Wednesday, 22 January 2025
Today we visited a few attractions around Makkah city. The first visit in the morning was to the Al Amoudi Museum.
The Al Amoudi Museum offers a view into the local Arabian life around early 20th century (early 1900s). To put it simply, it’s about how they lived before their lives were transformed by oil wealth. Despite being part of the Ottoman empire at the time (Makkah was under Ottoman rule from 1517CE to 1918CE), the people in Makkah were very poor (compared to other Islamic states at the time).
I was fascinated to see photos from Makkah from 1951CE. Even back then, there were still a lot of buildings very close to the Kaabah.
I was also amazed to see the Saie scene from 1951 where there were still buildings between Safa and Marwah (photo above).
We then visited the Hudaibiyah mosque, where the Treaty of Hudaibiyah was struck in 642CE between the muslims and the Quraysh. Today it is also a miqat point for pilgrims performing umrah.
We arrived back at the hotel in time to attend zuhur prayers at Al-Haram. We went to the mosque early, around 40 minutes before azan, to ensure we had good seats.
After prayers, we went to Makkah Tower and had lunch at Cafe Moment. The cafe has a nice view facing the main entrance of Al-Haram.
After lunch, our mutawwif took us for sightseeing around Al-Haram. He pointed out areas in the mosque (indicated by the gates entering Al-Haram) that used to be houses or streets during prophet’s time and early Muslims. Now there is nothing left as Al-Haram has levelled all the old houses (refer to photo above) to make way for the expansion of the mosque.
We also saw the prophet’s birth house from far. The original house has been demolished and a library was built on top of it. The Saudi government did this to avoid pilgrims performing false worship on the site.
We did some shopping at Makkah Tower before going to Al-Haram for maghrib prayers. As shown in the map above, our hotel (InterContinental) is walking distance to Makkah Towers, Clock Tower and Safwah Tower.
For maghrib prayers, I went to the roof of Al-Haram. There were a lot of people and unfortunately the view of the Kaaba was blocked by construction.
After prayers, I went to the Clock Tower Mall. It’s the newest mall nearest to the mosque. There is another Makkah museum inside the mall which I didn’t get the chance to visit due to large crowds.
We then headed to Safwah Tower, located next to the Clock Tower Mall (refer to map above). Safwah tower is older but packed with smaller shops. It has a well known restaurant called D’Saji (owned by FELDA) that serve excellent Malaysian food.
Imran Jaafar 