Masjid al-Fash (مسجد الفسح) in Madinah

By Spahic Omer

Masjid al-Fash (the mosque of al-Fash) is a mosque closely affiliated with the battle of Uhud. It is located at the foot of the Uhud Mountain behind, or north of, the Uhud battlefield, about 700-800 meters away. It is a well-known fact that as a strategic manoeuvre, the Prophet (peace be upon him) stationed the Muslim fighters in such a way that they faced Madinah while their backs were to the hills of the Uhud Mountain. Hence, the army of the enemy stood between the Muslims and Madinah.

The earliest reference to this mosque was by Umar b. Shibbah al-Basri (d. 262 AH/876 AC) in his seminal book on the history of Madinah “Tarikh al-Madinah al-Munawwarah.” The author wrote that the Prophet prayed in a small mosque which was affixed to the Uhud Mountain (it lay at its foot). The mosque was on the right side of the visitors coming from the Uhud battlefield. The mosque seemed important to Umar b. Shibbah, thus, without naming it, he mentioned the mosque as the first of the Madinah mosques and sites where the Prophet had performed his prayers, after the Prophet’s mosque and the Quba’ mosque. The subsequent historians agreed that the mosque under consideration was masjid al-Fash.

The mosque might have been built first by Madinah’s Umayyad governor ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz. Following the completion of the historic expansion of the Prophet’s mosque by order of the Umayyad caliph in Damascus al-Walid b. ‘Abd al-Malik, ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz asked the people of Madinah to show him the ancient mosques and places where the Prophet had prayed. He then at each such location built a mosque with incised and identical stones; that is to say, he both institutionalized and immortalized those places and their mosques with the intention of facilitating their visitation. 

“With incised and identical stones” additionally suggests that the mosques were part of a systematic undertaking and were given an architectural individuality hitherto unknown. Not unexpectedly was such the case, given that the caliphate of al-Walid b. ‘Abd al-Malik was the time when the distinguishable vocabulary of Islamic architecture, along with its identity, were in the final phase of evolution.

One of those places thence attended to architecturally was masjid al-Fash. During the time of Umar b. Shibbah, the mosque appears to have been still standing and in a usable condition. That was in the third Hijrah century, less than two centuries after the mosque’s first construction. 

In his influential work on the history of Madinah entitled “Al-Ta’rif bima Anasat al-Hijrah min Ma’alim Dar al-Hijrah”, Jamaluddin al-Matari (d. 1341) also alluded to the same mosque. However, just like Umar b. Shibbah, neither did he name it. To the two authors, the mosque in question was only “a small mosque.” Jamaluddin al-Matari further added that subsequent to the Uhud battle, the Prophet had performed the zuhr (midday) and ‘asr (afternoon) prayers in the said mosque (at its site), which is the solitary truth closely linked with the structure and its location. By the time of al-Matari’s writing of his book, though, the mosque was as good as destroyed.

Adjoining the mosque, towards the qiblah (southern) side facing Makkah, there was in the mountain a carved, or hollowed out, place of the size of a human head. People believed that the Prophet had sat on a rock beneath that place. To the north of the mosque – which was the opposite of the former spot – there was a cave about 150 meters up the mountain. It was suspected that the Prophet had entered it following his and the Muslims’ withdrawal from the Uhud battlefield. 

However, Jamaluddin al-Matari concluded that neither of the two beliefs was true. They were mere folktales. Certainly, there was a cave nearby and a supposedly carved point abutting the mosque, but they were there by chance. The general public started to relate those to the Prophet as a result of their ignorance and weak faith. The viewpoints were the product of their imagination. Self-interested and greedy schemers were to be blamed as well, as emphasized by Ibrahim Rif’at Pasha at the outset of the 20^th century. That was one of the reasons why in his book “Wafa’ al-Wafa” – which is by far the greatest and most reliable reference on the history of Madinah – al-Samahudi did not mention any of the two fallacies. As he relied both on Umar b. Shibbah and Jamaluddin al-Matari, it is as though al-Samahudi accepted and duly implemented his mentors’ findings.

