WikiIslam:Sandbox/Fernando/Mecca

Traditionally, Mecca is assumed to be the birthplace of Islam. Starting with Abraham, who founded Al-Masjid-al-Haram, the Mosque of the sanctuary, the House of God, or the Ka’bah, the cube, which holds the Black Stone. The holiness of which was confirmed by the prophet Muhammad, who was born and worked in Mecca, and started his preaching career in the city.

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In sum, the problems with Mecca are

1. No mention in ancient sources.

2. Not on ancient trade routes.

3. No archaeological remains, in spite of extensive excavations for new buildings.

4. The Abrahamic sanctuary is located by the Quran in Becca/Bakkah rather than Mecca/Makkah (3.96).

5. Its climate is not compatible with the description of the audience of the supposedly Meccan verses of the Quran as prosperous fish eating farmers^[1].

6. Who are said to share their location with Lot of Sodom and Gomorrah (37.133-138, 11.89),which were somewhere near the Dead Sea.

7. There is a rock inscription near Mecca which dates the building of the Ka’bah to 78 AH / 697-698 CE^[2].

The first three points only tell against traditional descriptions of Mecca as a bustling centre of trade. They are compatible with the existence of a sanctuary patronised by local tribes. But this raises the difficulty of the absence of Christians in the area, given that the Quran is so heavily influenced by Christianity.

Problem seven about the inscription can be dismissed by the claim that the Arabic word translated as ‘built’ also means ‘rebuilt’. It should be noted however that this is compatible with the hypothesis that while there was a local sanctuary at Mecca, it became the Holy Mosque only in 78 AH. In any case, if a non obvious translation is proposed, it needs to be supported by examples of its use elsewhere.

The Becca problem could just be a scribal error. But then why was it not corrected before an authoritative text was issued? Furthermore, if the Quran is to be taken seriously as a source of historical knowledge, then some explanation is required of why Abraham should have wanted to travel so far south from Canaan. Both problems could be solved by accepting that Becca is not Mecca. In which case the sanctuary of Abraham has been lost.

The only plausible solution to problems five and six, the fish eating farmers familiar with the city of Lot, is to accept that some verses of the Qur’an were not written in either Mecca or Medina (which is even more arid than Mecca), or indeed anywhere in the Hijaz. To admit this undermines the project popular with scholars, of trying to explain the differences of style and doctrine to be found in the Qur’an by a sequential development in the career of its prophet. The problem is not simply a matter of determining the order in which verses were revealed, but where, when and by whom they were first written down^[3]

If Mecca is not the birthplace of Islam, where did it start? Further progress requires, not only more evidence, but an alternative theory.

The Petra Hypothesis

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Dan Gibson^[4] has recently provided both an alternative to the Mecca hypothesis and new evidence, by measuring the orientations of early mosques. The Quran orders Muslims to face the Ka’bah, and the accepted interpretation is that they must face Mecca when praying. As an aid, mosques are built facing Mecca. Which is to say, the prayer wall is built perpendicular to a straight line to Mecca, and worshippers face this wall. The question then is in which direction are early mosques orientated? And when did it change to Mecca?

Gibson has found that the earliest mosques face Petra rather than Mecca, but there was a gradual reorientation to Mecca over a period of centuries. Which suggests that the original Holy Mosque of Islam was at Petra, but was then changed to Mecca for political reasons, presumably encouraged by earthquakes at Petra.

Petra is the more plausible candidate for the original Muslim shrine. It was an important trade centre, even if declining by the time of the Prophet. Agriculture was possible, including the cultivation of olives mentioned in the Quran. And it had an archbishop, thus a large Christian population, likely of an anti Trinitarian variety which is compatible with Islamic monotheism^[5]. Gibson offers various other arguments in favour of Petra, and Peter Townsend argues more generally for a north Arabian location^[6].

A point against Petra is that it is not near the Dead Sea and thus the city of Lot, or not near enough. But if Mecca is the only competition for the original shrine, it is much nearer. If Petra contained a sanctuary, it is plausible that it would have been visited by farmers from further north. In any case, the Quran is inconsistent in a number of ways. The best that can be hoped for is to get a partial match to what it suggests about its historical context.

