Petra vs Mecca - Using Quran to Debunk Dan Gibson's Sacred City Argument

The Petra Fallacy: Early Mosques do face the Sacred Kaaba in Mecca

by David A KingPublished on: 15th September 2020
Dan Gibson, a Canadian amateur archaeologist, is the latest of a number of revisionist historians of early Islam who are desperate to show that Islam did not start in Mecca, and hence that early Islamic history was forged.

Gibson claims that early mosques face the MODERN direction of Petra rather than the MODERN direction of Mecca, and that this points to Petra as the cradle of Islam rather than Mecca. He does not realize that these early mosques could not face Mecca in the modern sense and that it is foolish to expect that they should. Nor could they face toward Petra in a modern sense. Anyway mosques do not face Mecca; they face the Kaaba. How does one face a distance edifice that one cannot see? The first generations of Muslims had their own way of doing this, which was fully in keeping with their knowledge of simple folk astronomy. The methods they used have been documented in scholarly literature. Gibson compares the HISTORICAL mosque orientations with MODERN directions of Petra and Mecca from these mosque locations. He does not realise that historical qibla directions cannot be the same as MODERN  qibla directions, except by coincidence. In fact, the earliest mosque orientations were not calculated at all, but relied on astronomical horizon phenomena, not least because the Kaaba itself is astronomically aligned. Astronomical alignments are found elsewhere in Arabia, particularly in monumental pre-Islamic Nabataean architecture. 

Having discovered to his satisfaction that the mosques were aligned to Petra rather than Mecca, Gibson was able to claim that these early mosques were deliberately laid out in the modern direction of Petra. This is, of course, ridiculous, but to 'prove' that he is correct Gibson is prepared to deliberately distort the history of science and claim that his Nabataean Muslims could determine the direction of Petra accurately from places between al-Andalus to China using sophisticated scientific methods. Now only in the 9th century could astronomers in Baghdad determine the qibla there using a mathematical formula. Reasonably accurate qibla directions for major centres based on modern geographical coordinates became available only in the 19th century.

In brief, the history of the ways in which Muslims have laid out their mosques over a thousand years ago is a very complicated subject. To understand it, we have numerous medieval Arabic treatises on the ways to find the qibla using non-mathematical means (sacred geography) and the ways to find the qibla using mathematical procedures (but with pre-modern geographical data). And we have medieval Arabic astronomical, historical and legal Arabic treatises detailing the different qiblas underlying mosques in Cordóba, Cairo and Samarqand. Gibson and a missionary group (in their numerous comedy videos) are happy to laugh at all this material because they do not understand any of it. This enables them to laugh at Muslims who they think have faced the wrong direction towards Mecca in their prayers for so many centuries. They even suggest that Muslims should start praying toward Petra again. In fact, the last laugh is on those who think that any Muslims of sound mind ever faced Petra in their prayers.

Figure 1. The Kaaba (literally “The Cube”) in an early photograph.” (Source)

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Note of the Editor: This short article is a collection of paragraphs extracted from the full paper that was originally published here by David A. King. The original paper contains explanations of various early mosque orientations, showing that they have nothing to do with Petra. Prof. King has added some remarks dated September 2020, at the end of this shorter version.

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Introduction

For over 1,400 years, Islamic civilization has taken the orientation of sacred space more seriously than any other civilization in human history. The sacred direction towards the sacred Kaaba in Mecca is called qibla in the languages of the Muslim commonwealth. The ways in which Muslims have determined the qibla over the centuries constitute a complicated story, but several facts are known:

• The Arabs before Islam had an intricate system of what we now call ‘folk astronomy’ based on what one can see in the heavens.
• The Kaaba has a rectangular base which is astronomically aligned; its major axis points toward the rising of Canopus, the brightest star in the southern sky, and its minor axis is defined by summer sunrise and winter sunset. Its four corners point roughly in the cardinal directions.
• The Muslims developed a sacred geography in which, over the centuries, various schemes were developed in which segments of the perimeter of the Kaaba corresponded to sectors of the world which had the same qibla, defined in terms of astronomical risings and settings. The first such schemes appear in Baghdad in the 9th century.
• By the early 9th century, the Muslims had accessed the geographical and mathematical knowledge of their predecessors, which meant that for the first time they could calculate the qibla using (medieval) geographical coordinates and mathematical procedures. (Of course, this would not mean that they could find the MODERN direction of Mecca.)
• From the 7th to the 9th century and also occasionally thereafter until the 19th century, Muslims used astronomical alignments to layout the qibla. From the 9th century to the present Muslims have also used mathematical methods to calculate the qibla.

Few people know anything about this these days. Indeed, most Muslims think that all mosques face Mecca. Yet if they would investigate just a few historical mosque orientations they would be surprised. For medieval mosques face the Kaaba rather than Mecca. There is a subtle, but highly significant difference. How can they ‘face’ a distant edifice that is not visible? How these mosques actually ‘face’ the Kaaba is something we moderns have to learn. And the matter of the qibla is not only about mosques: it is about every Muslim at home and abroad, in life and in death, who follows the prescriptions relating to the sacred direction of Islam.

* * * 

One of my concerns over the past 50 years has been to attempt to document – mainly for the first time – the ways in which Muslims over many centuries have used astronomy in the service of their religion:

• to regulate the lunar calendar through the sighting of the crescent;
• to organize the times of the five daily prayers; and
• to determine the qibla or sacred direction toward the Kaaba.

To do this I first read what my teachers Karl Schoy (1877-1925) and Ted Kennedy (1912-2010) had written about these subjects using medieval Arabic sources. Particularly important were Kennedy’s translations of and commentaries on the writings of al-Bīrūnī, the greatest scientist in early Islamic history, which dealt with the second and third of these topics.

I spent many years looking at thousands of medieval Arabic manuscripts and hundreds of scientific instruments in libraries and museums around the world. Since nobody had ever looked at most of these manuscripts for centuries, I inevitably found things that were new. Some of my results took some Muslim colleagues by surprise. Western colleagues are, I find, becoming less and less interested in anything to do with classical Islamic Studies. And that field is plagued by revisionists who think that no medieval Arabic texts are trustworthy and who eagerly rewrite a chapter of Islamic history relying instead on the ramblings of some early Christian bishop in Armenia (I exaggerate, but not much).

