We will start today as we ended yesterday. You may hate this… but we’re the ones exploring, no? Hehe. We leave the hotel early enough, walk down to the Prophet’s Mosque, and… get on the sightseeing bus again! Haha. Maybe my partner is tired…? Who knows. But, we did tell you it was a 24 hour ticket, and today we will use it as a method of transportation. So, let’s walk down to the first stop. As always, we show off the abandoned/construction sites of Saudi Arabia as we detail their big push towards Vision 2030.

But then we’re quickly on the bus and ready to go. Today we looked towards the other side of the bus as we were leaving… and we saw some architecture that we explained in Jeddah. Must be this entire south western region.

Then it is back to our next instalment of the expansion of the Prophet’s Mosque.

Then it is around the Prophet’s Mosque to see it from the south with Al Baqi Cemetery’s wall just in frame.

Then we go north towards the Uhud Battlefield stop.

And then we continue on. We skip a lot of stops in the pictures because my partner decided to film this entire bus ride (which is the real reason we’re taking the bus again). So from the Uhud Battlefield we don’t have another picture until we arrive at the Trench Battlefield stop.

And then it’s not too much further until we reach the Quba Mosque.

And that’s our whirlwind tour of Madinah for the day. For us, the bus ticket was a great purchase because we got three rides out of it, there’s water, an audio guide and map, and free wifi. Not a bad combination.

But wait! How are we ending on the Quba Mosque? We should’ve gone back to the Prophet’s Mosque… But, that’s what we meant by using the bus as “public transportation” today. We get off at the Quba Mosque to investigate, and then we will figure out a way back to the hotel later. For now, let’s explore!

As you can see, we did the full walk around outside of the mosque. As we didn’t repeat any historical information yet so far, please allow us to just remind you that this is likely the first mosque to be built in the world, which makes it incredibly important. Add to that that the Prophet himself helped in building it… incredibly important.

As we were at the Quba Mosque, the call for prayer sounded. Of course we had to stay here and witness that. The mosque was filled with people coming to attend the prayer. We just waited outside until it was finished before capturing one of the entrances.

And with that, we take our last look towards the Quba Mosque before starting to make our way back.

Maybe this will also bring up a question in your mind… Why has my partner been neglecting my selfies in Madinah?! Well… he will be honest with you… After being told in Bahrain that taking my selfies was not “proper” at the Grand Mosque, he decided not to risk seeming offensive in any way in such an important city. Did he take it too far? Maybe, but we weren’t sure and erred on the side of caution.

But, that doesn’t mean that there are no pictures of me. This is the walkway we are to take back towards the Prophet’s Mosque.

It’s a bunch of little shops and things like that along a walkway. They have signs indicating how far you are and what other attractions you can see nearby. Not a bad way to have people move between the Quba Mosque and the Prophet’s Mosque.

We’re not the only ones that decided to do this walk today, but we imagine that it is busier in the evening, even if it is already past 4:30 pm. 

Just off of the path there are many, many buildings and mosques.  But, we don’t have much information about them beyond their names, really. We will try to pass on the tiny bit we were able to figure out.

This is Jummah Mosque, where the first Friday prayer was offered by Muslims after migrating to Madinah. It used to only be open on Fridays, but it seems to be regularly open now.

Apparently this is the Quba Fort. Unfortunately, we did not know this as we were walking around. It is an Ottoman castle/fort and was used for military purposes. Since it is Ottoman, it is not from the beginning of Madinah. We’re not sure if you can enter it or not. As you may have guessed, my partner would have definitely done a detour to it if we knew what it was and if it was possible to enter it.

This is the Bin Laden Mosque. For most people this name will bring up unpleasant memories… but Bin Laden is a family name, and they were (are?) a powerful/wealthy family in Saudi Arabia. As we have discussed, people with power and/or money usually build mosques as a show of their devotion to Allah.

Following along we see some art. We of course had to take this picture because we believe it is an illustration of the importance of Madinah. We may get the interpretation wrong… but we believe that these are the camels that the Prophet and his companions would have ridden while on their migration from Makkah to Madinah. And then, of course, you can recognize the Prophet’s Mosque with its Green Dome.

