Year:    2009

Author:    Rotter, Ekkehart

Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, Vol. 36 (2009), Iss. 2 : pp. 183–233

Abstract

As is well-known, a number of medieval authors in Europe wrongly believed that Mecca was the town where Muhammad mainly operated, died and was eventually buried. Quite a few of them told the story of Muhammad's magnetised tomb suspended in mid-air. Some maps show Mecca as the only place marked on the Arabian Peninsula and describe it through corresponding annotations as Muhammad's tomb. This late medieval focus on the holiest site of Islam canvassed the idea of modern science that throughout the European Middle Ages only Mecca was associated with Muhammad and the emergence of Islam.

Taking a closer look at the sources, however, one can show that, in contrast to these conventional views, the town of Medina was mentioned earlier than Mecca, and that it was justly recognized as both the starting point of Islam and the place of Muhammad's tomb. This knowledge about Medina was lost because in the European literature of the 8th and 9th centuries the town was introduced under the previously used name of “Yathrib“. The article argues that the toponym of Medina also sank into oblivion as a result of a linguistic misunderstanding. The Arabic term “madina“ means “town“ in general but also the particular town “al-Madīna“ (correct: “Madīnatu ‘n-Nabīy“, i. e. “the town of the Prophet“), in which Muhammad lived after his flight from Mecca in 622 and where he died ten years later. The translations of Arabic texts into Latin substituted the place name “al-Madīna“ for the unspecific word “civitas“, thus unintentionally obscuring the place name of Medina. Furthermore, the growing popularity of Mecca as the most sacred place for Moslem pilgrims pushed Medina into the background. Therefore some apologetic texts and reports called this place Mecca, although it was in fact Medina which they had described. It was not until the 14th and 15th centuries that these misinterpretations were corrected.