A mapped register of the city’s heritage

Every mosque, well, fort, mountain and battlefield from the compiled research, now joined by the places named in the classical histories of Madinah and the famous incidents of the Sirah. Each is placed on the map, exactly where it can be identified and approximately where only the text survives, and linked to the page of the book that records it.

Open the atlas

Reading the pins

Pin colour and icon show the kind of site — match them to the filter chips.

Two kinds of pin

Solid pin: a site from the visitor atlas
Ringed pin: a place from the classical books, linked to its page on Shamela
Dashed circle (when selected): how far the true spot may lie from an approximate pin

Source reliability

High — official or encyclopedic sources agree
Good — specialist Islamic-geography sources
Traditional — classical text matched to a modern spot
Flagged — no authenticated source found

On Google Maps

Every site on a real map

Each site’s panel has an Open in Google Maps button that drops a pin on the spot, and the Google Maps button on the atlas opens the area you are looking at. To see all 289 placed sites at once on Google’s own map, load the file below into Google My Maps. Places from the classical books are marked “approx.”, and each pin keeps its summary and its Shamela source links.

Save the site list, madinah-atlas.csv, to your device (or the KML version, which keeps the folders).
Open Google My Maps and choose Create a new map.
Under the first layer, choose Import, select the file, pick Latitude and Longitude for the position and Name for the title.

From the Hijrah to the Harrah

Where the famous incidents happened

مواضع الوقائع

The places tied to each event of the Sirah, in the order the events happened. Tap a place to see it on the map, or show every place of one event at once.

Five geographies

How the sites gather on the ground

خمس مناطق

Madinah’s heritage is not evenly spread. It clusters into five natural zones — a dense ring around the Haram, the southern Hijrah trail to Quba, the northern battlefield of Uhud, the western trench and Sela ridge, and the long road out to Badr.

Method & source authenticity

What is documented, and what is only reported

منهجية التوثيق

Research was conducted primarily in Arabic, prioritising official and encyclopedic sources. Every entry states the source behind it; where only weak or unverifiable reports could be found, that is flagged rather than hidden.

Priority of sources

Official Saudi bodies and encyclopedias were treated as primary. Specialist Islamic-geography projects were used where official coverage was silent. Aggregator and travel-blog content was never allowed to stand alone as the basis for an entry.

How to read a coordinate

High — multiple independent encyclopedic or official sources agree with map data.
Good — specialist Islamic geography sources plus map pins.
Traditional — a classical description matched to a modern neighbourhood; the pin may move as the city develops.
Weak — the site is named in reports, but no authenticated source was retrieved.

Places from the classical books

Ringed pins come from the Arabic histories on Shamela: al-Samhudi’s Wafa’ al-Wafa, Ibn Shabbah’s Tarikh al-Madinah, Ibn Hisham’s Sirah and al-Waqidi’s Maghazi. Each links to the exact page. The English is a close paraphrase, not a checked translation. Most of these places are known only from the texts: the pin is placed from the author’s description, and the dashed ring shows the uncertainty. Being recorded in a classical book does not make a report sound, and it gives no special merit to praying at the spot; only al-Masjid an-Nabawi and Masjid Quba carry that.

Before you travel

Coordinates mark the main visitor-accessible point, and pins shift with renovation. Several sites are temporarily closed, fenced, on restricted agricultural land, or reduced to ruins viewable only from outside. Confirm access locally on the day, and treat sites flagged weak as historical interest rather than established visiting places.