مسجد محمد بن عمر الزبيدي (الجامع)

In the ancient and luminous city of Tarim, often described by poets as the spiritual capital of the Hadramawt and indeed of the entire wider Arabian south, the jami mosque of Muhammad bin Umar al Zubaydi offers its worshippers a place of profound quiet within one of the most revered religious landscapes on earth. The Hadramawt valley stretches like a great green ribbon through the arid plateaux of eastern Yemen, its tall mud brick houses rising seven or eight stories along the streets of Shibam and Tarim, its date palm gardens watered by ancient wells, and its skyline punctuated by the slender minarets of countless mosques built by scholarly families of the valley.

Tarim is remembered across the Muslim world as a city of scholars, saints, and poets. Its people speak with gentle courtesy, its households have for centuries produced teachers of hadith and jurisprudence, and its cemeteries hold the graves of more than one hundred descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him and his family, whose tombs are visited by pilgrims from every land. The Hadhrami diaspora has carried the devotional culture of Tarim across the Indian Ocean to the coasts of east Africa, the Malabar shore of India, Sumatra, Java, and the eastern islands of the Indonesian archipelago during centuries of learning.

The masjid of Muhammad bin Umar al Zubaydi, whose family honorific recalls the Zubayd tribal confederation and whose name reflects the scholarly lineage of the Hadramawt, follows the unmistakable regional style. Tall walls of sun dried mud brick coated in pale plaster rise above a shaded courtyard, a slender square minaret carries the call to prayer across the date gardens, and the prayer hall is supported on carved wooden columns brought in antiquity from the forests of the Deccan or east Africa. Evening classes gather students for the study of hadith, tafsir, and the beautiful tradition of sung poetry in praise of the Prophet.

Accurate daily prayer times for Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, and Isha at the Tarim jami appear on this page, along with its address, a helpful location map, and notes that assist residents of the Hadramawt governorate, students at the famed Dar al Mustafa institute, pilgrims visiting the tombs of the Tarim saints, scholars researching the Hadhrami diaspora, and travellers following the old caravan routes between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to share in the serene and luminous congregational worship offered within these old and sacred walls.