Madīna, al-

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Madīna, al-. Yathrib, ‘the town’ to which Muḥammad made the hijra at the invitation of its inhabitants. It is situated in the Ḥijāz, and is the place where the earliest organized forms of Islam could take root (hence the fact that the Madinan suras of the Qurʾān deal increasingly with practical issues of individual and social life). The so-called Constitution of Madīna gathers several different agreements drawn up with Jewish and other tribes. Muḥammad was buried in Madīna (as were Abū Bakr and ʿUmar, and also ʿUthmān, but in a place apart), so it has been a place of pilgrimage for Muslims.