Some of my publications in the history of Islamic astronomy include studies of the following subjects:

• the astronomical alignments of the rectangular base of the Kaaba;
• the methods with which Muslims from the earliest period could have determine the qibla by simple folk astronomy;
• the notion of a sacred geography about the Kaaba, with sectors of the world having the same qibla defined by astronomical horizon phenomena;
  the methods by which the Muslim scientists could calculate the qibla for a given locality;
• the geographical tables showing longitudes and latitudes of hundreds of localities from al-Andalus to China together with their qiblas in degrees and minutes;
• the extraordinarily sophisticated mathematical tables displaying the qibla for any locality with which the user enters its (medieval) longitude and latitude in the table and reads the value of the (medieval) qibla;
• the remarkable cartographical grids produced by Muslim scientists enabling the user to reading off the (medieval) qibla on a circular scale and the distance to Mecca on a diametrical scale.
• the medieval Arabic texts discussing the palettes of accepted directions for the qibla and for mosque orientations in specific localities, which partly explains the wide range of mosque orientations in these places (notably Córdoba, Cairo and Samarqand).

Over the past few decades numerous colleagues have published papers on various mathematical procedures proposed by individual Muslim scholars for finding the qibla, and some of my colleagues and former graduate students have written on the procedures involving folk astronomy and astronomical alignments. The interested reader can survey what has been written on historical qibla-determinations in the bibliography appended to this paper.

We have left it to others to write on such controversial topics as the conflict regarding the qibla – is it south-east or north-east? – amongst Muslims in North America. Frequently over the years, other folks have introduced the factor that the Earth is not a sphere into the qibla discussion, which is not helpful.

In 1999 I published a book dealing with the way Muslims have determined the sacred direction over for some 1,400 years. This presented an overview of the earliest procedures of using astronomical alignments to face an astronomically-aligned Kaaba, with different means of calculating the qibla using geographical coordinates and trigonometric or geometric methods. But the book focusses on the mathematical tables that were devised giving the qibla as an angle in degrees and minutes to the local meridian for the whole Muslim world; the geographical tables giving for the principal localities in the Muslim world the qibla and distance to Mecca; and the cartographical Mecca-centred grids which enable the user to read off the qibla and distance to Mecca for any locality in the (classical and medieval) world.

None of these materials was known 50 years ago. And inevitably none of them are mentioned in uninformed popular accounts of the qibla such as one finds in Wikipedia. I never thought while preparing all my research that someday someone would come along and announce that all early mosques are oriented toward a location other than Mecca. No serious scholar, Muslim or non-Muslim, would ever have thought that mosques might have been deliberately oriented toward somewhere other than Mecca. If they had, they would rightly be considered to be deranged.

Figure 2.  The orientation of the Kaaba mentioned in medieval texts and confirmed by satellite images, taking into consideration the surrounding skyline. Canopus (Suhayl) is the brightest star in the southern sky. The direction of the rising of Canopus is conveniently perpendicular to the axis between summer sunrise and winter sunset for the latitude of Mecca. In pre-Islamic folklore the walls of the Kaaba were associated with the four ‘cardinal’ winds. Note that if one standing in front of the SW wall one is facing (istaqbala) the qabūl wind, also called ṣabā’; in this position one is facing summer sunrise with (formerly) fortunate Yemen (al-Yaman) on the right and ominous Syria (al-sha’m) on the left. Some revisionists have claimed that the orientation of the Kaaba (with al-ḥijr!) may have been altered on one of the several occasions when the edifice was rebuilt after destructive floods. Revisionists have to be very innovative when confronted with an edifice that is as ancient as the Kaaba.  Not to scale. (Source)

Revisionist fascination with N. W. Arabia

Some 50 years ago some over-enthusiastic London-based Arabists – John Wansbrough and his students Michael Cook & Patricia Crone – came up with the idea that Islam began not in Mecca but somewhere unspecified in N. W. Arabia. This was a curious idea, not least because there were no obvious potential sites. One of the principal and most convincing arguments for their bold assertion was the ‘fact’ that the earliest mosques in Egypt and Iraq do not face Mecca, but rather some locality in N. W. Arabia. Some 25 years ago I pointed out to Michael Cook the folly of this assertion, explaining that the earliest mosque in Egypt faces winter sunrise and the earliest mosque in Iraq faces winter sunset; so, of course, these mosques do not face (the MODERN direction of) Mecca. Nor were they deliberately aligned towards anywhere in N. W. Arabia. They were deliberately aligned to face toward the Kaaba. Cook reacted to this information by saying, most appropriately: “It’s a bit late”.

Yes, the earliest Muslims in Egypt and Iraq used winter sunset and winter sunrise, respectively, for the qibla, not because they were stupid, but because they were smart. How else to face an edifice they could not see: all savvy ancient peoples have used astronomical alignments for one reason or another. From al-Andalus to Central Asia early mosques were built in astronomical directions later referred to as qiblat al-ṣaḥāba or qiblat al-tābiʿīn, ”the qibla of the first or second generations of Muslims”.

My present intention is simple: it is to warn the unsuspecting reader that the only other person ever to have written generally on the subject of mosque orientations

(a)  has no qualifications to correctly interpret the available data;

(b)  has no understanding of the fact that MODERN directions from one place to another cannot be used to investigate the reasons underlying the orientation of PRE-MODERN architecture;

(c)  seems oblivious to the fact that there is a well-established discipline called archaeoastronomy and has no understanding of astronomical alignments;

(d)  has erred monumentally in his interpretation of mosques that were built on pre-existing religious architecture or to fit with pre-Islamic city plans;

(e)  has no understanding of how mosques were laid out over the centuries;

(f)  has no control over any of the numerous medieval Arabic sources – legal, astronomical, folk astronomical, and mathematical, geographical – relating to the determination of the qibla; and

(g)  prefers to refrain from citing the vast existing bibliography on the subject.

Worse still, he

(h) has settled on a nice-enough locality, Petra, as the focus of early Islam where in the early 7th century there were no Arabs, no Muslims, and no Jews, and, in brief, there was not much going on.

And worse than that,

(i) both his activities in a field which he does not master and his false conclusions have already contributed to somewhat dubious causes.

