Modern studies have shown that in the early mosques, astronomical alignments were used for qibla. Astronomical phenomenon such as sunrise or sunset during equinoxes, solstices, Pole star, Canopus, etc. were used to direct the mosques towards qibla.
That looks distinctly pagan to me.Garudaman wrote:& the answer is a bit long too : http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Histor ... qibla.htmlModern studies have shown that in the early mosques, astronomical alignments were used for qibla. Astronomical phenomenon such as sunrise or sunset during equinoxes, solstices, Pole star, Canopus, etc. were used to direct the mosques towards qibla.
Yes. if we consider we are in the zone of la la land of mirage. The very reason that, all those stories of 1000 night Arabian nights had originated from that part of the world.Fernando wrote:That looks distinctly pagan to me.Garudaman wrote:& the answer is a bit long too : http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Histor ... qibla.htmlModern studies have shown that in the early mosques, astronomical alignments were used for qibla. Astronomical phenomenon such as sunrise or sunset during equinoxes, solstices, Pole star, Canopus, etc. were used to direct the mosques towards qibla.
manfred wrote:So, are you saying they got it wrong the first few times? Isn't it odd that that the mistakes consistently point to some place close to Petra and not, as you would expect, have random variations? Our user "the Cat" has written extensively on this issue... have a look.
not odd at all, as they all (petra, kaaba, astronomical object) are close each other http://www.muslimheritage.com/article/f ... k-to-makka
Approximate distance as the crow flies in miles from Petra Jordan to Mecca Saudi Arabia is 669 miles or 1076.42 Kilometers
manfred wrote:So, are you saying they got it wrong the first few times? Isn't it odd that that the mistakes consistently point to some place close to Petra and not, as you would expect, have random variations? Our user "the Cat" has written extensively on this issue... have a look.
Islamic awareness wrote:It was claimed by Crone, Cook and Smith that the early mosques pointed towards an unnamed sanctuary in northern Arabia or even close vicinity of Jerusalem. However, a closer analysis using the modern tools available to us show that the qiblas of early mosques were oriented towards astronomical alignments; winter sunrise of mosque in Egypt and winter sunsets for mosques in Iraq. It was shown conclusively that the early mosques do not point at northern Arabia or even close vicinity of Jerusalem. We also added the study of 12 early mosques in Negev highlands to support our conclusions.
In the early centuries of Islam, Muslim did not have tools to determine the qibla with precision. Only from third century onwards mathematical solutions for determining qibla were available; even then their use was not widespread. The folk astronomy retained its strength as suggested by various mosques in Cairo, Cordova and Samarqand. This gave rise to various directions of qibla, sometimes way off from the true direction.
Folk astronomy? That would be a pagan matter, carried forward into Islam, rather than amateurish geography.skynightblaze wrote:Islamic awareness wrote:The folk astronomy retained its strength as suggested by various mosques in Cairo, Cordova and Samarqand. This gave rise to various directions of qibla, sometimes way off from the true direction.
manfred wrote:Hi SNB, good to hear from you. OK, we have 7th century sources telling us that early Muslims prayed toward the KAABA. But does it say it is the particular one in Mecca? We know that at that time there were many such sanctuaries.
manfred wrote:And you are right, the orientations of those early mosques are not PERFECTLY pointing a Petra, you would not expect them to, as people were not yet very good at determining the qibla. But the early ones from Egypt all consistently point towards the Levant, and not Arabia. There is an a good 60 degree difference, if taken from Egypt, far too big to be a chance error, specially if repeated several times. And while people were not perfect in getting the qibla right in early Islam, errors of that size would be very strange.
One could perhaps explain the Egyptian misalignments by suggesting that one builder copied another, including the mistakes. That is a possibility.
Islamic Awareness']
As one can see that maximum deviation from the actual qibla is about 29° for a mosque which has its qibla pointing due south. Rest are deviated between 5 to 19° from the actual qibla. The question now is: what was the method used to align these open mosques in the Negev highlands to such a high degree of accuracy? [/quote]
So we have 12 mosques pointing towards Mecca and a significant number of mosques in Egypt pointing towards Levant. Certainly both of them cannot be correct inspite of each of places (egypt and negev) having numbers on their side. This means that numbers game does not prove anything .
One more point- In statistics, we draw a conclusion say A when the sample size is say 300. However when we take the sample size as say 3000, the conclusions may change drastically. I see a similar case because mosques from all the places in middle east are not considered to derive a conclusion. I think the possibility that you mentioned could be right i.e one builder got the qibla wrong and others copied him. This is understandable as there was no technology available to determine qiblas.
