Historic Madinah
The trip around Madinah was surprisingly very interesting. I wondered if I had missed similar interesting trip in Makkah.
The following is from my notes during the trip, as explained by the guide, a Malay living in Madinah, but I forget his name. I have not gotten any verification for the information I got, so any mistakes are totally mine. Anyway, he's quite interesting and did give us pop quizzes, and I got a correct answer for a simple question, and received a nice small booklet of supplication based on Al-Quran and Sunnah, Bahasa Malaysia version :-)
Masjid Quba'
This is the first masjid Rasulullah built with his own hands, upon arrival in Madinah. It's about 10km from Masjid Nabawi. The current building is located on the original site. From a hadith: ~ going to this masjid with wudu' and performing two rakaah of salah is equivalent to performing an umrah. It was very crowded and the guards were very strict that visitors only stayed for that two rakaah and a quick du'a.
Mak couldn't keep her dismay that Pakcu was not with us for this trip.
From here we could also see Masjid Jumaat, the masjid in which the Friday congregational prayer was first performed.
Uhud
The tour guide started to tell to story of the Battle of Uhud as the bus was leaving the orchard. This is not the first time I heard about it, but it's touching every time, and we couldn't hold our tears as we were walking to the cemetery of the syuhada'. There were 70 Uhud syuhada', including Rasul's beloved uncle, the brave and strong Hamzah whose body was mutilated by the enemy. Each of the syuhada' were buried at the exact place it was found at the end of the battle. About 200 years later, there were big flood in the area, and all the bodies appeared from the ground, fresh as if the battled had just ended then. So the people gathered them and reburied them all in one place, namely the cemetery we visited. Hamzah's is at the center of the cemetery.
And there were a lot of people standing on The Archers' Hill. This was the hill where 50 archers were stationed, and 40 of whom descended from the hill against the order of Rasulullah. That caused the loss of the Muslim army, whereby even Rasulullah was wounded. Anyway, all the syuhada' were forgiven by Allah. The moral of the story for us is to obey Allah and obey Rasulullah even when it seems to be against our rationale.
Masjid Qiblatain
Rasulullah was performing salah in this masjid when he received the command from Allah to return the qiblah from Jerusalem (Palestine) to Ka'bah. Ka'bah was the original qiblah when he was in Makkah, then in Madinah Allah had ordered him to pray towards Jerusalem. See Al-Baqarah/2: 142-7
The story was that Rasulullah went to the masjid in the morning for i'tikaf, then he performed salatul Zuhr. On the second rakaah, he received the message. So he turned 180 degrees to the new qiblah. The jumuah changed as well, but now the imam was at the back of the congregation! So Rasulullah gave signs to them, and he slowly moved to the front, without halting the salah. Hence the name ~"The Masjid of Two Qiblah".
It used to have both the mihrabs. But when people had done all kinds of bid'ah there, the authority had removed the old mihrab.
Wallahu'alam.
Other notes:
Date orchard
Date season is in summer, ie. between June and Sept/Oct. So if we had visited during summer, we would have plucked our own dates from the trees.
We got to see the date trees, very similar to our own palm trees.
They were selling all kinds of dates there: small, big, light brown, dark brown, maroon. In summer we could buy fresh dates. What we had now is either dried or frozen ones. I guessed the frozen ones were the closest to the real thing we could get.
King Fadh Al-Quran Printing Complex
This is where the writing and printing of the Quran are operated. The mushaf was hand-written in its entirety.
We didn't get to see the operation inside, as we were short of time. We did drop by at the Marketing center to buy copies of the Quran. They come in many sizes and many translated versions. I had run out of cash so I just watched people buying.
