So… should we actually explore some of the historic sites we’ve told you about over the past few days? It’s called a hop on, hop off bus… but all we did was ride around except for getting off for prayer time and to walk from the Quba Mosque. Let’s get a bit closer to history today!

As we’ve hinted towards, we’re towards the northern end of Madinah, which means we’re very close to the Uhud Battlefield bus stop, so let’s go that way first. As it just had to be… the first thing we see when we leave our hotel is a football field with Mount Uhud in the background. It must be fun to play here!

And if you really zoom in, strain your eyes, and look carefully you will be able to see the minarets of the mosque we’re going to go visit. Just over the palm trees.

A bit closer and we see another “health corridor” as we saw in Abu Dhabi. Are these popular in the Middle East? We didn’t walk it this time, but we had to take the above picture thinking of Abu Dhabi.

As we get closer, we also had to take this picture. It’s not the best, but it has everything that we talked about in a previous post in one picture. You can see Mount Uhud in the background of the entire shot, then you can see the Sayed Al-Shuhada Mosque, your eyes are then drawn to the Archer’s Hill where you can see a number of people looking over what was once a very important battlefield, and finally in between the mosque and Archer’s Hill there is the Uhud Cemetery where 70 of the Prophet’s companions are now buried following the battle here. Let’s get even closer.

So this is one of the main entrances to the Sayed Al-Shuhada Mosque, the entrance that faces the parking lot. Behind us and to our sides, there are a number of small vendors selling out of small vans. Most of the vendors are selling small servings of food or drink. We then walk around the back where there are more vendors. These have small souvenirs and packs of food for the pigeons that are around. And as we continue around the back of the mosque, we come up to the Shuhada Uhud Cemetery.

As we mentioned in front of Al Baqi Cemetery, there are rules that must be followed when visiting a Muslim cemetery. Similar signs to those at Al Baqi Cemetery were also posted here describing what you should and should not do while visiting the cemetery. So, obviously, we didn’t take any pictures. But there were a few people looking out over the cemetery. As we explained when outside of Eve’s tomb in Jeddah, Muslim cemeteries in this region of the world don’t have any markings or tombstones as you would expect to see in countries such as Canada, USA, or much of the European Union.

But, that’s enough about cemeteries. We now join all the other people climbing Archer’s Hill!

This is a very common vantage point for visitors to this site. There were a lot of people up here, and there were a lot of people that had cameras and were offering to take your picture as a souvenir of this historic site. It’s incredible to think that one of the most important battles in the history of Islam would have happened directly in front of where we are now. And, in case you’re wondering, this is what it looks like behind us.

Much different! But you may be able to notice all of the small food trucks that are just waiting for the crowds of people. Maybe more so in the evening? We didn’t see too many people walking out that way. Or, maybe, they’re just waiting for the next tourist/pilgrim bus to come as the hop on, hop off bus stop is in that direction. Either way, we don’t know, we’re just speculating.

So we’ve walked all the way around the Sayed Al-Shuhada Mosque, which means we should start heading towards our next landmark. We climb down from Archer’s Hill and take a closer look at the mosque.

And this lets us take a closer look at Archer’s Hill with all of the people on top.

And then it’s time to start walking. We didn’t know it yet… but my travel partner would end up walking quite a bit today… And we were just getting started! As we start to walk away from the Mount Uhud Battlefield, you know we had to take just one final look back.

Now, we could stick to the main streets to get to our second destination, but what would be the fun in that? My partner is on foot, so we might as well take a more interesting route. He gets to walking through a semi residential, semi commercial district and we come to this, the Sheikh Mohammad Bilquaid Mosque.

On the tour bus it said that this mosque was approximately where the trench from the Battle of the Trench would have reached. We’re not 100% sure if we heard that right, they meant this mosque (since we were speeding by, it wasn’t a stop), and if it’s 100% correct since there weren’t any signs that we could see that indicate that. But, an interesting fact if true. We continue on!

This is the Yahyawi Mosque. And that’s all the information we can come up with. At this point we’re “far” from the tour bus route, so that doesn’t help us… and beyond finding its name online, we couldn’t find any facts. We continue on!

Now… we sort of made it to our next destination. You may or may not recognize this as the opposite side of the As-Selea Mountain than what we’ve seen before from the Trench Battlefield bus stop. It is packed with busses that are just waiting to go pick up their pilgrims and take them to their next destination. But, we’re here investigating how to reach the top. We saw people up there yesterday and some up there today as well, so we wanted to do the same and get a look from above Madinah. It must be amazing!