Figure 3. A schematic representation of the fallacy propounded by Cook & Crone. They observed that the earliest mosques in Egypt and Iraq appeared to be aligned toward a place in N. W. Arabia rather than toward Mecca. This, they wrongly thought, confirmed their theory that the origins of Islam were somewhere in N. W. Arabia rather than in Mecca. In fact, the mosques are aligned with the Kaaba in Mecca by means of astronomical horizon phenomena, namely, winter sunrise in Egypt and winter sunset in Iraq. The first generation of Muslims knew what they were doing with regard to mosque orientations and later generations over many centuries developed remarkable and more sophisticated means for finding the sacred direction. We moderns just have to learn how they dealt with the need to align mosques in the sacred direction toward the sacred Kaaba in Mecca. It is not something one can imitate or investigate with an iPhone, and no Google maps are going to help much.

Accurate mosque orientations towards Petra

To give credence to his Petra theory Gibson needs to rewrite the history of science, a subject about which he is singularly uninformed. He wants us to accept that when the first generation of Muslims expanded out of Petra (!) they knew all about astrolabes (!) and spherical trigonometry (!) and the like. When they wanted to build mosques around the world from al-Andalus to China facing the Kaaba in Petra they used these advanced mathematical techniques to calculate the pibla (my word) toward Petra and they were able to do this to within a degree or two. In fact, the ‘real’ Muslims used simple astronomical alignments to find the direction of the Kaaba, and there was no need for any mathematical system. (However, as part of the Graeco-Roman world, the Nabataeans long before the advent of Islam did have such devices as sundials.)

Mosque orientation before Gibson

Gibson’s claim about Petra deliberately ignores everything that modern scholarship has uncovered about the ways Muslims over the centuries have determined the sacred direction. His first book Qur’ânic Geography (2011) had not a single reference to any serious book or article on the qibla. His later works have been padded with a few references to my works but they deliberately omit any reference to five articles which presented an overview of what was known before Gibson appeared on the scene:

• “On the astronomical orientation of the Kaaba” (with Gerald S. Hawkins) (1982);
• “Astronomical alignments in medieval Islamic religious architecture” (1982);
• “The orientation of medieval Islamic religious architecture and cities” (1995);
• “The earliest Islamic mathematical methods and tables for finding the direction of Mecca” (1996); and
• “The sacred geography of Islam” (2005).

For myself, I am fairly confident that Islam started in Mecca and Medina, and that all early mosques were deliberately aligned to face the astronomically- aligned Kaaba in Mecca. These orientations were achieved by the early Muslims with a considerable amount of success within the limits of their capabilities, mainly using astronomical alignments or building on earlier foundations that were inevitably also astronomically aligned. Later mosques were aligned either in qiblas calculated from the available geographical data using mathematical procedures, although the old procedures continued to be used.

In each major centre in the medieval Islamic world there was a palette of several qibla-directions accepted by one interest group or another. There might be a qiblat al-ṣaḥāba, a direction chosen by the first generation of Muslims who settled in that locality, usually an astronomically-defined direction, and favoured thereafter; there might be different directions favoured by the individual legal schools; there might be a different astronomically-defined direction that was favoured by some; and there could be two mathematically-determined qibla-directions, one based on approximate methods and the other based on an exact procedure. The modern qibla, based on accurate geographical data and derived by exact mathematical methods, is irrelevant to the investigation of the motivation behind the orientation of any historical mosque.

I consider it necessary to respond to Dan Gibson’s latest pronouncements for three main reasons:

• People seem to forget that the sacred direction in Islam is not toward Mecca but toward the Kaaba in Mecca. There is a significant difference between facing an edifice that one cannot see but which one knows is astronomically aligned and facing a distant city. People need to be reminded of this, because what was obvious to a medieval mind is not obvious to us moderns. All of Gibson’s mosques are aligned toward the Kaaba in one way or another. Since the 9th century, when mathematical geography and mathematical methods became available, mosques have generally been aligned toward Mecca, usually, but not always, using mathematical methods. In major centres there was sometimes a palette of qibla-directions – covering as much as a quadrant of the horizon – used by different interest groups.

Figure 3. A brilliant geometrical construction for finding the qibla proposed by Habash al-Hasib, the leading astronomer of 9th-century Baghdad. The complicated modern formula can be derived directly from Habash’s diagram.

Without knowing this, it is somewhat precarious to try to explain an early mosque orientation.

• The concept of the qibla is not just about legal scholars splitting hairs or mathematicians performing calculations or architects building mosques, it is about the millions and millions of faithful Muslims who for well over a millennium over a large part of this planet have exercised their utmost to pray towards the physical focus of their religion, a symbol of the presence of their God. This they do or have done in their mosques, but also in their homes and at work and whilst travelling. Also, in death the faithful are laid to rest in the same direction in which they have been praying during their lives. No Muslim needs some ill-informed Besserwisser to announce to them that they and their forefathers have been praying in the wrong direction for over a millennium and that they should have been praying towards a city in Jordan that has absolutely nothing to do with early Islam.
• There are very few people – Muslims, non-Muslims and independents – who know anything about historical qibla determinations and even fewer who would be able to counter Gibson’s ‘new’, basically absurd theories which appear to rely on ‘scientific evidence’.
• I am well aware of the potential damage Gibson has done / can do to our field. But more seriously, Gibson’s writings are guaranteed to contribute to Islamophobia amongst those who have no idea about the one and only civilization which really took orientations seriously for over 1,400 years.

Critiques of critiques

Most people are either numerate, which means that they like numbers and know how to handle them, or innumerate, in the sense that they don’t like numbers and shy away from them. Such people shudder when confronted with a direction such as 292°, because they have no idea that modern usage measures directions from 0° clockwise to 360° = 0°; these people might prefer to read 22° N of E. Now Gibson’s book is all about numbers, some real (measurements of mosques) and some irrelevant (MODERN directions of Petra and Mecca). Alas, most reviews of Gibson’s qibla extravaganza have been made by people not well versed in numbers.

In the acknowledgements to his Early Islamic qiblas Gibson thanks two scholars Rick Oakes and Ahmed Amine whom we shall mention below. (He also thanks one of the leading archaeo astronomers of the Near East, and of Petra, my colleague Juan Antonio Belmonte, who was even more surprised than I was to find his name in Gibson’s acknowledgements, for Gibson never mentions ethno- or archaeoastronomy.)