Madinah Islamic University
We only passed through the front of the U. This is one of the best Islamic Universities in the world. Tuition and accomodation are all free. 80% of the students are from foreign countries. To maintain the high quality, it has very strict selection process. Each year the U reps go to the countries and find prospective students. They have to take exams before being selected. On average, there are only about 15 students from Malaysia who are successful. Back to TOC
The following is from my notes during the trip, as explained by the guide, a Malay living in Madinah, but I forget his name. I have not gotten any verification for the information I got, so any mistakes are totally mine. Anyway, he's quite interesting and did give us pop quizzes, and I got a correct answer for a simple question, and received a nice small booklet of supplication based on Al-Quran and Sunnah, Bahasa Malaysia version :-)
Masjid Quba'
This is the first masjid Rasulullah built with his own hands, upon arrival in Madinah. It's about 10km from Masjid Nabawi. The current building is located on the original site. From a hadith: ~ going to this masjid with wudu' and performing two rakaah of salah is equivalent to performing an umrah. It was very crowded and the guards were very strict that visitors only stayed for that two rakaah and a quick du'a.
Mak couldn't keep her dismay that Pakcu was not with us for this trip.
From here we could also see Masjid Jumaat, the masjid in which the Friday congregational prayer was first performed.
Uhud
The tour guide started to tell to story of the Battle of Uhud as the bus was leaving the orchard. This is not the first time I heard about it, but it's touching every time, and we couldn't hold our tears as we were walking to the cemetery of the syuhada'. There were 70 Uhud syuhada', including Rasul's beloved uncle, the brave and strong Hamzah whose body was mutilated by the enemy. Each of the syuhada' were buried at the exact place it was found at the end of the battle. About 200 years later, there were big flood in the area, and all the bodies appeared from the ground, fresh as if the battled had just ended then. So the people gathered them and reburied them all in one place, namely the cemetery we visited. Hamzah's is at the center of the cemetery.
And there were a lot of people standing on The Archers' Hill. This was the hill where 50 archers were stationed, and 40 of whom descended from the hill against the order of Rasulullah. That caused the loss of the Muslim army, whereby even Rasulullah was wounded. Anyway, all the syuhada' were forgiven by Allah. The moral of the story for us is to obey Allah and obey Rasulullah even when it seems to be against our rationale.
Masjid Qiblatain
Rasulullah was performing salah in this masjid when he received the command from Allah to return the qiblah from Jerusalem (Palestine) to Ka'bah. Ka'bah was the original qiblah when he was in Makkah, then in Madinah Allah had ordered him to pray towards Jerusalem. See Al-Baqarah/2: 142-7
The story was that Rasulullah went to the masjid in the morning for i'tikaf, then he performed salatul Zuhr. On the second rakaah, he received the message. So he turned 180 degrees to the new qiblah. The jumuah changed as well, but now the imam was at the back of the congregation! So Rasulullah gave signs to them, and he slowly moved to the front, without halting the salah. Hence the name ~"The Masjid of Two Qiblah".
It used to have both the mihrabs. But when people had done all kinds of bid'ah there, the authority had removed the old mihrab.
Wallahu'alam.
Other notes:
Date orchard
Date season is in summer, ie. between June and Sept/Oct. So if we had visited during summer, we would have plucked our own dates from the trees.
We got to see the date trees, very similar to our own palm trees.
They were selling all kinds of dates there: small, big, light brown, dark brown, maroon. In summer we could buy fresh dates. What we had now is either dried or frozen ones. I guessed the frozen ones were the closest to the real thing we could get.
King Fadh Al-Quran Printing Complex
This is where the writing and printing of the Quran are operated. The mushaf was hand-written in its entirety.
We didn't get to see the operation inside, as we were short of time. We did drop by at the Marketing center to buy copies of the Quran. They come in many sizes and many translated versions. I had run out of cash so I just watched people buying.
Madinah Islamic University
We only passed through the front of the U. This is one of the best Islamic Universities in the world. Tuition and accomodation are all free. 80% of the students are from foreign countries. To maintain the high quality, it has very strict selection process. Each year the U reps go to the countries and find prospective students. They have to take exams before being selected. On average, there are only about 15 students from Malaysia who are successful. Back to TOC
posted by Ina at 12:05 AM
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