We walk through the busses towards the mountain… the drivers look at us but don’t say anything. They’re all just relaxing in the baggage hold of their busses. But, bad news for us… everywhere we look the mountain is completely fenced off. We can get close-ish to some Ottoman era ruins, but there’s no way to start climbing this mountain. We weren’t about to look for a hole or jump the fence, so we will see if we can find an opening from some other side. Maybe there’s only one way up for safety? So, we start walking around the base of the mountain through some more residential neighbourhoods. Everywhere we look… the mountain is completely fenced off…

We finally make it to the main entry point for the Seven Mosques and start looking around. We’re both looking for a way up the mountain and for all of the historic sites, because there are a lot. Let’s show you some, without much context.

These, plus the large modern one, are the mosques we were able to account for. Plus, the historical buildings on top of the mountain from the Ottoman era.

But! We’re also trying to find a way up, remember? So we climb beyond the highest mosque we had pictured above seeing if there was some sort of entrance… but all we see is this:

You can clearly see that there is a pathway up… and we did see some people taking it… but you can also clearly see that there either is supposed to be or will soon be a fence there. Not knowing whether or not it would be okay to climb, we decided to play it safe and not go up. Unfortunate as As-Selea seems like it would be high enough to get a perfect view of Madinah. Instead, we have to just take pleasure in being at a good vantage point to look down over the Seven Mosques.

This vantage point also allows us to take a picture of what we told you about the other day when we first visited the area by bus, the medical facilities provided. 

We’re far enough away that no one will see us taking a picture and you won’t be able to recognize anyone. We’re not sure what is going on, but every time that we have passed by this stop there have been a lot of people waiting to enter. As we previously speculated… maybe it’s free medical care for anyone. If you know what’s going on, we’d love to know as well!

But, with that, our time at the Seven Mosques is done. We continue around the base of the mountain through new residential areas. We get the feeling that tourists/pilgrims don’t usually walk around these parts. We don’t notice anyone that doesn’t seem to belong… but no one pays any attention to us either. As we get closer to the Ring Road we start to notice the traffic getting busier again.

But we would just like to point something out in the above picture. It’s nothing more than a simple overpass… but the reason we point it out is because engineers took the time to add in a little detail to make this nicer than just concrete.

As you know, we’re not experts in architecture/construction, but we’ve always liked these little details to make the boring concrete and pavement of cities into nicer places to live and visit. And, as always, maybe that’s what will happen here once the construction or restoration is done?

You knew we couldn’t go long without showing a construction site in Saudi Arabia, especially when going around random neighbourhoods on foot, hehe.

But then we arrive at our final destination of the day, well… just in front of it.

This is the Anbariya Mosque. This mosque was built by the Ottomans in 1908 as part of a new development in the area. What development? The Hejaz Railway. And that’s our destination for today, Al Madina Museum and Al Hijaz Railway Museum.

You may recognize both this building and the mosque from one of our many bus tours. Although the bus said it was closed, we wanted to come check it out. And to our surprise, it’s 100% not closed, haha. Of course we go in, it’s very hard for my partner to just “skip” a museum, so in we go!

So, first up is Al Madinah Museum. This small museum is in what we assume used to be the train station here. It tells the history of Madinah and the surrounding area. So, let’s try to convey a bit of what we learned. The first exhibits begin with the earliest inhabitants of the area surrounding Madinah.

These objects/tools are dated back between 8,000 and 250,000 years! Incredible to think that people have been in this area of the world for that long when it is considered so inhospitable. At least, that’s what we used to think of when we thought of Saudi Arabia and the gigantic Arabic Desert. But these people were able to survive by living close to oases or living nomadically. (We learned about that in Jeddah, remember?). This was made a little easier by Madinah being a natural oasis allowing many animals and plants to naturally live in the area as evidenced by rock art in the region. This also means that the land is fertile, and to this day Madinah is known for their dates, narcissus, jasmine, basil, lilies, violets, roses, mint, and other fragrant plants. Some of these were on display within the museum.

This reminds us of when we were on the tour bus as they explained that many of these plants are produced locally in Madinah and they make great gifts for pilgrims to take home to their loved ones. But, the people from the region close to Madinah would soon become one of the “most well known” civilizations in the world.  

