A philanthropist once asked one of the watch factories in Karbala to make two giant clocks for the holy shrine of Imam Hussein "peace be upon him", where the first one to be labeled in the name of Al-Hussein and the second to be in the name of his son Ali Al-Akbar.
The factory board suggested to make one clock instead of two, as the new clock will be knocking twice at the same time, so he approved the suggestion and completed his project in the late thirteenth Hijri century.
The new clock was installed on the southern side of the holy shrine near "Al-Qibla" gate, as this clock kept working flawlessly until 1959 AD, to be removed then replaced with a new one in the northern side of the holy shrine. The new clock was purchased and installed by the holy shrine's reconstruction committee, from Muhammad Amin Al-Hadi shop in Baghdad, who in turn imported it from Germany.
The new clock cost an amount of 600 Iraqi dinars, to be cladded later with gold by the aforementioned committee with an estimate cost of 2000 Iraqi dinars, as it was the only one of its kind in Karbala. After that, it went through a series of modifications until 1965, when its mechanism had been changed into an electricity-based function instead of its old key-based one.
Source: [Mashhad Al-Hussein wa Beutat Karbala, by Sheikh Majeed Al-Har, Vol. 4, p. 80].
