To trail the footsteps of the Prophets.. (8)

(cont’d)

We continued our journey to a market which was covered with grape’s trees on top of it. We just looked around and had a walk in it before we went to break our hunger- Nasi Mandi for lunch. Yummy! The rice looked somewhat similar to Briyani except that we’re given milk to eat with the rice.

After lunch we took off to a mosque which has a shrine of Bilal bin Rabah at the rear of it. We couldn’t really see the shrine because it was placed in a small house and can’t be entered. Anyway an interesting story told by ustaz; it was something like, (correct me if I’m wrong) during Bilal’s time, there was this one man volunteering to recite the athan to replace Bilal (Bilal’s voice wasn’t that lovely). The guy has got an exquisite voice and he’s aware of that. Then Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. allowed him to do so, for the Subuh prayer if I’m not mistaken. After that came Jibril a.s. asking Prophet Muhammad s.a.w., why didn’t any of you recite the athan this morning? This was because Bilal’s athan can reach the sky (can be heard by Jibril a.s.) but the guy’s was not. Clearly this depicts that Bilal has his own specialty in reciting athan.

The next journey brought us to climb Jabal Qasyun to experience the beauty of Damascus city from there. The scenery was amazing, and unbelievable too. Unbelievable because I never yearned or thought of going to Syria when I was a kid. I also wasn’t really aware that Syria actually has lots of histories and shrines of the Prophets as well as the shrine of the great people to discover.

That night we visited a number of shrines and mosques of Syria starting with Abu Dardak shrine when the sun was about to set. Just to share something, I once listened to a talk concerning friendship and the ustaz gave an example of a person who really cares about his friend, the person is Abu Dardak. When he prays, he would pray for his friends’ good where he would mention 70 names of his friends. He would state every 70 names without fail.

After Abu Dardak’s shrine, we then went to pay our visit to Salahuddin’s shrine but unfortunately it was closed for Maghrib prayer. There were plenty of mosques in that area, not far from each other. We walked in the market itself to reach the next mosque namely Ruqaiyah Mosque which was a Syiah (Shia) mosque. From my observations, a prominent difference between Syiah mosque and Sunni mosque is that Syiah mosque is definitely more colourful and has these massive decorations that depict some kind of lavishness, whether it was on the shrine or on the mosque itself, in comparison with a Sunni mosque. The Syiah ladies were wearing all black, so inside the mosque the atmosphere was pretty much murky and gloomy. The mosque was also intensely congested with people, until we have to hold our friends’ hands to ensure that we don’t get lost in the traffic. Many of them were surrounding Ruqaiyah’s shrine, mourning and wiping it with a piece of cloth. On top of the shrine itself I saw a plenty of dolls and clothes flung onto it, for a reason which I don’t know. Anyway, who’s Ruqaiyah actually? She was the daughter of Hussein who was the son of Ali and Fatimah who was the daughter of Prophet Muhammad saw.

For our final destination that night, we visited Umawi Mosque where the shrine (maqam) of Prophet John (Yahya) was found. It was also the place where Sayidina Hussein’s head was believed to be placed. If you notice, in the previous post I’ve mentioned a place which also was believed to have Sayidina Hussein’s head, which is Sayidina Hussein Mosque in Egypt. So Ustaz Joe explained that a ‘maqam’ doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a place where someone’s body or part of the body is buried, but instead it can also be a location where a person used to sit or something like that. The Umawi Mosque also has a few minarets, one of them is the place where Salahuddin Al-Ayyubi used to give khutbah, and two white minarets which one of them might be the minaret where Prophet Jesus (Isa) will come down.