We say “well known” in quotation marks because you may know the civilizations we’re talking about without actually knowing it. The first mention of a “civilization” begins in the Leheanite/Lihyanite and Nabatean eras (the Nabateans are the civilization you may know of, as they’re associated with the historic site of Petra, in Jordan). Most of the objects above are from either the 2nd century BCE, 1st century BCE, or 1st century CE. These civilizations lived in the region from the 7th century BCE until the 2nd century CE. During this time they generally lived about 350 km north of Madinah and connected the trade centres of Syria and Iraq with those of central and southern Arabia. In Saudi Arabia (and much of the Middle East) this period of time is known as the pre-Islamic era.

If you have a pre-Islamic era, you must also have an Islamic era, and that begins here, with the Hijrah to al-Madinah al-Munawwarah.

As we have explained a little bit, this is the migration that the Prophet took from Makkah to Madinah. The sign explains the 21 locations that the Prophet visited over his 13 to 15 days of the journey of the Hijrah. They also talk about how the Prophet built the Quba Mosque that we visited and how his camel knelt at the location that would later become the Prophet’s Mosque.

And these are the earliest artefacts that the museum had of the Islamic era. The coins all date back to the time of the Prophet while the inscriptions praising both Allah and the Prophet date back to the 8th century CE. And what have we always said that every museum must have in this region? Of course we saw a beautiful Quran from the 18th century.

But there were also a lot of other things to see in the main area of the museum.

The first picture should be pretty obvious if you’ve been following our trip so far with its astrolabe, calendar, and triangle for calculating time. The weapons come from different rulers of Saudi Arabia. The ceramics are displaying the work that has been done in Madinah for centuries. And finally the clothing is worn after the wedding or on the seventh day following child birth (left) or worn on the second morning of the wedding (right). Pretty interesting. And, of course, we didn’t take pictures of absolutely everything. But, we did take pictures to highlight something you may have noticed in the picture that shows part of the museum’s ground floor, the windows.

But with that, we’re done Al Madinah Museum. We exit through the back and start making our way to Al Hijaz Railway Museum. You immediately see the train tracks between both museums from the back, as well as Al Madinah Museum and the Anbariya Mosque. In between both museums in a little park where there are quite a few people just sitting around and enjoying themselves. There are little places that you can go and learn about different forms of art from Madinah (closed when we were there, unfortunately), washrooms, and places to buy some food. But, as it was getting a little late, we went straight for our second museum. Of course, stopping to take a few pictures.

But then it was time to enter.

This was actually taken after leaving the museum, which is why it looks all closed up, but you entered from behind the train car! Inside the museum there were a bunch of signs explaining the history of Al Hijaz Railway, and of course many more trains.

Trains started arriving in Madinah in August, 1908 to much fanfare, but the “actual” opening had to wait until December to coincide with the ascension of the Sultan to the throne (which means this was completed under Ottoman rule). BUT! Trains would not last long in Madinah…

The railway that linked Madinah to Amman, Jordan would be severely attacked during the First World War with most of the bridges, equipment, and stations being ruined by a certain British colonel, T. E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia), playing a major role in this. Following the end of the First World War the Saudi government tried to restore this railroad, but the colonial powers of Britain and France (who governed over parts of the route like Syria, Transjordan, and Palestine) rejected the request. All hope was lost once the Second World War started. Of course, the Saudis tried to resurrect the railroad following the end of the Second World War but “the occupation of Palestine in 1948 and the catastrophe of 1967 had negative impacts on efforts in this area”. And so, Al Hijaz Railway remains fragmented until this day. As you may remember… Madinah had to wait until 2021 to be reconnected to the outside world by train when the first Haramain High Speed train arrived in Madinah.

Well… with that we’re done both museums! We slowly walk back to the entrance making sure to take more pictures of the train tracks, the park with everyone enjoying themselves, and Al Madinah Museum from the front.

And from here you have a nice view towards the Prophet’s Mosque. Good thing my partner brought his actual camera to capture the view.

And of course that means that we’re headed to the Prophet’s Mosque! And let us tell you… it. is. packed! Wow, wow, wow. We had seen a lot of people, but not like this yet!

And then, of course, we go to take a better look as always. My travel partner is quite predictable, hehe.

And then it’s time to start heading back towards the hotel. We start walking around the Prophet’s Mosque… and then we see it. It’s not just our own made up idea. There really are way more people here today. How can we tell? These prayer mats had been set up outside of the main area of the Mosque, something we hadn’t noticed other days.

