The camel chose the house

The Prophet ﷺ arrived in Madinah after the journey from Makkah, and immediately there was a problem — a good one, but a real one.

Every household wanted him to stay with them. In a town organised around clans, with Aws and Khazraj having spent years in conflict with each other, choosing one house over another was not a neutral act. Whoever he stayed with would be seen to have been chosen.

So he did not choose. The reports describe him telling the people to let the camel go, saying it was under orders, and letting it walk.

It knelt on open ground, and the nearest house was Abu Ayyub's.

Abu Ayyub carried the luggage inside. He offered the upper floor, but the Prophet ﷺ preferred to stay below, where the many people coming to see him could reach him more easily. The stay lasted about seven months on the usual reckoning, while the mosque and his own quarters were built. The open ground where the camel knelt became the site of the mosque.

It is a small piece of diplomacy and it tells you a great deal about how Madinah had to be handled. The answer to an impossible choice between families was to make sure that nobody had chosen.