It is important to consider Gibson’s approach to mosque orientations in light of his methodology. For he uses MODERN geographical coordinates to calculate directions of buildings to Petra or Mecca or Jerusalem when those who erected these buildings did not have access to such coordinates. Nor did they have EXACT mathematical procedures for calculating directions of one place to another. So when Gibson writes that a given mosque faces (the MODERN direction of) Petra, not (the MODERN direction of) Mecca, this is not to be taken seriously. If I were to say this or that mosque faces Mecca not Petra, that might be equally absurd. If either of us says that a given mosque faces exactly Petra or Mecca so that those who built it must have had the geographical and mathematical knowledge to determine the pibla / qibla accurately, this would be nonsense. For mosques in the earliest period were laid out in directions that were not calculated at all.

In my first critique of Gibson’s Petra thesis I deliberately stated that I would not demonstrate his error for all of the mosques he had misinterpreted but would present enough examples to demonstrate that not only are his interpretations erroneous, but also that the whole idea of assessing the “errors” of medieval orientations by comparing them with MODERN directions is flawed. Some later commentators didn’t understand this.

Rick Oakes is an American scholar of theology concerned with the history of the Qur’ān and of early Islam. He has posted his evaluation of my critique of Early Islamic Qiblas on the blog of the International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA), an outfit based in Atlanta claiming to be “devoted to the study of the Qur’an from a variety of academic disciplines”. Oakes’ focus here is not on the science, mathematics, or astronomy that was (or, rather, was not) available to early Muslims, nor is it with how they could have pointed any of their earliest mosques in any particular direction. But rather, he naïvely focusses on the 17 mosques that Gibson says face (the MODERN direction of) Petra. He does not argue whether or not they were pointed toward (the MODERN direction of) Petra intentionally. He does not argue that Gibson’s mosque orientation measurements are accurate, but that these Gibson’s conclusions based on these orientations deserve confirmation or refutation. He overlooks my refutation of all of them, so he repeats this appeal from his non-critical review of Gibson’s first book.

Oakes begins by omitting that I first published my review of Gibson on my own website and later on the Muslim Heritage site. He writes that I “revised” my review after a petty response by Gibson, when, in fact, I just removed a comment about his missionary connection. Oakes identifies five mosques whose orientations I did not even mention: the Masjid al-qiblatayn in Medina and four other very minor mosques I had never heard of. He seems so convinced about Gibson’s finding that 17 early mosques point toward (the MODERN direction of) Petra that he challenges other scholars to offer better explanations than that this was deliberate. It all becomes a game: who gets it right and who gets it wrong. Oakes correctly observes that my explanations of why the mosques in Amman, Fustat, Jericho, and Khirbat al-Minya (only these!) are preferable to Gibson’s explanation that they point toward (the MODERN direction of) Petra. While he is correct in mentioning that I wrote that the Sanaa Mosque points toward (the MODERN direction of) Petra, he missed the fact that this does not mean that it was deliberately laid out to face Petra: I also said that the axis of the Mosque was ‘parallel’ to the main axis of the Kaaba, so that the qibla-wall is ‘parallel’ to the SE wall of the Kaaba.

In brief, Oakes has unfortunately overlooked what I wrote about the absurdity of using MODERN directions to investigate orientations of buildings that were built well over 1,200 years ago and the folly of ignoring cardinal and solstitial directions in interpreting orientations that were laid out toward astronomical horizon phenomena or on pre-Islamic foundations that were cardinally aligned. He is apparently ready to believe Gibson’s claims about Petra if somebody can confirm them.

Suggestions for future research

Fortunately, nowadays one would not have to travel the length and breadth of the Muslim world to have a new look at mosque orientations. These are not “theories” about early mosque orientations, these are simply suggestions for future research. What concerned investigators might want to do in the future with the major mosques of the medieval period (7th-15th centuries) is the following:

(1)  determine which mosques were built on the authority of the Prophet or his Companions;

(2)  determine which mosques were built on the foundations of, or in line with pre-Islamic religious architecture which happened to be cardinally aligned (such as in Jerusalem and Damascus);

(3)  determine which mosques were built according to the street-plans of pre- Islamic cities which happened to be solstitially aligned (such as Córdoba, Tlemcen, Tunis, Kairouan);

(4)  determine which mosques were built toward winter sunrise (taken as one qibla-direction from Egypt to al-Andalus), and toward winter sunset (taken as one qibla-direction from Iraq to Central Asia), or toward some other astronomical horizon phenomenon;

(5)  determine which mosques face more or less due south in Jordan and Syria;

(6)  determine which mosques face due west in India and due east in N. Africa; and

(7)  determine which mosques more or less due north in Yemen and E. Africa.

Mosques which do not conform to these norms can possibly be explained by means of information on the local qibla in treatises on folk astronomy and sacred geography (astronomically-defined directions) or treatises on mathematical astronomy (qiblas calculated from available medieval geographical data using exact or approximate mathematical methods). Local topography or hydrography may also have played a role. In all such investigations, no conclusions should be drawn based on qibla-directions calculated from MODERN geographical data using some kind of EXACT mathematical procedures. Also, measurements and calculations to the nearest degree are adequate for investigative purposes; any attempt at greater ‘accuracy’ is unrealistic.

To any interested parties, I would recommend looking at the five articles which I mentioned above, not least my article on the earliest mathematical methods and tables for finding the qibla. I am confident that such simple approximate methods had far more influence in mosque alignment than any complicated exact methods and tables. But one cannot use any of these without knowing what geographical coordinates were available over the centuries. The complexity of Islamic geographical tables giving longitudes and latitudes, and the basic reference work by E. S. & M. H. Kennedy, Geographical coordinates of localities from Islamic sources (Frankfurt, 1987), presents 14,000 sets of longitudes and latitudes from some 80 Arabic and Persian astronomical and geographical sources.

In investigating the orientation of a historical mosque it is important to take into consideration the original surrounding street-plan and the various qibla– directions that were favoured in that region at the time. Without such information it is not a little arrogant to suppose that one can make any sensible pronouncement regarding the reason behind the orientation of an edifice that was built over a millennium ago. Woe betides anyone who claims to explain any medieval mosque orientation without realizing how complicated is the subject of orientations.

