Academia.eduAcademia.edu

Outline

Title
Abstract
References

Bibliography of qibla determinations 2018

Profile image of David A KingDavid A King
Uploaded (2019)
visibility

…

description

15 pages

link

1 file

Abstract

There is an enormous amount of literature in the Muslim sources on the sacred direction or qibla toward the sacred Kaaba in Mecca. Here we are concerned only with modern studies of historical literature which discussed the ways in which one can actually determine the qibla. Essentially, the qibla directions used in early times were often derived using astronomical horizon phenomena such as the cardinal and solstitial directions-north, south, east & and west, or summer or winter sunrise & sunset, or the risings and settings of specific qibla-stars-as outlined in the little-known genre of folk astronomical kutub dalā'il al-qibla, "books on the (non-mathematical) means of finding the qibla". The mathematically-derived qiblas (9th century onwards) were calculated from medieval geographical coordinates, using either simple approximate techniques or complicated trigonometric or geometrical procedures. In most major centres there was a palette of different qibla-directions favoured by one group or another, documented in the medieval sources, which partly accounts for the wide diversity of orientations of historical mosques in any given region. Since the mathematically-derived qiblas depend on geographical coordinates, the qibla directions derived by Muslims centuries ago with (by modern standards, inaccurate) coordinates are obviously not going to be identical with modern qibla directions such as one can now access for any location on earth by means of the internet. If one is interested in investigating orientations of historical mosques it is advisable to first try to understand how Muslims dealt with the determination of the qibla, keeping in mind that modern qibla-directions are less relevant than one might first think. No general bibliography on qibla determinations has been prepared before. The author will appreciate information on any relevant works that have been inadvertently omitted. References to specific medieval Islamic legal works on the qibla are to be found in the writings of Neumann, Dallal, King, Rius, and Schmidl. See also the article "Ḳibla (legal aspects)" by A. J. Wensinck in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn.

Related papers

070 - KING 1985 - The Sacred Direction in Islam: A Study of the Interaction of Religion and Science in the Middle Ages
David A King

In Islam the sacred direction is towards Mecca, or more precisely, towards the sacred Kaaba in Mecca. Muslims face this direction in prayer and during various other ritual acts. Muslim astronomers from the 9th century onwards dealt with the determination of the qibla, as the sacred direction is called in Arabic. They treated it as a problem of mathematical geography and they produced highly sophisticated trigonometric and geometric solutions. They even compiled tables displaying the qibla as an angle to the local meridian for each degree of latitude and longitude difference from Mecca. But these were not the only means used for finding the qibla, a fact immediately apparent from the orientation of medieval mosques, which in general do not face Mecca as they are supposed to. This paper addresses the question: what means were used in practice? The answer is contained in texts on folk astronomy, in which celestial phenomena are discussed without recourse to theory or computation, and texts on the sacred law, in which the qibla is always discussed because of its fundamental importance in Islamic practice. In these sources, astronomical risings and settings were advocated for the qibla. The reason for using astronomical horizon phenomena to face the Kaaba was that the Kaaba itself is astronomically aligned, a fact known in the medieval period but only rediscovered a few years ago. These findings cast new light on the origin of the Kaaba, and the author suggests that it may have been built originally as an architectural representation of an early Arab cosmology.

View PDFchevron_right
The Whole World in His Hands: What a Qibla Indicator Illuminates About Islamic Community in Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Turkey
Meghan Doyle

Global Tides, 2018

View PDFchevron_right
Investigation on the Accuracy of Existing Qibla Directions of the Mosques from Different Periods: A Case Study in Çorum City, Turkey
İbrahim Murat Ozulu

Tehnicki vjesnik - Technical Gazette, 2018

The main goal of this study is to introduce two different approaches (i.e. based on spherical trigonometric formula and using sun qibla time) that can be used to determine the qibla directions of the existing mosques were oriented with sufficient accuracy according to Islamic criteria. In order to do this, eight mosques which were constructed in different periods, 14th, 16th, 17th and 21st centuries in Çorum City, Turkey, were handled. The existing qibla directions of each mosque were calculated with spherical trigonometric formula and compared with the precisely calculated real qibla directions. The existing qibla directions of the same mosques were once more compared with the real qibla directions which were determined by using the qibla time calculated based on the location and the time of the measurement. The results show that the qibla directions of the recently built mosques were oriented to Kâ’ba with higher accuracy while the earlier with more deviations. However, the result...

