I was searching for the approximate founding of Medina again this morning, and went to the wikipedia article on it, and find that the dating in that article which, as I remember, put it at about the 6th century BC (over a thousand years after Abraham & Ishmael), has disappeared. The article seems to have gone through an extensive rewrite since my earlier visits and even the Medina article suggests the history began with Jewish settlement in the 2nd century AD:
(Though the last 3 paragraphs in this section are most amusing! You know you're in for a treat when an account of
pre-Muhammad "history" begins with: "Early Muslim chronicler Ibn Ishaq tells of a.....")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medina#HistoryNor is Medina listed in the "Ancient Towns of Saudi Arabia" article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_towns_in_Saudi_ArabiaIn the process I found the following article that suggests that Jews were the original founders (just as the Wikipedia article now does). It was my prior understanding that they fled THE Holy Land to escape Roman persecution following the slaughter of over a million Jews in 70 AD, and perhaps another wave of them in the next slaughter of another half million Jews in around 132 AD. That the Jews had joined the Arabs there, not actually been the founders. If Jews escaping the Romans in the first century were the original settlers, this would make the founding of Medina some time into the Christian era. Jews would have of course been otherwise reluctant to leave their heritage and temple, in THE Holy Land of the prophets and patriarchs, prior to the destruction of their temple in 70 AD.
"Medina, Islam's second holiest city, was originally a Jewish
"settlement""
http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~peters/medina.htmlAnother:
http://themuslimissue.wordpress.com/2014/04/12/medina-islams-second-holiest-city-was-originally-a-jewish-settlement/
