Prophet's Mosque

The Prophet's Mosque is in Medina, a city in Saudi Arabia.

A mosque is a building where Muslims pray. This one is very big. It has a green dome and tall, thin towers. Its wide courtyards are covered in smooth, shiny stone.

The Prophet's Mosque stands in the center of Medina, a city in western Saudi Arabia. A mosque is a Muslim place of worship. This one began as the home of the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of the Muslim community, and Muslims count it among the three holiest places of Islam.

Its best-known feature is the great green dome, which stands over Muhammad's tomb. Around the old mosque, huge new prayer halls and courtyards have been added, with ten tall towers called minarets. Muslims make pilgrimages to Muhammad's tomb in the mosque. Only Muslims may enter the central area of the city around the mosque.

Britannica describes the Prophet's Mosque as the courtyard of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina and as the model for later Islamic architecture; the later mosque on the site, containing Muhammad's tomb, is one of the three holiest places of Islam. Medina, where Muhammad established the Muslim community after his migration from Mecca in 622 CE, holds the mosque at its center, and non-Muslims may not enter this area of the city.

Today the complex combines the older southern mosque, with its green dome, and vast Saudi-era prayer halls and plazas. Saudipedia, the Saudi encyclopedia, counts ten minarets, 196 fixed and movable domes and 229 gates, and says King Fahd's expansion raised the capacity from 167,000 to one million worshippers at peak times.

As more and more visitors came, the mosque grew bigger.

New prayer halls have thousands of columns. Some domes on the roof can slide open to let in fresh air. Giant umbrellas open in the courtyards to give shade.

In the 1950s, Saudi Arabia's kings began making the mosque much bigger. King Saud added a new northern courtyard with covered walkways in the same style as the 1800s building, but made of concrete. Then King Fahd began an even bigger expansion in 1984, finished in 1993.

Its new prayer hall has 2,028 columns covered in marble. On the roof are 27 domes, each 18 meters across, that slide open and shut on rails to let in fresh air. Six new minarets were built, each about 105 meters tall. Later, 250 electric umbrellas were added to shade the courtyards, with 436 fans that spray a fine mist to cool the air.

The modern expansion, planned by King Abdulaziz in 1948 and carried out by King Saud in 1953 to 1955, added a northern court and colonnades in the style of the 19th-century building but in concrete rather than local stone; the qafas, the screen that once confined women worshippers, was removed. King Fahd laid the foundation stone of the second Saudi expansion on November 2, 1984, and it was completed in 1993.

Saudipedia lists 2,028 marble-clad columns on a ground floor 12.55 m high, 27 sliding domes 18 m across and weighing 80 tonnes each, opened by remote control for natural ventilation, and six new minarets of about 105 m. Under King Abdullah, 250 electric umbrellas and 436 mist fans were added to the courtyards; Saudipedia's statistics give 262 umbrellas in all, in the courtyards and inside. A third Saudi expansion was ordered in 2012.