Given the seriousness of the issue for both Muslims and non Muslim scholars, it is understandable that there is much hostility to Gibson’s hypothesis. Yet little has been published against it. There is however a detailed rejection by David King^[7], a long time specialist on the study of mosque orientation. King’s criticism is long, repetitive and abusive, and what follows is not claimed to be a definitive interpretation. Rather the aim is to extract testable hypotheses which are alternatives to Gibson’s Petra hypothesis.

King’s position can be summed up as follows.

1. ‘For the interpretation of orientations of historical mosques, modern qibla directions are irrelevant.’

2. The oldest mosques were orientated so that the walls have the same orientation to the fixed stars as the Kaaba.

OR 3. The oldest mosques were orientated so that the wall have the same orientation to the cardinal points as the Kaaba.

1. is a direct quote, and is clearly false. If, for instance, it were discovered that all mosques face Mecca to within a reasonable degree of accuracy, it could be concluded that the builders understood the command of the Quran in the obvious way, had the technical ability to fulfil it, and believed the Holy Shrine to be at Mecca.

So let us try a variant, 1’. There was no attempt to orientate the oldest mosques towards Mecca, because they did not have the ability to do so. Which raises the question, what were they trying to do?

As a first approximation, hypotheses 2 and 3 can be taken as equivalent. But what would be the point of such a convention? It might be thought that what would be achieved is that worshippers would be facing in the same direction as those at Mecca. But there are two problems with this idea. It is a considerable stretch to interpret ‘facing’ as ‘facing in the same direction’, however ‘direction’ may be interpreted. More seriously, worshippers at Mecca can be facing in any direction, depending which side of the Kaaba they are on.

Which suggests hypothesis 4 - The oldest mosques were orientated so the prayer direction was the same as that at Mecca or Petra. This is consistent with Gibson’s data on ‘parallel’ mosques. Towards the end of the seventh century the prayer direction of mosques he describes as ‘Western Umayyad’ became parallel to a line between Petra and Mecca. This does not however solve the problem about the earliest mosques, or tell us whether the target was Mecca or Petra.

An orientation the same as the Kaaba might seem better than nothing. But in fact it only raises further questions. Most fundamentally: what geometry did the builders think applicable to their problem? The author of the Quran believed in a flat Earth, ‘spread out like a carpet’ (Quran 71:19 etc.,Islamic Views on the Shape of the Earth). To which Euclidean geometry applies. We now know that the Earth is round, as did the ancient Greeks, so that the calculation of angles and distances requires spherical geometry. Flat maps can be useful for small areas, but become increasingly distorted as the area covered grows larger. This is relevant to the problem of what ‘the same’ means when applied to the orientation of buildings.

In the case of rectangular buildings like the Kaaba, it could mean that the longest axes are parallel. Which in turn could mean: at the same angle to a great circle drawn, say, through the midpoint. Or alternatively: at the same angle to an orthogonal frame of reference based on the fixed stars. These two standards will only give the same result at the equator.

King’s hypotheses also raise theological difficulties. If early Muslims had no way of establishing the direction to the Holy Shrine, they had no way of obeying the command of the Quran to face it when praying. The Quran repeatedly warns that anyone who disobeys will be tortured for all eternity in hell. Are we to suppose that all Muslims living distant from the Shrine before the invention of GPS are currently suffering the eternal punishment? Have Muslims currently worshipping in misaligned mosques mended their ways? Is there any discussion of the problem by Muslim scholars, ancient or modern?

In sum, King offers no plausible alternative to the obvious interpretation of the Quranic command to pray towards the Holy Shrine, and Gibson has supplied the best evidence to date of where the builders of the first mosques thought it was.

Gibson claims to have established that too many of the early mosques face Petra to be due to chance. How they did this is a matter of speculation, but their success is a statistical fact. It is also a fact that after a period of uncertainty, later mosques succeed in being orientated with Mecca with a greater than random success rate. Anyone who dislikes Gibson’s Petra hypothesis needs to show either that his measurements are wrong, or the statistical analysis faulty.

Another possible line of criticism is to question whether Gibson has correctly identified the prayer wall on the buildings he has included in his survey, not all of which are obviously mosques, and in any case early mosques did not have a mihrab to identify the prayer wall. However, Gibson does take care to justify his identification of prayer walls, so unless further data is obtained on site, there is no reason to question his judgement.

