it every Saturday, riding or walking, and prayed two rak'ahs, a standing appointment with the place where freedom began. And he ﷺ set its reward for his ummah permanently: "Whoever purifies himself in his house, then comes to the masjid of Quba and prays in it, has the reward of an umrah."
Here too, while the community waited for Ali, who had stayed behind in Makkah returning the trusts of the very people trying to kill his cousin, then walked the road on foot, the shape of the new society was already visible: a building for prostration before a building for anything else.
From Quba he rode toward the city on a Friday, praying the first Jumu'ah on the way, and Yathrib, soon to be renamed al-Madinah, received him with a welcome the world still sings.