al-Baqīʿ, also known as ‘Baqīʿ al-Gharqad’ is the oldest and most famous cemetery of the Islamic era in Medina. In more recent times it is popularly known as ‘Jannat al-Baqīʿ.

According to lexicographers, the name of the cemetery indicates that prior to the advent of Islam, the field in which the burial-ground lay was originally covered with prickly shrubs, called al-gharqad—possibly the boxthorn or the nitre bush (Nitraria retusa), and that the word baqīʿ indicates ‘a place in which are roots of various kinds of trees’ (Abū ʿUbayd, 1/265; Yāqūt, 1/703; about this na…