View PDFchevron_right
Sacred Orientation: The Qibla As Ritual, Metaphor, And Identity Marker In Early Islam
Ari Gordon

2018

Scholars of early Islam often take for granted the title of this study—that facing the qibla (i.e. the geographic direction of worship) is an important Islamic ritual and that Muḥammad’s turn toward the Kaʿba after facing Jerusalem for prayer marked the identity of his nascent community. This postulate is rarely questioned, but the mechanisms by which the qibla expressed and inscribed a collective Islamic identity remain largely unexplored. Rather, study of Islam’s sacred direction tends to focus on either historical reconstruction of Islamic origins or on the science of qibla-calculation. The former seeks to question or establish the location of the original qibla, while the latter examines the mathematics, astronomy, and cartography used to ascertain the direction of prayer with growing precision from around the Muslim oikumene. This dissertation probes, instead, the discursive and ritual processes through which qibla-rhetoric and qibla-practice fostered a sense of group belonging...

View PDFchevron_right
The Culmination of Islamic Sacred Geography
David A King

Geography and Religious Knowledge in the Medieval World, 2021

In Islam,the sacreddirection or qibla is towardthe sacred KaabainMecca, which edifice is astronomicallyaligned. Various ritual acts from prayer to burial are to be performed in the sacred direction. Muslim scholars devised two sets of solutions for finding the qibla from anyl ocality.T he first involved as acred geographyw ith the world divided around the Kaaba and the qibla in each sector defined by an astronomical horizonp henomenon. The second involved mathematical geographyw ith the qibla calculated by exactorapproximate mathematical procedures, albeit using medieval geographical coordinates.Thisd ichotomyt os ome extent explains the orientation of medievalIslamic religious architecture. In this paper,the ultimateachievements in each tradition willb ep resented and compared; as erious investigation of orientations is ataskfor the future.

View PDFchevron_right
Al-qibla and the New Spherical Trigonometry: The Examples of al-Bīrūnī and al-Marrākushī [Al-qibla et la Nouvelle Trigonométrie Sphérique: Les Exemples d'al-Bīrūnī et al-Marrākushī]
Randy K Schwartz

The development of spherical trigonometry as a mature discipline can be seen in the evolution of precise methods for calculating al-qibla, the sacred direction to Mecca. Solutions devised during the classical Islamic period grew less and less reliant on concepts that had been inherited from Greek and Indian astronomy. This study focuses on the calculations of al-qibla carried out by Abū al-Rayhān al-Bīrūnī in his al- Qānūn al-Mas'ūdī (Ghazna, c. 1035 CE) and by Abū al-Hasan 'Alī al-Marrākushī in his Jāmi ' almabādi' wa al-ghāyāt fī 'ilm al-mīqāt (probably Cairo, c. 1280 CE). In quite different ways, each approach synthesized elements of prior traditions but in the service of a new type of trigonometry, one that treats angles on the surface of a sphere as well as angles in the interior.

View PDFchevron_right
Facing Mecca from Java: Two Treatises on the Establishment of the qibla, and Their Scholarly and Social Context
Philipp Bruckmayr

Islamic Law and Society, 2024

Between the 1870s and 1902, the Jakarta-based Sayyid ʽUthmān b. ʽAbd Allāh al-ʽAlawī wrote two epistles on the correct establishment of the qibla. Questions on the qibla and, controversially, on correcting the faulty direction of prayer in several mosques in Southeast Asia, surfaced in the late 18th century and reappeared periodically until well into the 20th century. Seeking to change the established qibla of a mosque represented not only a strong claim to religious authority, but also a direct assault on the legitimacy of local religious leaders. Thus, Sayyid ʽUthmān’s epistles were aimed not only at cementing his scholarly status, but also at intervening in the social cleavages of the time. This contribution will analyze the author’s two treatises on the qibla and situate them within their scholarly and social context.

View PDFchevron_right
Qibla Direction Accuracy Analysis Based on Astronomy (Google Earth), Perspective of Islamic Law
Samsuddin Samsuddin

