al-Ashhal, and likewise all the other clans of the Ansār. As the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“The best quarters of the Ansār are those of Banū al-Najjār, then Banū ‘Abd al-Ashhal, then Banū al-Hārith, then Banū Sā‘idah. And in every quarter of the Ansār there is good.”

The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, had settled among Banū Mālik ibn al-Najjār, and there he built his mosque. The site had been an enclosed garden belonging to some of Banū al-Najjār, containing date palms, ruins and graves. He ordered the palms to be cut down, the graves to be dug up and the ruins to be levelled, and he built his mosque there. The other quarters of the Ansār lay around it.

Ibn Hazm said that there was no urban centre there. He said that this was something no one was unaware of; rather, it had been transmitted by large numbers of people from similarly large numbers. All of this constituted a single city, just as Allah divided the people into two groups: the people of Medina and the Bedouins around them.

Thus, anyone who was not a Bedouin belonged to the people of Medina. He did not distinguish an interior and an exterior, a wall and outlying suburbs for Medina, as such distinctions are made for walled cities. The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, designated Medina’s sanctuary as an area measuring one barīd by one barīd. Medina lies between two lava fields; a lava field is land whose soil consists of black stones. He said:

“The area between its two lava fields is a sanctuary.”

Everything between its two lava fields therefore belongs to Medina and is a sanctuary. This is a distance of one barīd, yet someone travelling within it is not a traveller. Even if a Meccan who goes out to ‘Arafāt is a traveller, ‘Arafah, Muzdalifah and Minā are tracts of open country outside Mecca, unlike al-‘Awālī