Notes added in September 2020:

If Dan Gibson had claimed that his investigations revealed that the earliest mosques faced precisely toward Mecca, I would have immediately pronounced that this was absurd, not least because he would have been claiming that they face the modern direction of Mecca for each locality. Besides the sacred direction in Islam is toward the Kaaba, not toward Mecca. Modern directions from one place to another were available only from the 19th century onwards. 

No precision was to be expected in the 7th and 8th centuries, precision of the kind we moderns take for granted. But the first generations of Muslims had all the technical knowledge they needed to face the Kaaba, because the Kaaba is astronomically aligned, that is, the major and minor axes of its rectangular base face significant astronomical horizon phenomena, and its corners roughly face the cardinal directions. So to face the Kaaba in any locality, they had only to face the direction in which they were standing right in front of that part of the Kaaba which was associated with that locality. Modern people would be perplexed if they would be asked to face a building that they cannot see; the first generations did not see this as a problem.

As it is, Gibson’s data show that these mosques face precisely towards Petra, a very nice place which has, however, nothing to do with the history of early Islam. Gibson’s Nabataean Muslims could never have accurately determined the pibla toward Petra from places between al-Andalus and China. We have to look elsewhere in order to investigate the orientations of these mosques. In brief, they do not face Mecca, and they do not face Petra, but they do face the Kaaba, within the limitations of what the Muslims knew in the 7th and 8th century. The orientations of their first mosques are not “careless” or “inaccurate”, as has been claimed by many a historian of Islamic architecture. But they have a lot to teach us, including that they do not face anywhere specific.

Dan Gibson is not to be held back from his claims, to the extent that he has even included mosques built on pre-Islamic foundations and finds that they face Petra too. I am reminded of a certain fellow who measured the orientations of numerous medieval cathedrals in Europe and found that they were facing Mecca and concluded that they must have been built as mosques. On the subject of churches, it is an absurd claim that medieval churches face east or face Jerusalem. If one measures the orientations of French cathedrals, for example, one comes up with a span of 100° on the eastern horizon.

The claims of Dan Gibson have been greeted with enthusiasm by those who seek to denigrate Islam and distort Islamic history. Serious reactions to them from the scholarly world have led to laughable rhetoric on the part of a fundamentalist outfit concerned to attract Muslims away from Islam.

The interested reader may care to consult the following works to gain some control over the subject and to better understand the folly of the claims of Gibson and the perverseness of his advocates. Most of the nonsense they attribute to the present author results from their inability to understand what he wrote to counter Gibson’s claims and their readiness to distort it.

(a) “On the orientation of the Kaaba” (1982). Without an understanding of the layout of this sacred edifice, one cannot begin to explain the orientation of any early historical mosques. For this and other reasons, Gibson does not mention the orientation of the Kaaba (academia.edu). A new book on many aspects of the historical Kaaba by a well-informed Western scholar, Simon O’Meara, has just been published (barakat.org).

(b) Astronomical orientations were widely used in ancient times, including in Arabia and especially by the Nabataeans in Petra. See J. A. Belmonte et al., “Equinox in Petra: Land‑ and skyscape in the Nabataean capital” (2020 – (doi.org). Gibson does not like astronomical orientations, even though they were used by his favourite Nabataeans (long before the advent of Islam). His claims about Petra as the cradle of Islam are not taken seriously by scholars of Nabataean Studies.

(c) “Finding the qibla by the sun and stars – Islamic sacred geography” (2019), a survey of some 50 medieval sources, documenting some 20 different schemes of sectors of the world about the Kaaba together with their qiblas as the same astronomical directions one would be facing if one were standing directly in front of the Kaaba (academia.edu). Gibson claims that “dumb” people used these astronomical orientations to find “sloppy” orientations without realizing that they were the means used by the first generations of Muslims to carefully find the direction of the astronomically-oriented Kaaba. In fact, they were smart to use these directions.

(d) “The wind-catchers of medieval Cairo and their secrets” (2020), where the ‘secrets’ relate to the layout of the astronomically-aligned Fatimid city alongside the Roman Nile-Red Sea Canal as well as the various qiblas used in the city from the 7th century onwards (academia.edu – text) / (academia.edu– illustrations). Gibson does not realize that there are entire Muslim cities facing the Kaaba, but that this can only be understood if one knows what people thought was the direction of the Kaaba, which was not the modern direction of Mecca, and most certainly not the modern direction of Petra!

(e) “The enigmatic orientation of the Grand Mosque of Córdoba” (2019), on the way in which the Mosque was laid out according to an astronomically-aligned Roman suburban street-plan, the admittedly curious orientation of the Mosque being later confirmed by the astronomical directions proposed in various medieval schemes of sacred geography, that is, divisions of the world around the astronomically-oriented Kaaba (academia.edu). All major mosques of the Maghrib face the same direction for the same reason (brill.com). Gibson in one of his most imaginative moments proposed that these mosques are all parallel to an imaginary line between Petra and Mecca.

(f) “al-Bazdawī on the qibla in early Islamic Transoxania” (1983/2012) on the orientations of mosques in Samarqand by a well-known 11th-century judge (academia.edu). Contrary to what Gibson thinks, this judge knew what he was talking about.

(g) “Bibliography of books, articles and websites on historical qibla determinations” (2018), listing some 150 items (academia.edu). Gibson’s first writings on the qibla referred to none of this material. Later he consulted King’s article “Qibla” in the Encyclopaedia of Islam but not King’s article “Mekka as centre of the world”, in which Islamic sacred geography is presented for the very first time (academia.edu).

It is not unfair to say that Gibson has no idea about historical qibla determinations, but he is considerably better informed than the hapless souls who seek in a series of some 18 and more videos to promote his nutty ideas about Petra and to demolish his detractors (www.nabataea.net).

~ Click here for the full article ~

by David A. King,
Professor of the History of Science,
Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main

THE PETRA FALLACY BY DAVID A KING 

A review of Dan Gibson’s Mecca vs. Petra theory

 
“(Gibson’s) evidence provides no grounds to conclude that Petra had a play in Islam. Quite in contrary, one can make a confident case that Petra has nothing to do with the emergence of Islam.”

Daniel “Dan” Gibson (b 1956) is a self-published Canadian author studying the early history of Arabia and Islam. His Quranic Geography (2011) is an attempt to examine some geographical references made in the Quran. It looks at the people of ‘Ad, the people of Thamud, the Midianites as well as Medina and Mecca. His claim that the Holy City and the birthplace of Islam is really Petra rather than Mecca1 – based upon his understanding that the earliest mosques were directed2 towards Petra – drew some interest from a small number of audience, including Muslims and non-Muslims.