A bit further we arrive in a more “developed” area that has higher-rise buildings where people must live. All of these buildings are mixed use buildings as they all have stores on the first level and what we assume to be apartments above. It may just be the part of the neighbourhood that we walked through… but we mainly saw toys and seamstresses where you could buy and alter your clothing.

And then we arrived at the end of the Quba walkway. We just sat here for a bit to take some pictures of the little plaza type area and look around.

There were a lot of little stores and fast food places in this area, and you can kind of see the size and setup in the above picture, even if we took it to show the building in the background.

But, with that, we crossed the street from the Quba walkway and crossed the ring road around the Prophet’s Mosque. As promised, we stopped by the Abu Bakr Al-Saddiqi Mosque that we had seen from the bus off in the distance.

This is the location where the Prophet did his Eid prayers. But, why then is it attributed to his companion, Abu Bakr? The first caliph of the Muslims continued the tradition of performing the Eid prayer at this mosque after the Prophet’s death.

And then my partner noticed that the sun started to set, so he just had to double back to show you. I mean, not that bad of a picture. Worth the small walk back.

It also allowed us to get a better picture of the Bilal ibn Rabah Mosque. The magic of “camera” settings, no? Those two pictures were taken only one minute apart.

And can you tell the other thing we’d like you to focus on in this picture? Of course, it’s what we assume to be construction. Maybe this will be a ramp onto a roadway? Or maybe more public transit? With the increased pilgrims and visitors that Saudi Arabia would like to attract a train/metro between all of these holy sites wouldn’t be a bad idea. Just saying, hehe.

But enough of that, we’re still on the south of the Prophet’s Mosque and need to get beyond it to its north to be able to get back to the hotel, so, along with everyone else, we start going towards the Prophet’s Mosque.

With the setting sun you can probably predict what’s coming next… the evening prayer! We sit outside of the mosque again and witness the call to prayer and the prayer itself.

The above picture is once the prayer is already over and people are beginning to leave, which means that an exhibit that we are waiting for is open and we can go check it out.

This is The International Fair and Museum of the Prophet’s Biography and Islamic Civilization. We approached to enter and they told us that an English tour had just started, so we were escorted in to join with the tour.

Unfortunately for you, no photos were allowed inside, so you will just have to trust us and our memory. As we had to rush to catch up to our group, we missed the first little bit of the museum as we just passed through it. But the areas we did see explained the history of the Prophet, Islam, and Madinah and how it relates to Makkah. Inside the museum there were the 99 names of Allah (recall the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi), models of Madinah showing it throughout history, and many interactive screens and films. We will mainly focus on the interactive screens because we found the use of these very interesting. The last room before the final film was one that was filled with interactive screens along all four walls. On three sides you had screens dedicated to things that the Prophet had personally used, while the remaining screens will be used to display all the objects that the Quran mentions. And that is the important part here, which the guide stressed multiple times, that all of these objects are mentioned (and therefore cited at the museum) directly in the Quran. So you could use the screens to virtually examine a table or chair or armour as it would have been during the Prophet’s time. This was a very interesting touch, which we don’t think we’ve seen done in this way in any other museum. Very interesting. 

The guide explained a lot about the significance of Madinah and the Prophet’s life throughout the tour and he would often pause and ask the group questions. The majority of the group seemed to know all of the answers, which was also quite interesting to see, especially since we had visited many museums and things to learn along our travels but were nowhere near the knowledge of the rest of our group. The group was also very diverse, again showing the number of pilgrims that come to Madinah. There were people from Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, and Kosovo (and there were probably others as well). All in all, a very interesting museum/exhibit to visit, and not too long of a tour at all.

It was now time to make our way back to the hotel around the Prophet’s Mosque. The exhibit was short enough (maybe on purpose) to fall between both the sunset and last prayer of the day, so we witnessed this final prayer from the north side of the Mosque. And then we also witnessed the exit of people. We were always impressed by the sheer number of people that exit the Mosque at the end of the prayer.

Well, that’s our day. We start walking back towards the hotel and discover a new way to cross the road. 

Of course they wouldn’t design such an important city to have to just cross the ring road with cars coming towards you to reach the Prophet’s Mosque… there are underground tunnels. But we only figured that out just now, hehe. On the other side you come out where there are a lot of little stores and places to get food. We do a bit of shopping, get our food, and then it’s time to rest. Good night from Madinah!