Today, the mosque lies in ruins. There are only traces of its ground plan. The southern qiblah wall is in a better shape than the rest of the walls, standing at the height of about one meter. Its relatively small and shallow mihrab or praying niche, as a result, is also discernible. The qiblah wall was so thick that recessing the mihrab into it did not require a protrusion on the outside, as is always the case with thin qiblah walls. The thickness of the wall amplified its sturdiness, which, without doubt, contributed to its longevity as opposed to the other walls. 

The mosque’s architectural remnants most probably date back to a period of the Osmanli or Ottoman history in Madinah. This could be supported by the fact that the medieval pre-Osmanli historians generally draw attention to the ruinous state of the mosque. Whereas the historians of the Osmanli period do not follow suit. Rather, they speak of the mosque as a subsisting entity, sometimes even implying a tenable architectural condition. For example, while Ibrahim Rif’at Pasha and Muhammad Kibrit al-Husayni in the 20^th and 17^th centuries respectively simply affirmed that there was a mosque: the mosque of al-Fash, Ali b. Musa al-Afandi in 1885 referred to the mosque as a complete, albeit not a roofed structure. This denotes that prior to the arrival of the Osmanlis, the mosque lay derelict and in a state of ruin; afterwards it was rebuilt by the Osmanlis, and again in modern times, the mosque has been allowed to slip back to its old conditions of devastation and neglect. 

Of late, however, there are official efforts aimed at restoring the mosque and reviving its fortunes once again. In charge of the initiative is Al Madinah Region Development Authority. The plan is part of an enormous enterprise that seeks to redevelop and rehabilitate the Islamic historical sites of Madinah.

The mosque is called al-Fash, which means “giving place to”, “opening the way for” and “spaciousness.” Why the mosque is thus called is unknown. Still, many people believe that the mosque’s name had something to do with the revelation of the following Qur’anic verse: “O you who have believed, when you are told: ‘Space yourselves’ in assemblies, then make space; Allah will make space for you. And when you are told: ‘Arise,’ then arise; Allah will raise those who have believed among you and those who were given knowledge, by degrees. And Allah is Acquainted with what you do” (al-Mujadilah, 11). 

It has been purported that the reason for revealing this verse was an event that took place at the mosque’s location, in all probability in conjunction with the events of the battle of Uhud, which nevertheless is not correct. No commentator of the Qur’an, nor trustworthy historian, subscribed to that opinion. On the contrary, a great many scholars took great pains to address the issue and establish its falseness.

The mosque is sometimes called the mosque of Uhud as well, which is for obvious reasons. It was built at the base of the Uhud Mountain, virtually integrating itself with the latter. Its main building material was the famous dark stone of Madinah, some of which should have been cut from quarries at or near the Uhud Mountain. Thus, in terms of environmental guidance and support, the mosque and the landscape of Uhud were at peace with each other. They were organically amalgamated. They were just as one; which surely serves as a lesson in sustainability and sustainable development.

Finally, it is remarkable that in the modern-day editions of al-Samahudi’s magnum opus “Wafa’ al-Wafa” the mosque is (mis)spelled as “masjid al-qabih” instead of “masjid al-fash.” To make things worse, the wording of “masjid al-qabih” is grossly repulsive and so, utterly inappropriate for any mosque, let alone a mosque associated with the Prophet, which tends to confuse researchers. 

However, the truth is that the said wording is a typographical error. The original manuscript of the book, plus the manuscript, as well as the printed version, of the abridgment of the same book, contain the correct name of the mosque. Muhammad Ilyas ‘Abd al-Ghani properly clarified the matter in his scholarly analysis of the traditional mosques in Madinah entitled “Al-Masajid al-Athariyyah fi al-Madinah al-Nabawiyyah.” Thus, al-Samahudi must be absolved of any charge of wrongdoing. ***