Manasik 1.3 — The Lost History
“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree. ”
― Michael Crichton
One of the most unfortunate thing to have inflict the Muslim ummah of the 20th century was the destruction of history in the two holiest lands in Islam. For 1400 years many of the shrines and historical sites were meticulously preserved and visited by millions if not billions of pilgrims from all walks of life from the four corners of the world. Unfortunately due to various reasons, some are religious and some commerical, many, if not all, of those sites have been demolished. The future generations will not know the birth place of Prophet Muhammad, the house where his children grew up in, the site of the first Islamic propagation and training centre, the tombs of famous companions of the Messenger and luminaries in the Islamic history, many other important historical sites.
Some may argue that the demolition of those sites is a necessity to accommodate the growing numbers of pilgrims. Others argue that expansion could be done more carefully without completely obliterating history. But whichever side you are on, we have to agree that important historical sites have been wiped out. The fear is that Prophet Muhammad will soon be like other founders of the great religions of the world — removed to being a mythical figure whose existence is argued by historians. Of all the founders of the worlds’ great religions’ Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, only Islam’s founder (I am using the term founder here very loosely), Prophet Muhammad is the only that can be proven to exist withouth a shroud of doubt.
What Can We Do?
It is easy to fall into despair since there appear to be nothing much that can be done. The destruction has happened. In most cases, those locations they only exist in the memories of the elders. And herein lies the opportunity.
At TwentyEight we build apps. And we think we could lend our hand in the preservations of this history through apps. In Manasik 1.3, codenamed ‘Taibah’, we are introducing a new feature in Ziarah – Audio Tour. If in 1.2, codename ‘Riyadh’, we introduced our umrah guide, Ahmed, in Taibah we are featuring Muadz, our history guide.
We begin with the one location where most of its history is preserved, but not known to many — Masjid an-Nabawi. The Masjid of the Prophet is full of historical clues worthy of a movie not unlike National Treasure. Follow Muadz around the masjid and discover the meaning of each clue that has been preserved despite the vast expansions in the past millennia. You’ll be pointed to the most blessed spot to pray in the masjid, the spot where a dead palm tree cried, Rasulullah’s favourite spot to nap while iktikaf and many more important spots in this area.
With the 45 minute tour, you will connect with this blessed Masjid like never before and travel back in time to the days where Rasulullah and his companions lived.
What Next?
We will continue to add more tour to Manasik. We are currently working on a tour around Makkah entitled ‘The Birth of Islam’. Muadz will take you for a walk around Makkah to visit the important sites in the early days of Islam. Don’t be surprise that he might take you to an ATM machine and tell you that some great event happened on that very spot. That is the nature of Makkah today. All historical sites have been taken down. But we want to preserve those spots and its beautiful history in an app so that this knowledge can be passed down to the future generation.
In the mean time you can get hold of Manasik from which is available on iOS and Android.
If you want to see more of what is happening in Makkah, watch this discussion on al-Jazeera (it is 30 minutes but really worth your time).
