Baqīʿ al-Gharqad is the principal cemetery of Medina, the oldest and historically most important Islamic graveyard. The word baqīʿ originally denoted a area covered with trees and scrub, and gharqad is the box-thorn (genus Lycium) . Though there are, in the cemetery of al-Maʿlā, in Mecca, tombs (such as that of Khadīja) ascribed to Muslims who died before the hijra , the cemetery of Medina is the first exclusively Muslim burial-ground. According to Islamic tradition, the prophet Muḥammad himself selected its location. His reported words and deeds in