For readers who are interested in or fascinated by this Mecca vs. Petra theory but haven’t gone through Dan Gibson’s actual arguments, here is a brief review of his book by A. J. Deus:

Extraordinary Claims require Extraordinary Evidence

In the book Qur’ānic Geography, the author Dan Gibson makes a case that the orientation of early mosques is evidence for Petra playing a major role for the beginnings of Islam. Until the early eighth century, he claims, they all point to Petra and from the time of the Abbasids to Mecca. In between is, what he calls, a time of confusion. In the author’s own words, his case can be summarized as following:

“The only conclusion I come to is that Islam was founded in northern Arabia in the city of Petra. It was there that the first parts of the Qur’ān were revealed before the faithful were forced to flee to Medina. Thus, the prophet Muḥammad never visited Mecca, nor did any of the first four rightly guided caliphs. Mecca was never a centre of worship in ancient times, and was not part of the ancient trade routes in Arabia. All down through history the Arabs made pilgrimages to the holy sites in the city of Petra, which had many ancient temples and churches. It was in Petra that 350 idols were retrieved from the rubble after an earthquake and set up in a central courtyard. It was in Petra that Muḥammad directed the destruction of all the idols except one, the Black Stone. This stone remained in the Ka’ba in Petra until it was later taken by the followers of Ibn al-Zubayr deep into Arabia to the village of Mecca for safe keeping from the Ummayad armies. And today it is to this stone that Muslims face, rather than to their holy city and the qibla that Muḥammad gave them [page 379].”

These are extraordinary claims. It is surprising that their source is a scholar with a literal approach to the Bible, the Koran, and the traditions. However, since the idea of Petra playing any role in Islam is an extreme niche position, this claim requires extraordinary evidence. The author’s research appears to brake with all conventions of the Mecca-Medina narrative of emergent Islam.

In short, within the margin of error that mosques could be oriented at the time, there is no such pattern as the author claims.

The book starts with Geographical Locations in the Koran. In it, he bases a theory that the Koran is different from other ancient scriptures and early writings on the frequency of places named in scripture. I am unable to follow the logic how the word count and the number of geographical locations could lead to any other conclusion than randomness (in a non-random text construct).

Based on his numerology, he builds the history of the Arab people through the Bible. This is supposed to draw the historical path of the relevant tribes that show up at the gates to Islam. However, we have evidence that they adopted linages in Biblical locations when opportune. This is in particular important when it concerns the inheritance of the Promised Land as evidenced from the primary record. In fact, we know that linages were ‘sorted out’ under Nehemiah ben Hushiel, the supposed son of the Exilarch, who was in an alliance with Benjamin of Tiberias, Elijah bar Kobsha and Xosrov under General Shahrbaraz in 614 AD. If the actual progression is ignored in favor of a Biblical narrative, I am wondering how the author would get himself out of an impenetrable maze.

Later in the book, the author tries to reconcile the Biblical view with Muslim traditions, and he even notes that Jewish refugees had spread throughout the entire Arabian Peninsula. With that said, researchers would need to be on the lookout for attempts to reverse-engineer history.

In the author’s promised identification of the locations in the Koran, I do not find myself convinced that the interpretations by the author can be academically duplicated without a strong will to having to find any solution. Granted, the locations could be those, but there are many other theories that sound just as valid. Based on linguistic conjecture, he proposes that ‘Ad is identical with the Biblical ‘Uz. While this could well be so, I am unable to follow the academic argument. So far, academia does not understand the methodology of how the Koran has been written. Without this foundation, every attempt to define a word that is not readily understood can only lead to disputable proposals and wishful thinking. The icing of the cake is that the author is infatuated with the Koran’s Arabic words when we know that much of the original Koran had been written in Aramaic and Syriac. Since we are also void of the methodology of the Biblical construct, the author is building a sand castle upon a mountain of sand.

The author’s Biblical adherence stands in stark contrast to his own research where he writes: ‘As I listened to Arab poets recite the histories of their tribes, I realized that there was a disconnect between a) the modern names for tribes, b) tribal names during the early years of Islam and c) tribal names in antiquity. The poets could recite their tribal lines back many generations, but few of them could go farther than a thousand years, and none of them could connect with ancient groups like the Amalekites, the Midianites, or the Nabataeans, other than those directly related to the prophet Muḥammad (page 187).’ This is troublesome, because it is also a systemic mechanism of religion to reshape the collective memory. Memorizing bogus linages from kindergarten does not validate them, does it?

On the other hand, Gibson does a great job in demonstrating the primary evidence of the Nabateans. However, it should make the Biblical narrative redundant with which he had started out. Yet, he continuously attempts to reconcile the Bible with the real Nabateans. In the face of the primary evidence, this is absolutely unnecessary other than providing for the (wishful) linage background.

In his attempt to identify locations in the Koran, the author walks on a slippery slope by bringing the Khabiri together with the Children of Israel, respectively the Hebrews, for example. As with the Koran, academics have to be careful not to fall into the trap of confirming Biblical stories with archaeology when the possibility is at hand that the stories themselves have been inserted into real history or borrowed from other people’s histories. How they may be related to the Nabateans, we simply do not know. Thus, with the approach of the author, I recommend reading the Bible and taking it at face value rather than following the Biblical tour of the book.

From page 138, the author starts to engage in ‘real’ history. Based on a personal ‘opinion’, he states that Dr. John Healy was convinced that the Thamuds and the Nabateans were one and the same people. ‘They had the same names, the same gods, the same practices, and yet they wrote with different scripts.’ This rests on the idea that the Nabateans may have used two different scripts in parallel, one for (encoded secret) religious purposes (Monumental) and one for clear text proto-‘Arabic’, Safiaitic. These two scripts should have provided Gibson with a decisive clue how to approach the topic more carefully.

He also equates the Arabs with the Nabateans, whereas seventh century primary evidence clearly speaks of two different kinds of Arabs, those friendly with the Christians and the others, the Tayyi, not so much. Finally, the reader ends up in Petra, which is the place around which the author builds his central thesis: Petra as the focal point of early mosques. In order to demonstrate the importance of Petra, he thinks that it is one of five burial cities, whereas two annual festivals (pilgrimages) were held in Petra itself. In addition, Petra was an important gateway to the Nabatean trade routes through the desert, which they controlled (together with the Silk Road and Damascus) with access to (hidden) water holes. However, with all this, the author does not provide the foundation of why Petra would have been singled out as the mosques’ focal point, even though it may have been (at much earlier times) the capital (Rekem) of the Nabateans.

