السياحة الدينية في المدينة المنورة و إمكانات تنميتها مستقبلا : دراسة جغرافية باستخدام نظم المعلومات الجغرافية

Abstract EN

Al Madina Al Munawara has a great cultural legacy especially the city of Al Madina Al Munawara, which has a global importance for the historical, heritage and touristic sites it encompasses, most notably the Holy Masjid of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

This place witnesses an active religious traffic as a short-term model of touristic activities where Muslims can practice religious rituals within a short period ranging from one to three days.

This research aims at shedding light on religious tourism at Al Madina Al Munawara including its social and economic future guided by GIS technology by application of Spatial Analysis of religious tourism map at such an outstanding place.

This study applied regional historical, analytic and objective approach to process digital data as well as graphical and cartographical representation with a view showing spatial characteristics of the historical and archeological touristic sites of the city of Al Madina Al Munawara.

The study came to the fact that distribution of sites has strong bonds and ties with the geographical sites of the Prophet’s Masjid where actual Nearest Neighbor Analysis was 0.50.

This means that sites are closer in their nature to the model of the community around the Holy Prophet’s Masjid.

More than 50% of sites fall within a distance ranging from 1-200m far from highways.

The study recommends that accurate statistics should be made available as to the touristic hosting sites such as hotels and furnished residential apartments in order to get acquainted with future needs of tourism including the training of national manpower in this domain.