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Cities & Lands · The city that expels its dross

المدينة المنورة

Madinah · Tabah

Renamed by heaven, guarded at every pass, and loved with a du'a for double the blessing of Makkah.

The account

Yathrib died as a name the day the emigrant arrived; "it is Tabah," he ﷺ said, the good one, a city Allah renamed (Muslim 1385). Its charter of sanctity parallels its elder sister's: sacred between its two lava fields, its game and trees protected (Muslim 1362). Its purifying work never rests: "it is like the bellows, expelling its impurity and brightening its good" (Bukhari 1871), and in the Dajjal's hour it will shake three times and shake the hypocrites out.

He ﷺ prayed for its increase: "O Allah, place in Madinah double the blessing You placed in Makkah" (Bukhari 1885), and taught the promise of patient residence: whoever endures its hardship, "I will be an intercessor or witness for him on the Day of Rising" (Muslim 1374, 1378). Angels hold its passes so that neither plague nor the Dajjal enters (Bukhari 1880). It received the Hijrah, ratified the pledges, built the mosque, buried the Prophet ﷺ and most of his companions in al-Baqi, and remains what he made it: the capital city of the sunnah, where dying is itself a du'a he taught Umar to make.

The facts

The narrations

Madinah is like the bellows: it expels its impurity and brightens its good.

Bukhari 1871 · Muslim 1383

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Lights that name it

On the Path

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