Quba Mosque
— — the first ground laid down for prayer.
Not only on a wall.
“On the southern edge of Medina, three to four kilometres from the Prophet's Mosque. Quba is the first mosque of Islam, its foundations laid in 622 CE in the days after the Hijra. The current building dates to a major Saudi expansion in the 1980s by the architect Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil — white walls, six domes, four minarets. A hadith holds that prayer offered here carries the reward of a lesser pilgrimage.
Quba Mosque, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Quba Mosque (Masjid Qubāʾ) sits in the village of Quba on the southern fringe of Medina, in the Medina Region of western Saudi Arabia, at about 608 metres of elevation on the Hejaz plateau. Tradition records that the Prophet Muhammad laid its foundation in Rabi' al-Awwal of 1 AH — September 622 CE — on his arrival in Medina from Mecca, making it the first mosque of Islam. The site has been rebuilt several times across the centuries. A major expansion in 1986 under King Fahd, designed by the Egyptian architect Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil, gave the present form, raising capacity to around 20,000 worshippers.
El-Wakil's 1986 design returns to traditional Hejazi forms — white stuccoed walls, articulated brick courses, and six domes raised over the prayer hall. Four minarets rise from the corners, the tallest about 47 metres. The mihrab niche faces north-east toward Mecca. The mosque rests on a raised platform reached by a broad open court, with the women's prayer hall arranged behind a screened section to the rear. A recent expansion announced in 2022 by the Saudi authorities will extend the courtyards substantially, increasing capacity by an order of magnitude.
Quba sits roughly four kilometres south of Al-Masjid an-Nabawi, an easy taxi or bus ride within the city. Like Medina's central mosque, Quba is open to Muslim visitors only; the wider city centre and harem boundaries are restricted to non-Muslims. A hadith narrated by Ibn Majah records that whoever performs ablution at home, comes to Quba, and prays two units of prayer there receives the reward of an Umrah. Many pilgrims travel out on Saturday mornings to observe this practice.