AD 622

Quba Mosque

Muhammad arrives at Quba during the Hijra and establishes a mosque there

Some residents greeted Abu Bakr as the prophet; they recognized Muhammad only when Abu Bakr stepped forward to shade him from the sun.

Arrival at the edge of the oasis

According to the Hijra tradition preserved by al-Bukhari, Muhammad and Abu Bakr arrived on a Monday in Rabi al-Awwal of the year conventionally given as 622 and lodged among the Banu Amr ibn Awf at Quba, on the outskirts of Medina’s oasis.

Residents had been going out to the lava field each morning to wait, until the noon heat drove them home. A lookout finally spotted the travelers emerging from the desert shimmer.

The mosque at Quba

Muhammad stayed at Quba, established a mosque the tradition describes as founded on piety, and prayed there. How long he stayed is unsettled even within one collection: al-Bukhari preserves ten nights in one report and fourteen in another.

After leaving on a Friday, he held Friday prayer with his companions on the route into central Medina. Quran 9:108 does not name Quba, and classical interpretation disputed whether its “mosque founded on piety” meant Quba or Muhammad’s mosque in the central settlement.

Why the CE date keeps moving

September 20 and September 24, 622 are attempts to reconcile the traditional Monday-and-Friday sequence with different Hijri-calendar assumptions. The June 28 alternative comes from a different astronomical reconstruction; none of them is an independently documented contemporary CE date.

The Islamic date is contested too — early and later traditions disagree over whether the arrival fell on 8 or 12 Rabi al-Awwal. Scholars note that the recurring use of Monday, 12 Rabi al-Awwal for several major episodes in Muhammad’s life may reflect literary or symbolic chronology.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 2 audit passes Traditional date

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Traditional date. This date is the conventional one, not one fixed by a contemporary record.

What the sources leave uncertain

Early and later traditions disagree over whether the arrival was on 8 or 12 Rabi al-Awwal and whether the Quba stay lasted roughly four, ten or fourteen days.
September 20 and September 24, 622 are attempts to reconcile the traditional Monday and Friday sequence with different Hijri-calendar assumptions. The June 28 alternative comes from a different astronomical reconstruction; none is an independently documented contemporary CE date.
Scholars note that the recurring use of Monday, 12 Rabi al-Awwal for several major episodes in Muhammad's life may reflect literary or symbolic chronology.
There is no surviving archaeology of the original Quba structure; descriptions of its exact plan and materials depend on much later literary sources.