Work begins on the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina
Al-Tabari transmits Salih ibn Kaysan’s account that demolition of the Prophet’s Mosque began in AH 88 as part of its rebuilding in Medina.
What this does and does not establish
One account dates the start to Safar; a neighboring report places the arrival of the order in Rabi I of the same year. The reports support the year but leave the precise sequence and month uncertain. No day is assigned.
- Read through an AI working translation.
- Region
- Western Asia
- Theme
- Politics and institutions
- Kind of record
- Placed in a year. A source places this in one year. It is listed under that year; no day precision is invented.
How it is dated
- Date reference
- AH 88, Safar or after the arrival of the order in Rabi I
- How we use it
- Year only.
The date reference is this project’s reading of the source’s date. It may give an era name, a reign or a calendar in a normalised form rather than in the source’s own words; the dating notes say what the source prints.
Dating notes from the research record
Book 6 lines 3171–3175, under the AH 88 annal. Safar and Rabi I of AH 88 both fall wholly in AD 707 even with the three-day margins in the table. The named Medina workforce and the mosque under reconstruction identify the physical site. Passage at line 3175, character range [587574,587635).
File names and line numbers in these notes, and in the limits above, refer to the project’s retained copies of the cited sources. Names such as calendar_headers are the project’s calendar look-ups, and “the investigator” is the research step that prepared the record.
Sources and quoted text
Line and character numbers under “Location” refer to the project’s retained copy of the source. For database rows, “Edition” names the batch of rows that was fetched together.
Source 1 · Supports the statement
Al-Tabari, History of Prophets and Kings, book 6 (Arabic Wikisource division)
Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari
Quoted text (Arabic)
ابتدأنا بهدم مسجد رسول الله {{صل}} في صفر من سنة ثمان وثمانينThis quote keeps the edition’s markup: tags in angle brackets and wiki braces are not part of the text.
AI working translation into English; not official or authoritative
We began demolishing the mosque of the Messenger of God (blessings upon him) in Safar of the year eighty-eight.
Source credit and reuse conditions recorded for this source: Al-Tabari, History of Prophets and Kings, book 6 (Arabic Wikisource division), Arabic Wikisource revision 112404; project English working translation. https://ar.wikisource.org/w/index.php?oldid=112404 Medieval Arabic original; attribute Wikisource contributors, fixed revision and CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for transcribed excerpts and adaptations. No modern translation or annotation quoted.
Exact source version
b1014aed3e5d6d9bcb5eb256b32bfc5d819b1c94f221fc526e1a655f911aecfeChecks and changes
Source checked 2026-11-05. An independent AI evidence review supports this bounded, attributed wording. That review does not guarantee historical truth. How records are checked
No correction has been made to this record’s statement or limits.
Revision s701_mosque_medina_707
Exact revision fingerprint
596d43bdf40d75d3e400e047408c38b8d709b2ec6f0692a7dd78d6aeb08b8574