Among the names given to Madinah as the first Islamic city was Taybah, which means “good”, “pure”, “wholesome” and “virtuous”. The name was given by none other than Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him).

In doing so the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) wanted to teach people more than a few lessons on the meaning and scope of what later came to be known as culture and civilization.

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) also called Madinah Tabah, whose meaning is similar to that of Taybah. Both Taybah and Tabah are derived from the Arabic verb taba/yatibu, which means to be “good”, “pure” and “upright”. Related to the verb are the noun tibah, which means “goodness”, “purity” and “righteousness”, and the adjective tayyib, which means “good”, “pure” and “righteous”.

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) added another name (Tabah) to the name Taybah – albeit with the same connotation – most probably with the intention of bringing the importance of the Madinah marvel home to people, and to draw their attention to how crucial its transformative undertakings were.

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The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) migrated with his companions from Makkah to Madinah primarily because he realized that the former’s predominantly hostile conditions were unconducive for the full implementation of Islam as a total way and code of life.

Having spent thirteen years in Makkah trying the impossible, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) needed to consider other more favorable options. Madinah proved the perfect one.

As a matter of fact, there was no then Madinah as such. There was only a vast geographical area with a number of loosely interrelated and interconnected big and small tribal settlements. The area was called Yathrib.

The name Yathrib was derived from the Arabic words tharb and tathrib. The words contained some negative connotations such as blaming, condemning and misbehaving. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) disliked the name, seeing it inappropriate for the world-shattering Madinah phenomenon. Therefore, he immediately rescinded the place’s old name and called the emerging urban wonder Madinah.

No sooner had the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) arrived in Yathrib (Madinah) than he embarked on planning, building and organizing a city: the city of Madinah. The undertaking encompassed community integration as well.

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The word madinah means “city”. By naming thus the prototype Islamic city, and in general by his overall urbanization and development policies and programs, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) indirectly suggested that Islam with its global and inclusive disposition favors urban and settled over rural and desert, or unsettled, life.

That also means that Islam favors organization, order, elegance, culture, dynamism, sufficient wherewithal and peace, over disorder, anarchy, rudeness, vulgarity, lethargy, poverty and conflict.

All the ideals of Islam were achieved most unequivocally in the city-state of Madinah under the leadership of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Hence, Madinah was called taybah. The description unmistakably echoed what the city, at once as a concept and sensory reality, entailed and stood for.

Madinah became a personification of purity, goodness and virtue at all levels of its existence and operation. It was a symbol of success in this world and a gateway to success in the hereafter.

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) dubbed Madinah taybah perhaps by analogy with the Quranic vocabulary according to which the successful and prosperous homeland of Sheba was called baldah tayyibah (a land most goodly, pure and happy) (Saba’, 15).

The Quran likewise calls a good, clean and productive land al-balad al-tayyib. It yields rich produce by the permission of Allah at all times (Al-A’raf, 58). In a similar way, all things, occurrences, dealings, environments, as well as persons, that are tayyib (good, clean and productive) can only lead to and generate more tayyib.

Tayyib is an antidote to depravity and all sorts of impurity. It incessantly breeds but more tayyib, just as:

… barren soil (land, life systems and milieus) yields nothing but poor produce (or it springs up hardly anything useful) (Al-A’raf, 58).

Madinah as Taybah was the culmination of a process that was initiated in Heaven. It further signified the final result of a continuous interaction between Heaven and earth, and between spirit and matter, exhibiting how the latter can be employed as a means for achieving the interests of the former as an existential goal.

Madinah connoted the confluence of the two spheres. It was a physical locus to which the most important aspects of the metaphysical realm were transported and were given a terrestrial chi and nuance.

Maybe that is why – and Allah knows best – the blessed Rawdah, a space inside the Prophet’s Mosque between his house, which adjoined the Mosque, and his minbar (pulpit), is designated by Allah as a garden of the gardens of Paradise. The minbar itself is said to be upon the Prophet’s cistern (hawd), as a prominent element of the hereafter (Sahih al-Bukhari).

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