In contrary, he asserts that Medina had been the prophetic focal point (after Mecca) and that the city of the Prophet would have been the capital of the Muslims under Abu Bakr and Umar. Based on primary evidence that Gibson does not provide, this might well be the case. But that Mu’awiyah later took the Muslim capital from Medina to Damascus, as it is said, is mere fancy. During the ‘civil war’ in 685 AD, Mecca may have been destroyed and/or re-founded. All this conflicts with the primary evidence wherein the Umayyads had not only opposed proto-Islam but wherein the Prophet himself does not appear in the historical record until after 632 AD. The issue is that we are unable to draw solid conclusions when the timeline, the locations, and the people are all off. Nothing finds a solid anchor, and the unsuspecting reader risks to be exposed to mere speculation.

The book only starts to be more focused and forceful from page 221. Like others before him, Gibson notes that the Koranic geography about Mecca does neither match the present location nor was it recorded on ancient maps. But then the work of the previous 200 pages kicks in and emerges as a tunnel vision: Mecca (or Medina, perhaps) is impossible; Petra and Petra only can have been the real location of the Mother-City and the Forbidden Sanctuary as if Jerusalem would not have been a far bigger price in the eye of the Muslim conquerors. He does have a point that the Biblical narrative of Ishmael growing up in Paran, the traditional home of the Thamudic or Nabataean people in northern Arabia provides for a thousand kilometer chasm between the Bible and Islam.

The direction of prayer then turns into the main argument. Mosques were initially not oriented toward Mecca. This does not rest on some complex theory but on the simple fact that the Koran itself directs this change in prayer orientation in Sura 2. It is merely logical that early mosques could be oriented toward the Kaaba only after this decree would have been disseminated and universally understood in the same way. But so far, academia has been unable to come forth with a sensible date when this would have been written. At the least, following consensus, this should have been during Muhammad’s lifetime of the traditions, i.e. before 632 AD. Gibson, instead, asserts that this directive has been missing in early Korans that have been recovered. The author takes note of the fact that the orientation was changed much later than the traditional life of Muhammad and thinks that this must have occurred after the civil war under ’Abdallāh ibn Zubayr. He makes a case that 100% of those mosques before 725 AD, of which he could determine the orientation, pointed to Petra.

But before we continue, we must do what Gibson did not do: establish the orientation of the Great Temple of the Nabateans in Petra and also of the Kaaba itself and some of the earliest mosques that he could not determine in order to find a starting point. Also, it needs to be stated that most of the locations of the first ‘mosques’ that are mentioned in the traditions cannot be identified today. The Great Temple in Petra points straight to Baalbek and further north to the ancient city of Ebla. This would require some explanation but could be by mere chance because the orientation is also astral as were several monuments in Petra. The Kaaba, as is well established, rests on pre-Islamic foundations, and its major axis is oriented toward the Canopus. For the early mosques in Medina and China, it needs to be said that they were either built later than claimed, or they were not Muslim. No Muslim mosque could have existed in the absence of Muhammad (who appeared after 632 AD). Fustat is likely also wrongly dated, because it cannot possibly lie before Medina.

We need to establish more fundamentals that Gibson also did not deliver: how precisely were the builders able to orient mosques toward any desired location? It turns out that they were exact to roughly one degree in latitude and longitude (!), even if a building would be located 1500 km away. Thus, deviations that are much larger than one degree need to be dismissed as out of range of a desired destination.

While measuring structural orientations from satellite images is tedious but precise (+/- 0.25°), within a few days, each mosque could have been mapped out precisely by the author. For whichever reason, in a separate table that I obtained from Gibson, he merely states ‘Petra’ as direction with no measurements or deviations provided. After careful re-examination, it appears that any building that sort of looks in the direction of Petra, was taken as evidence. This includes many buildings that are as far off as 10° and more or even 30°. Within the parameters just described, not a single mosque or building on his list points to Petra with one exception in Oman that comes within 1° of Petra (built during the author’s claimed ‘time of confusion’ and attributable to mere chance).

Thus, would Gibson have been just a little bit more careful, or had his work been reviewed by an alert peer, it would have become clear that the evidence provides no grounds to conclude that Petra had a play in Islam. Quite in contrary, one can make a confident case that Petra has nothing to do with the emergence of Islam.

The picture that emerges makes it clear why a similar pattern of one focal point has not shown up long ago. The directions of these structures are fairly precise, and there is not a mistake of 2, 3, or more degrees. As the orientation of later mosques shows, they are pretty much smack on. What we could say so far (if anything) is that a) the earliest known Muslim structures were not oriented toward either Mecca or Petra, and from this follows that b) an orientation toward Petra could only confirm a non-Muslim structure.

On the other end is Gibson’s case that 100% of the mosques from the Abbasid times would be built oriented toward Mecca. However, one of the most important holy sites for the Shi’ites is the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra. This tenth century mosque is not oriented toward Mecca — the hundred-year older Great Mosque of Samarra is. Some traditions indeed suggest that not everybody had made use of the complete Koran. If Sura 2 had been missing for some, or if the related verses were missing, then the orientation of the mosques would not yet have been defined for them. Yet, that would require that they would be oriented toward the ‘old’ focal point, which with certainty is not Petra.

It is not possible to reconcile Gibson’s thesis with the realities on the ground. Neither do many early mosques have been oriented toward Petra (perhaps a few within a broader margin and perhaps by mere chance) nor has the ‘time of confusion’ ended in the middle of the eighth century.