[quote="manfred wrote:However, if we assume that Mecca really was the origin of Islam, how would you handle the issue of the story of Abraham and the Kaaba and its problems, one of which at least, the age of the settlement in Mecca, would have been known to people living there? Perhaps they assumed Abraham only lived quite recently?
manfred wrote:The is also the curiosity that "Mecca", like Jerusalem, escapes a mention in the Qur'an. All we have is a place called "Bakka" which is suggested to be Mecca, but that is simply an interpretation. Another interpretation is that the word refers to the "valley of the Baka tree" mentioned in the Psalms, but that is a location close to Jerusalem, and certainly not Mecca in Arabia.
manfred wrote:Perhaps we need to be a little careful and not automatically assume when we hear "Kaaba" is ALWAYS means Mecca and its sanctuary there. We also need to careful tease apart what the sources say to us and how people have decided to interpret them.
And it is He Who has restrained their hands from you and your hands from them in the midst of Makka, after that He gave you the victory over them. And Allah sees well all that ye do.
"And He it is Who hath withheld men's hands from you, and hath withheld your hands from them, in the valley of Mecca, after He had made you victors over them. Allah is Seer of what ye do. These it was who disbelieved and debarred you from the Inviolable Place of Worship, and debarred the offering from reaching its goal. And if it had not been for believing men and believing women, whom ye know not - lest ye should tread them under foot and thus incur guilt for them unknowingly; that Allah might bring into His mercy whom He will - If (the believers and the disbelievers) had been clearly separated We verily had punished those of them who disbelieved with painful punishment."
manfred wrote:And it is He Who has restrained their hands from you and your hands from them in the midst of Makka, after that He gave you the victory over them. And Allah sees well all that ye do.
It is in the surah called "the conquest", and allegedly about the conquest of Mecca. It also mentions a sacred msoqus but does not say where it is as such. There is no description of the details of this conquest at all. In the whole surah you get just this one "in the belly of Mecca" comment. No mention of Meccans, Quraish, or anything like that. And Mecca at the time was hardly so big that it had a centre or a "belly" as such... The Kaaba, surrounded by a few houses without roofs.... Not exactly like some big city..... A strange comment....
manfred wrote:Some translators, aware of this odd phrase, suggested "valley" as a translation:"And He it is Who hath withheld men's hands from you, and hath withheld your hands from them, in the valley of Mecca, after He had made you victors over them. Allah is Seer of what ye do. These it was who disbelieved and debarred you from the Inviolable Place of Worship, and debarred the offering from reaching its goal. And if it had not been for believing men and believing women, whom ye know not - lest ye should tread them under foot and thus incur guilt for them unknowingly; that Allah might bring into His mercy whom He will - If (the believers and the disbelievers) had been clearly separated We verily had punished those of them who disbelieved with painful punishment."
Now, while this removes the suggestion of a vast city, it creates another problem: This passage falls short of identifying Mecca as the location of the sacred mosque. It only claims that while in the valley of Mecca there were certain unnamed men who tried to prevent the Muslims from reaching the sacred mosque. If anything, this implies that the mosque was not in Mecca, but that this "Mecca" valley was en route to the location of the mosque....
manfred wrote:Then we read about unbelievers and "desert Arabs"... "Desert Arabs" ? Perhaps I can ask you to think about this odd phrase for a second. First of all, as all Arabs are desert people, why "desert Arabs"? Then, the text is supposed to be "revealed" by an Arab and for Arabs. So why referring to the Arab people in a way as if you need to explain what they are to outsiders? If you live in India, you hardly speak of your neighbour next door as the "Indian who like curry and eats with his right hand" or something like that, if you are an Indian yourself. Any description of an Indian would only be used if you are either talking to other people or if some other people are describing you. In fact your would hardly refer to your neighbour even as an "Indian", he would be the man next door, or perhaps you mention his home town or similar...
This odd phrase makes it sound as if the unnamed conqueror the surah speaks of conquest a far distant place in desert and a people that need to be described somehow to the audience.... Not really what you would expect in a text written by an Arab for Arabs.
What do you make of that?
manfred wrote:I think this "Mecca" reference does not fit with the rest of the text, and is likely a late addition to the text, possibly in the Uthman recension when the modern version was compiled.
manfred wrote:Then we have the Muslim assertion that "Bacca" elsewhere the Qur'an is really "Mecca". So why suddenly "Mecca", if that was the name used at the time? There are supposed to be only a few years between "Bacca" and this "Mecca" reference. Isn't that odd? Why was it renamed, by whom and when?
We have answers to name changes to these Questions.... Bombay to Mumbai, Karl Marx Stadt to Chemnitz, Leningrad to St Petersburg, Augusta Treverorum to Trier , Lutetia to Paris ...
But why not for this one?
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