Medina is the 4th largest city of Saudi Arabia
and it is the 392 th largest city of the World.

Medina, also transliterated as Madinah,
is a city in the Hejaz,
and the capital of the Al Madinah Region of Saudi Arabia.

The city contains al-Masjid an-Nabawi ("the prophet's mosque"),
which is the burial place of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and the second-holiest site in Islam after Mecca.

The Arabic word al-Madinah simply means "the city".
Before the advent of Islam,
the city was known as Yathrib.
The word Yathrib has been recorded
in Surat al-Ahzab of the Quran.


Into the Amalekite town of Yathrib, Jews likely arrived sometime between the era of Moses
and the Babylonian captivity.

By the fourth century, Arab tribes began to encroach from Yemen,
and there were three prominent Jewish tribes
that inhabited the city into the 7th century AD:
the Banu Qaynuqa, the Banu Qurayza, and Banu Nadir.
Ibn Khordadbeh later reported that
during the Persian Empire's domination in Hejaz,
the Banu Qurayza served as tax collectors for the shah.

The soil surrounding Medina consists of mostly basalt, while the hills, especially noticeable to the south of the city, are volcanic ash which dates to the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era.
In 1256, Medina was threatened by lava flow
from the last eruption of Harrat Rahat.