[p.361]month of the new aera the congregation faced towards the Northern wall.  After that time a fresh revelation turned them in the direction of Meccah, Southwards:  on which occasion the Archangel Gabriel descended and miraculously opened through the hills and wilds a view of the Ka’abah, that there might be no difficulty in ascertaining its true position.

After the capture of Khaybar in A.H. 7, the Prophet and his first three successors restored the Mosque, but Moslem historians do not consider this a second foundation.  Mohammed laid the first brick, and Abu Hurayrah declares that he saw him carry heaps of building materials piled up to his breast.  The Caliphs, each in the turn of his succession, placed a brick close to that laid by the Prophet, and aided him in raising the walls.  Al-Tabrani relates that one of the Ansar had a house adjacent which Mohammed wished to make part of the place of prayer; the proprietor was promised in exchange for it a home in Paradise, which he gently rejected, pleading poverty.  His excuse was admitted, and Osman, after purchasing the place for ten thousand dirhams, gave it to the Apostle on the long credit originally offered.

This Mosque was a square of a hundred cubits.  Like the former building, it had three doors:  one on the South side, where the Mihrab al-Nabawi, or the “Prophet’s Niche,” now is; another in the place of the present Bab al-Rahmah; and the third at the Bab Osman, now called the Gate of Gabriel.  Instead of a Mihrab or prayer-niche,[FN#34] a large block of stone directed the congregation; at first it was placed against the Northern wall

[p.362]of the Mosque, and it was removed to the Southern when Meccah became the Kiblah.

In the beginning the Prophet, whilst preaching the Khutbah or Friday sermon, leaned when fatigued against a post.[FN#35] The Mambar,[FN#36] or pulpit, was the invention of a Madinah man, of the Benu Najjar.  It was a wooden frame, two cubits long by one broad, with three steps, each one span high; on the topmost of these the Prophet sat when he required rest.  The pulpit assumed its present form about A.H. 90, during the artistic reign of Al-Walid.

In this Mosque Mohammed spent the greater part of the day[FN#37] with his companions, conversing, instructing, and

[p.363]comforting the poor.  Hard by were the abodes of his wives, his family, and his principal friends.  Here he prayed, at the call of the Azan, or devotion-cry, from the roof.  Here he received worldly envoys and embassies, and the heavenly messages conveyed by the Archangel Gabriel.  And within a few yards of the hallowed spot, he died, and found a grave.