Mecca: Untold story of the biggest clock ever built

The Ka’aba is a special place for Muslims. Our reporter who was part of a Nigerian delegation on umrah (lesser hajj) as guests of the King of Saudi Arabia last month, brings this report on Mecca’s magnificent royal clock, the biggest clock in history. The Muslims face the direction of the ka’aba in their daily […]

The Ka’aba is a special place for Muslims. Our reporter who was part of a Nigerian delegation on umrah (lesser hajj) as guests of the King of Saudi Arabia last month, brings this report on Mecca’s magnificent royal clock, the biggest clock in history.

The Muslims face the direction of the ka’aba in their daily prayers, at least five times each day. The practice began 17 months after the prophet emigrated to Madina from Mecca in 622 C.E. For 13 years, the prophet and the Muslims faced Jerusalem during prayers, until a divine order came as contained in the Quran for the change in direction to Ka’aba in Mecca.

At the heart of Mecca, adjacent to the Grand Mosque housing the Ka’aba, is a towering building measuring more than 600 meters in height. At its top is a clock. It is not an ordinary clock. It is the biggest clock ever made. 
It is called the Makkah Royal Clock Tower, developed as part of the King Abdulaziz Endowment Project.   

Sandwiched between  other high rising buildings. Photo credit: dar.dargroup.com

I was part of a 50-man delegation from Nigeria to Saudi Arabia for Umrah (lesser hajj) and visited under the auspices of the Custodian of the two holy mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. 
A total of 250 visitors from 10 African countries including Mali, Niger, Ghana, Tanzania, Madagascar and Uganda among others, were part of the programme. 
When we were told that we would visit the Makkah Clock Tower the next day, I was pleasantly surprised because it had not been listed in our programme. 

Few feet below the clock, we managed to have this photo at the corridor courtsey of a wide angle lens. Credit: Umrah media committee

Each time we took a walk to the grand mosque in Ka’aba for our daily prayers, my gaze  often fell on this extremely tall building sandwiched between four to six other buildings. It has a huge clock at its top. I was glad it is opened for tourists to visit. 
It turned out to be an awesome and unquantifiable bonus to our trip, as I came to realize that calling the facility a clock tower was an understatement. It is indeed a space observatory center.

The curators of the facility disallowed us from taking photographs. So, I depended on my journalistic training on note taking and mental pictures to reproduce my experience. 

Muhammad Sa’id was our guide, an ebullient and eloquent Arab from Egypt. He spoke in impeccable English.
The visit was fun filled even from the start to the finish. 
The observatory center is impeccably perched atop the Fairmont Hotel, South East of the grand mosque overlooking the Ka’aba like a guardian angel.  

View of the Ka’aba from the top of the tower. Credit: Umrah media committee

The first elevator that took us to some height in the hotel was  huge, with a carrying capacity of 36 people. 
At the next point, we were ushered into some smaller elevators in two groups, each manned by a staff. The ride up was on cruise mode, as though we were in a kind of space craft to explore the galaxies.  

We were ushered into a semi dark floor with different kinds of architecture on display, from simulated solar system and real space observatory on display on extra-large projection. 
We were shown equipment which rotates round the earth taking real time images and which feed the observatory center. 

“If you remember the photo image we saw at the beginning (of the tour), it has been enlarged here (pointing to a frame of large photograph). What you saw there that looked like a star isn’t a star. It is a galaxy,” Mr. Sa’id said. The said galaxies look like stars but in real terms, they number in billions and “individually bigger than the earth,” he said. 

“As you can see here, the earth is very small, like dust in the space compared to the galaxies.”
The second floor is dedicated to the solar system. Our Egyptian guide, Sa’id came handy again. He explained: “When the sun travels, the heat is about 20 million degrees centigrade. Its lowest temperature is 5, 000 degrees centigrade, and when it travels through the space to the earth, we have it as 32 degrees. The highest a human can accommodate or withstand is 50 degrees centigrade.”

The heat of the sun can burn the earth and what it contains, but God in His infinite mercy and knowledge has placed some magnetic fields around it which eliminates the heat coming from the sun. 
The monitoring of the lunar and solar eclipses as well as some other phenomena is done in real time at the royal clock tower. 
A very intriguing and interesting phenomenon of the solar system, the delegation heard, is that the tectonic plates of the earth move at a naturally predetermined speed and in the next one million years, scientists believe that the European continent would have moved and merged with Africa. The conclusion was reached from research and observations.  

