Wadi Al-Jinn (Genie Valley) Near Madinah – Does It Really Exists?

You may not have heard the word “Jinn” before. So first thing first, what is a Jinn exactly? The closest synonym which I found is “Genie”, a supernatural creature. Many of you won’t believe that they exist but these are well-known in Islamic scriptures. Jinns are mentioned in many places in Quran e.g. Allah says regarding prophet Suleiman (prophet Solomon) PBUH:

“And before Suleiman (Solomon) were marshalled his hosts of jinn and men and birds, and they were all kept in order and ranks.” (Quran 27:17)

Even there is a complete Surah in Quran, named Al-Jinn. So there is no doubt about that Jinns do exist though they are invisible to us. But are they really present in a valley near Madinah Munawarah (Second sacred place for Muslims after Makkah)?

People who live in Saudi Arabia might have heard about Wadi-e-Jinn or Wadi Al-Jinn (official name Wadi Al Baidah) around 30 km North-West of Madinah. I also came across some rumors about that valley. It was said that vehicles, neutral or engines switched off, automatically start moving towards Madinah and can reach up to a speed of 120 km/hr within couple of minutes. Some said water poured on ground, also flows uphill instead of downhill. That sounds amazing? isn’t it? 🙂 and all this is attributed to supernatural forces like Jinns.

So I decided to experience it myself. It was during one of my several visits to Madinah that I spared some time to visit Wadi Al Jinn. The location of this valley can be found at the bottom of this page.

We (me and my friend with our families) left Madinah early in the morning. As usual, I was following the track on my cell phone navigation. Madinah is famous for dates. In our way, we saw a number of date gardens at outskirts of the city. Approximate at midway to our destination, there was a small seasonal pond. Apart from coastal areas, natural water is scarce in Saudi Arabia. Even a small pond like this makes people delightful. Like others, we also stopped there for a while and took some snaps.

A natural seasonal pond at midway to Wadi Al Jinn.

After an hour drive, we reached Wadi Al Jinn. Its official name is Wadi Al Baidah. In Arabic, Baidah means egg. Since this valley is surrounded by hills on three sides and resembles with egg in shape, hence the name. However due to myths associated with this valley, it is also renowned as Wadi Al Jinn.

A view of Wadi Al Jinn. It’s a deserted sandy place with some bushes.

A hill surrounding the valley. How many painted flags can you spot in below photo? Did you find Pakistani flag?

The road ends at Wadi Al Jinn. In fact, there’s a round-about at the end of the road to go back to Madinah. That was the starting point of this venture.

Some locals use this valley as picnic spot. We had brought breakfast with us. We parked our cars off the road, chose a shadowy spot in valley under a relatively large tree and enjoyed the breakfast.

We were surprised to see an ice cream van in the vicinity, at such relatively remote location.

Finally, it was the time to begin the adventure. My wife and mother were a bit frightened because of Jinn related rumors about the area and I was also increasing their fear by uttering weird sounds :). Anyways, we sat in the car. I started the engine and released the hand-brakes while keeping the car in neutral. The car immediately started moving whereas, apparently, the road was leveled and straight. Almost within 90 seconds, we were cruising at 120 km/hr. After travelling couple of kilometers, I stopped the car to see if it starts moving again and yup, it accelerated. Steering the vehicle at 120 km/hr without pressing accelerator pedal was quite a unique experience. We were enjoying it a lot.

Although there was no sharp declination, the car was speeding at 120+ km/hr on its own (without engaging car’s transmission and pressing accelerator). On the contrary, in below photo, some inclination preceded by minor slope can be observed at the far end of the visible road. However is this minor slope enough to accelerate the vehicle from stationary to 120 km/hr in less than 2 minutes?

In below photo, guess, in which direction vehicles would be moving on their own, against the inertia, without pressing vehicle’s accelerator and without engaging the transmission?

The total track length where this phenomenon can be observed is around 14~15km. After coming back to my residence, I googled the subject to find out exactly what was going on. I was surprised to see that there are hundreds of similar sites across the globe. Some call it “Magnetic Hills” or “Gravity Hills”. This phenomenon is also attributed towards “Optical illusion”, where road is supposed to be actually in slope but due to its surroundings, it seems that road is either inclining or leveled and straight. I also found in one blog that there is much difference in earth elevation between starting and end point of this road (Wadi Al Jinn) but as per my experience, it’s not quite visible through naked eyes. Although occasionally, there were some local steep slopes but there were some sharp humps as well at some places. Personally, I would rule out that this phenomenon is due to some Jinns. They definitely don’t have that much spare time :). However, I couldn’t find any solid scientific research based reasoning for this phenomenon.

Location & Map

Coordinates of Wadi Al Jinn: 24.722740, 39.443998

Route from Masjid-e-Nabawi (Madinah) to Wadi Al Jinn.