But, it’s not the entire area just yet.

But, that’s not necessarily because there weren’t prayer mats at some point. The workers are just quickly removing them all!

And, this is also the perfect time to tell you what day it is. It’s Thursday. Why do we tell you this? Because that means that tomorrow is Friday, and the weekend. Why is this important? Because this means that a lot of people are coming to Madinah to do their Friday prayers and be in Madinah for the weekend. We know this because we wanted to extend our stay in Madinah by an extra night to witness a Friday in Madinah… but the hotels were all sold out unless you wanted to pay an extreme amount of money. For context, my partner paid around $450 for the four nights we will be here… an extra night? Well, that’s an extra $400… BIG difference. And that’s the cheapest room, most hotels don’t have rooms at all. So, again, we tell you all of this just to highlight just how many people we saw leaving the Prophet’s Mosque just now.

But, we’re not done yet. We continue walking around and, knowing that it’s our last night here, do a little bit of shopping. We get a few little souvenirs, but our main goal is to get dates and miswak. Now, we predict that you are wondering why we specifically mention dates and what exactly is miswak. Well, first thing first.

While in Madinah everyone (museums, exhibitions, and the bus tour) has been telling us how good the dates of Madinah are. They’re supposed to be the sweetest and most delicious around. So, that piqued our interest. But, what sealed the deal was learning that the Prophet said that “He who eats seven ‘Ajwa dates every morning, will not be affected by poison or magic on the day he eats them” (Ajwa dates are a cultivar of dates local to Madinah). We were also told this on multiple occasions, so, we just had to buy some.

And now the harder thing to explain… miswak. So, we will first explain how we realized this… Walking around in Jeddah and Madinah we saw many people walking around with sticks in their front pockets. Just little sticks. We had no idea what that was about, but it’s something we both noticed. And then… some people had these sticks in their mouths! We really had no idea what was going on. But whatever, we didn’t think much more of it until we got to Madinah. Here it was more common than in Jeddah, but we also saw many people selling these sticks. So, of course, we approached a vendor and asked him what was going on. He explained that it is a way of cleaning your teeth and getting fresh breath. Of course, we had to try it. We bought some “sticks” and he explained it to us.

So, as you can see we have three “sticks” with one slightly shaved down. That’s because that is the one my partner will use. You shave the bark off of the outside then chew on the uncovered part until it separates into its component fibres like so:

Then you can use this as a toothbrush by rubbing your teeth perpendicularly. Very interesting. So, of course, my partner tried it. And once those fibres are worn out or dried out you cut them off and shave off the next part of the “stick” and start again. You could choose from different widths and lengths. We both loved it! If only I had teeth of my own to try it out I could give you a more detailed review! But, I can give you a more detailed description from our online research. Miswak is made from the roots, sticks, and stems of Salvadora persica, a tree that is commonly known as the “toothbrush tree” for obvious reasons. It is said to be good at controlling the formation and activity of dental plaque. And the bristles obviously help when you’re walking around in the street without your usual toothbrush. A very interesting thing that we had never heard about before coming to Jeddah/Madinah!

But, with that it’s time to stop shopping and start going back to the hotel. We finish circling the Prophet’s Mosque and take another picture. We hope you’re not getting tired of seeing this mosque’s beauty.

And then we leave just as everyone is exiting the mosque. Another flood of people as you can see from the two pictures below. So cool to see!

Then we get food and head back to our hotel. Now, at the hotel we ask the front desk about something we saw earlier in the day that we didn’t tell you about because we didn’t think it fair to keep you in suspense all day. Going back to the veeeeery start of the day (before my partner walked over 20 km) as we were walking to the Uhud Battlefield we saw a loooooot of police cars driving around and cutting off traffic everywhere. They would just park in the intersections and make sure that no car could pass. We weren’t sure what was going on. But, soon enough, we saw a convoy driving by with a police escort. As soon as they passed the police cars left and everything went back to normal. We were left wondering all day what we may have just witnessed. We had heard that there was a foreign diplomat that had visited Makkah a few days ago, could it be that? We believe we had heard he was from Pakistan… but we could be wrong. So, as soon as we arrived to the hotel we asked if they knew what it was all about. They just kind of brushed it off as something that happens regularly in Madinah. Their explanation? Most likely a member of the royal family visiting Madinah. Cool!

With that interesting possibility, good night from Madinah!