If the early mosque builders were not trying to face Mecca, what were they trying to do? The accepted interpretation of the Quran is that Muslims must face it when praying, so it is generally assumed that mosques are built to indicate the required direction. It is an implication of King’s theory that some early builders interpreted the word translated as ‘face’ to mean ‘facing in the same direction as you would if you were at the Ka’bah’. Which is a bit of a stretch. It is possible that at certain times and places the builders had no way of determining the direction of the Ka’bah, so they did the best they could by giving their mosques the same orientation to the fixed stars. But it is impossible to test this hypothesis without an explanation of what they understood by orientation, and how they thought it could be measured.

It is also relevant to point out that modern Muslims have no doubt about how to interpret the order to face the Ka’bah. (And have accepted the need to abandon the flat Earth geography of the Quran, and come to terms with the complications of spherical geometry^[8].) Why should early Muslims have interpreted the Quran any differently?

A note on terminology

It is not clear whether the Masjid-al-Haram and the Kaaba are the same, or the Kaaba is in the Masjid. For the purposes of the present discussion the distinction is irrelevant. (‘Kaaba’ is the spelling favoured by my spell checker.)

‘Qibla’ is commonly used to mean either the actual orientation of a mosque, or the direction towards the Kaaba. It would be better to adopt the second usage, so that there is an empirical question as to whether orientation and qibla coincide. Or, more realistically, to what degree of accuracy they coincide. Even with this clarification the question is ambiguous, since the answer will depend on whether the Kaaba is assumed to be at Mecca, or where the builder thought it was. The question could be made more precise by distinguishing between the Mecca qibla and the builder's intended qibla. Where the builder's intention has to be inferred from the likely candidates for the location of the Kaaba.

Gibson in his glossary defines 'qibla' as 'The direction one should face when performing Islamic rituals. According to Surah 2 Muslims should face Masjid al-Haram'. So the direction will depend on where one thinks the Masjid al-Haram is, or was. But it is uncontroversial that the original direction of prayer was towards Jerusalem, which is not in contention as the site of the original Masjid. (Although a more plausible location for Abraham.) Gibson also says things like 'And so in one town we have evidence of three different qiblas' (page 95). Which can only mean the actual orientation of the buildings, rather than the correct orientation. To be consistent, the definition needs to be changed to 'The direction the builders thought one should face.....' Or perhaps he should insist that the only true qibla is towards Petra.

In the article on the Kaaba yet another definition is given. 'In this capacity, as the direction of prayer, the Ka'aba is referred to as the Qibla.'

Altogether, it might be best to stop using the word 'qibla' to avoid verbal confusions about such a contentious issue. The empirical question is then about the orientation of old mosques.

Not that the idea of the orientation of a building is entirely clear. What is in question is the orientation of the prayer wall, which is what the congregation faces when praying. The orientation is the direction of a straight line drawn perpendicular to this wall. It is assumed that the idea of the direction of a line on the Earth’s surface is clear enough, and can be determined by modern technology. The idea of a straight line as the shortest distance between two points would probably have been acceptable to the earliest mosque builders. The direction of a straight line can then be specified by any two places it passes through, without the need for an external frame of reference.

Thanks for the updates, it is well written. We will also do a bit of editing ourselves to the article in due course, as mentioned. If you need any help with templates when you refine the references, this page explains how to quote or cite verses using the Quote, Quran, and Quran-range templates, as well as the various hadith citation templates. See also this page. A useful method is to look at the source edit page for an existing article to see how templates are typically used and how different types of sources are typically cited (the Islamic views on the shape of the earth article is a good one for that purpose). Lightyears (talk) 22:54, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

1. ↑ As pointed out by Patricia Crone, How Did the Quranic Pagans Make a Living? , also in her Collected Studies (2016).
2. ↑ https://www.islamic-awareness.org/history/islam/inscriptions/haram1
3. ↑ More evidence for multiple authors is provided by Tommaso Tesei.
4. ↑ Most recently in Let the Stones Speak.
5. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra, ‘Climate’ and ‘Byzantine Period’.
6. ↑ The Mecca Mystery (2018).
7. ↑ https://www.academia.edu/87024335/MOSQUE_ORIENTATIONS
8. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qibla ‘Calculations with spherical trigonometry’ and ‘North America’.