Also on exhibition at the observatory are different kinds of instruments that had been developed over time, most of them by Muslim astronomers to calculate time and determine the calendar. These include  the shadow clock, water clock, oil clock and sand clock. Some notable early Muslim scientists and astronomers include Abu Nasr Al-Farabi, Al-Battani and Shams ad-Din Ibn Battuta. 
The global positioning system, satellite and observation by different telescopes, help to give the clock the best that you can find anywhere.  

Every 28 of May and 16 of July, at 12 noon, the sun’s  rays are  perpendicular to the Ka’aba which is north of the clock tower. In effect, the shadow of any object from the sun will be zero. By these times of the year, you can find the direction of the Ka’aba from anywhere in the world by the opposite shadow, he says. “It’s very natural and accurate as the opposite shadow becomes the direction of Ka’aba.” 

The clock is duplicated in four; one to the north side, one to the south side and others to the east and west. 
All four clock drives are connected and synchronized to one control system, which is the brain. It gives the signal and calculates the time.  

One of its unique features which you won’t find anywhere is that its timing framework is divided into six; hours, minutes, seconds, mili, micro and nano. This makes the Mecca clock the most accurate clock in the universe. The curators are still considering adding another two options in the future. What would they be called? Even they don’t know yet-they are still undecided.

The micro and nano figures of the digital configuration of the clock are running a speed you can’t possibly see as the figures run atop one another.
The only way to know what the nano time is at a point, is to press a button at a designated machine nearby and print. Your unique time is printed. No one else in the world can ever share that with you. 

Burji Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirate is the tallest building in the world at a height of 828 meters followed by the Mecca tower which is 607 meters. The Mecca clock tower keeps its record of the tallest occupied building in the world. 
“Muhammed Sa’id explains thus: “Here, you can access up to the crescent (the highest point of the tower) up to 601 meters. At Burji Khalifa, you can only access up to 584 meters from the ground. 

Just below the clock, this photo was taken at angle of 45 degree . Credit: Umrah media committee

The clock which is duplicated in four sides are 43 by 43 meters each visible in the entire city of Mecca.
The clock hands each weigh eight tons and are made of copper fibers. 
The minute hands are 23 meters long, while the second hands are 17 meters. And because it is a special project, there are spare parts on standby. 

At night, the inscription on the face of the clocks ‘Allahu Akbar’ meaning God is Great is as visible as day light, courtesy of the 2 million Light Emitting Diodes (LED) with high intensity and low power consumption. There are also beacon lights used on special occasions like Ramadan. The green light comes on during every adhan (call to prayers) which allows even people with hearing impairment to recognize the time for prayers.  

The laser beams specially made for the tower travels up to 40 kilometers straight into the atmosphere.
“That is beyond the end of the atmosphere itself. From everywhere you are traveling by airplane, you will find the direction of the Ka’aba,” Said explained. They will notice it because the light is there like a line. 
A 24-hours maintenance crew is on standby just as you have security personnel standing guard at every turn. They only nod to acknowledge visitors’ salutations.  
We were led to a veranda just  a few feet below the exact position of the clock overlooking the Ka’aba. You had to look up in the sky at 45 degrees to see the clock. We managed to take a few photographs there.

I couldn’t believe I was that high up in the atmosphere, not in a plane but on a physical  surface. It was a dizzying feeling.   
The clock is adorned with 93 million pieces  of mosaic, 32 million are from gold.
Some 12,000 tons of steel were used to build the tower, beside the lower structure which is a hotel, accommodating pilgrims and super markets.  
“It was a very challenging project for the engineering team to bring in the construction materials,” Said concluded. “It goes without saying,” I sighed. 

The tour took about 30 minutes as we returned to ground zero using the same space-like elevators.   
The Mecca clock tower was built in a space of seven years. For each working day, the contractor ran three shifts of workers round the clock. Each shift had 25, 000 workers making a total of 75, 000 workers working for seven years to complete the project. 
Our guide declined to mention the cost of the project, saying “the project is still ongoing.” So, a final project cost couldn’t possibly be placed on it yet. Whatever the cost is, my conclusion is that it is well deserved. 

The trip to Mecca was sponsored by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.