Gibson then delves into the literary evidence, in particular the traditions, the Koran, and again the Bible. I am a little puzzled by the circumstance that the author’s theory defies tradition, but then he has no remorse in serving up questionable evidence from the traditions. Should not his case tell him that there might be something awfully odd with these beliefs that had been sorted out two hundred years after the fact? If they were able to bury Petra, what else were they able to come up with? On the other hand, the author is unable to produce even a single piece of literary evidence that would say something like Petra was the original hub. This would make for a perfect crime on a very grand scale. Something must have been left behind, anything, however little. He offers nothing at all, not even a single foundation stone that could be attributed to the earliest Muslims. After all, it is Gibson’s central thesis that the Kaaba had stood in Petra for several decades, prompting a whole chain of events that must have followed this building without leaving anything behind at all. The author asks: ‘If Petra is the first Islamic Holy City before the Black Stone was moved to Mecca, then would it not make sense that later writers would eliminate every mention of Petra?’ In religion, nothing is impossible. However, with the level of archaeological, numismatic, and literary documentation that we possess today, it seems rather unlikely that this could have been done successfully. It is one thing to insert a non-existing story into the history books or to swap timelines or locations – the level of difficulty is altogether different when it comes to removing an existing story without leaving a trace behind. But the orientations of the mosques constitute the traces, one might object. I just cannot validate this evidence. At every step along the way, I find myself faced with a religiously defended argument: do you not see this? Do you not see that? The more I read, the more it feels like faith.

Frankly, at times, I feel that the author looks down upon his audience, and he is perhaps eligible to doing so. After all, lovers of conspiracy theories with little learning will feast upon a case that sounds so fantastic that it borders to a miracle. I do agree, Mecca rises to be the focal point of the Muslims much later than the traditional view suggests. However, the case for Petra rests on no less real evidence than the one for Mecca. Academia needs hard facts, not arguments.

Finally, Gibson’s chapter about navigation and pre-Islamic poetry is informative, even excellent. In essence, it tells the reader ‘that the Arabs would have no trouble accurately determining the direction of the qibla for their mosques’ – and that is the final nail in the coffin to a theory that rests on an inexact orientation of an arbitrary selection of mosques. (Words highlighted by the author S. I.)

A. J. Deus is specialized in history in economics of organized religion. He is also an expert in religious frauds.

 

Further reading:

Petra has nothing to do with the origin of Islam

https://understandingislam.today/is-mecca-or-petra-islams-true-birthplace/

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Dome_Of_The_Rock/qibla.html

http://www.exploring-islam.com/geography-of-islam-was-mecca-really-the-holy-city-of-the-first-muslims.html

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Note 1

Among many other facts, there are three simple facts that contradict the claim about Islam’s Nabatean origins: 1. The Quran’s mention of Mecca in relation to its own story. 2. The presence of 200 Amharic and Ethiopic loanwords in the Quran. 3. Quranic references to pagans’ idol worship and animal sacrifice.

1. Regarding the quranic evidence, the fact that the Quran names Mecca just once (48:24) may look inadequate when compared with the New Testament’s naming Jerusalem, for example, almost 180 times. However, the two scriptures are radically different books. By way of comparison, the Quran names only a few contemporary geographic locations and none more than a couple of times, while the New Testament names many towns and other geographic features multiple times. Likewise, the Quran names Muhammad just four times, while the New Testament uses the name Jesus well over a thousand times. Thus, the important point with reference to the Quran’s naming of Mecca is that it names it in relation to its own story, whereas al-Raqim (18:9, Petra?) is mentioned only in relation to a historical event. And there’s nothing about that mention to suggest that al-Raqim is in the vicinity of Muhammad’s hearers.

2. Significant linguistic borrowing suggests extensive cross-cultural interaction. When goods and ideas are exchanged, words often are as well. Cultural dominance may play into linguistic borrowing also, and Ethiopia ruled the Hijaz for a time during the 6th century. If the Quran’s early suras were addressed to the inhabitants of Petra, one might expect more Coptic than Amharic and Ethiopic loanwords since Nabatea was much closer culturally to Egypt than to Ethiopia. Yet Amharic and Ethiopic words in the Quran stand in a 20:1 ratio to Coptic words. While this simple numerical comparison is not conclusive, it certainly raises questions.

3. Regarding pagan practices, the Byzantines had forbidden both idol worship and animal sacrifice long before Muhammad’s time – including in their province of Arabia Petraea. Yet the Quran repeatedly refers to idolatry as a contemporary practice, calling the unbelievers to forsake their idols, which they look to for protection (e.g., Q 2:256-57, 16:36). G.R. Hawting has argued that Muhammad challenged only the “spiritual idolatry” of retrograde monotheists. But in its listing of proscribed foods, Q 5:3 says, “Forbidden to you are carrion, blood, pork… whatever has been sacrificed to idols.” This was clearly pagan idolatry, which points to a region like Arabia’s Hijaz, beyond the bounds of the Byzantine Empire. Q 22:30 also warns against contamination by “the filth of idols” (awathan). The Quran also condemns “sacrificial stones” and the meat sacrificed on them (Q 5:3, 5:90). But since sacrifice had long ceased to be part of Jewish practice and was never practiced by Christians, this can only relate to idolatrous practice. The Quran repeatedly bans “that on which any name other than God has been invoked” (e.g., Q 2:173, 5:3). Likewise, Abraham is repeatedly presented as the prophetic hero who challenged his people’s idolatry (e.g., Q 26:69-102) as Muhammad is now doing. How does such paganism square with the Quran’s mention of the idolaters’ belief that God (Allah) created the world? In fact, it’s consonant with what we know of widespread polytheistic belief in a High God. Q 6:136 even describes the pagans as offering some portion of their produce to God, while other passages present them as ascribing offspring to God, swearing by God and even praying to God when in distress (e.g., 6:63-64, 6:109, 16:57). Not only is this quranic picture of pre-Islamic paganism consonant with polytheistic belief in a High God. It’s also generally consistent with both pre-Islamic poetry and the Book of Idols. And epigraphic evidence from both Palmyra and South Arabia attests to the pre-Islamic Arabs’ ascription of daughters to God. To sum up, the Quran condemns not adulterated monotheism, but rather literal idolatrous polytheism, something that had by the early seventh century been long forbidden in Byzantine Nabatea.

Thus, the Quran’s mention of Mecca, its Ethiopic loanwords, and its references to idolatrous practice all make the Hijaz a location more likely for Islam’s emergence than Nabatea. Source: https://understandingislam.today/is-mecca-or-petra-islams-true-birthplace/

Note 2

“The Qibla Of Early Mosques: Jerusalem Or Makkah?”, a study in Islamic Awareness, concludes:

“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.” See https://www.islamic-awareness.org/history/islam/dome_of_the_rock/qibla