The story
Harar Mawlid in Harar
Harar, one of Africa's holiest Islamic cities and a UNESCO World Heritage site for its dense concentration of historic mosques, marks Mawlid, the Prophet Muhammad's birth, with mosque gatherings, recitations and communal meals reflecting the city's centuries-old Sufi and scholarly Islamic heritage within its compact walled old town.
Harar, renowned across the Muslim world as one of Africa's holiest cities for its density of mosques within a compact walled old town, marks Mawlid, the commemoration of the Prophet Muhammad's birth, with particular local weight given the city's centuries-old status as a centre of Islamic scholarship, once functioning as an independent walled city-state closed to non-Muslim outsiders until the late nineteenth century.