In The Holy City of Medina: Sacred Space in Early Islamic Arabia, HarryMunt offers a much-needed look at the history of Madinah through scholars’writing about its significance and the construction of its sanctity. By examiningthe city’s history through a spatial lens, Munt presents a new perspective on134 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:3the history of a city that has been written about for more than a millennium.While Madinah has served as a catalyst of religious formation, identity, andpractice, until now it has not been studied as a sanctified city (ḥaram) in andof itself.As the city that welcomed Makkah’s Muslim refugees, Madinah has arich and complicated history. In addition, it is a sacred city. While modernMuslims primarily view it as sacred because of the presence of the Prophet’sgrave, the author returns to early Islamic sources to understand how earlyMuslim scholars between the seventh to the ninth centuries viewed the cityand how it became sanctified. He argues against the modern normative Islamicviewpoint that the city was immediately viewed as sacred and posits that ittook several centuries for the normative viewpoint to consolidate into a popularnarrative ...
The Holy City of Medina
