Ar-Rabaḏa

Rabadha lies in the sandy pasture country east of Medina, a stage on the Darb Zubayda, the pilgrim road that ran from Kufa to Mecca. Before Islam its grazing grounds drew the herds of the Muharib, Abs and Ghatafan, and in 637 the caliph Umar reserved the pasture for the horses of the Muslims. Abu Dharr al-Ghifari, the Companion of the Prophet, spent his last years here and died at Rabadha in 652. Excavations have uncovered an early Islamic town of sun-dried mud brick on stone foundations, dominated by a palace of thirteen rooms around a central courtyard, with grain stores, ovens and a glassmaker's furnace.