Journal of Islam and Science

Qibla is defined as the building of the Ka'bah or the direction of Muslims in carrying out a worship, especially prayer, so we need a method that can be used as a guide in determining the direction of Qibla in worship. This study aims to determine the accuracy of the Qibla direction of mosques in Tanete Riattang and Tanete Riattang Barat Districts as measured using astronomy (Google Earth), and the study of Islamic law views the measurement of Qibla direction using astronomy. The method used in this study is a qualitative method, namely the method used to process ideas, reviews and views of experts, as well as descriptive qualitative data analysis methods, namely comparing theoretical studies and realities in the field. The results showed that the method of determining the Qibla direction used in this study using the Google Earth software is relatively easy, very accurate and efficient, but people prefer to determine the Qibla direction by using a compass and also by using the sun's shadow which is known to have quite a difference significant (less accurate). Therefore, the involvement and concern of the government, in this case the Ministry of Religion, as well as competent parties in the field of astrology (determination of the Qibla direction) are needed. Qibla is the direction of the Muslims in worship, therefore we must try our best to determine the direction of Qibla as accurately as possible, considering the growing development of intellectual civilization, especially in the field of astronomy. So that in the future uniformity of direction in worship can be achieved.

View PDFchevron_right
Some remarks on the appearance of the mosque: the introduction of the niche-miḥrāband the change of the qibla
IOSR Journals

Despite historical sources ascribe the foundation of the main mosques of many cities to the years of the conquests, the earliest archaeological evidences date back to the beginning of the 8 th century. With very few exceptions, there are indeed no traces of this class of building before this date. It must be pointed out that the identification of a building as mosque often rely on the presence of the miḥrāb or on the orientation of the building toward Mecca. An examination of historical sources highlighted that these pivotal features in identifying a building as a mosque was only introduced at the beginning of the 8 th century. At this time many mosques were rebuilt by order of the amīr al-muʾminīn al-Walīd I (705-715). Since historical sources and archaeological data attribute to the same time span this process of transformation, it seems likely that the archaeological visibility of this kind of building could be due to the definition of its peculiar characteristics during the reign of al-Walīd I.The qibla and the miḥrāb-niche are commonly the elements that identify a building as a mosque, but neither were adopted in the early days. As is well known, the niche 1 first appeared between 707 and 710 when the amīr al-muʿminīn al-Walīd I ordered the rebuilding of the Prophet"s Mosque in Madīna and introduced the niche-shaped miḥrāb-or mujawwaf, i.e. concave 2-for the very first time 3. Archaeological proof and information found in the literary sources has led scholars to suppose that during the early years of the Hijra the qibla was not a datable element of mosque foundations or it was very approximate 4. The studies carried out by D.A. King on folk astronomy and Islamic sacred geography, however, made it clear that the first mosques were not oriented according to a specific direction, but rather on the observation of stars 5. According to King"s discoveries, a new analysis of the history of the congregational mosques in the main cities of the dār al-islām founded during the rāshidūn era has been pursued. It emphasises a transformation process involving both the adoption of a new qibla and the introduction of the niche-shaped miḥrāb: in fact, the written sources seem to suggest a sort of leitmotiv according to which the governors in office were ordered by the caliph al-Walīd I (705-715) to pull down the mosque of their city in order to rebuild it larger. Moreover, they were commanded to give it a new qibla, also introducing the niche of miḥrāb 6 , which archaeological data does indeed seem to confirm first appeared at the beginning of the 8 th century providing evidence of an overall reconstruction program. This contribution will deal with this process of transformation of the mosque as witnessed in the main centres of the dār al-islām. King"s studies mentioned above have shed light on the principles followed to determine the qibla, which were based on observation of the stars and their motion in order to astronomically align the walls of the early mosques with those of the Kaʿba(fig. 1) 7. In the text reported by Balādhurī (d. 892) concerning the foundation of Kūfa 8 , the word qiblawas adopted as to indicate the west, namely towards the winter sunset 9. A similar case is featured in Fusṭāṭ: when in 641-42 (21 H) ʿAmr b. al-ʿAṣ founded the miṣr and its first congregational mosque 10 , he was assisted in fixing the qibla by eighty Companions of the Prophet ordering them to set the orientation of the mosque according to astronomical observation 11. According to al-Nuwayrī (d. 1333), when governor ʿUqba b. Nāfiʿ decided to build the mosque-initially only traced on the ground-in Qayrawān, after its foundation in 670 (50H) 12 , he spent a lot of time observing the rise and set of the stars, in particular seeking to grasp the azimuth of the sunrise 13 .

View PDFchevron_right
KING 2018 - The Petra fallacy - Early mosques do face the Sacred Kaaba in Mecca but Dan Gibson doesn't know how
David A King
View PDFchevron_right
King: Bibliography of qibla determinations 1 Dec 2018 . Bibliography of books, articles and websites on historical qibla determinations David A. King, Frankfurt www.davidaking.academia.edu There is an enormous amount of literature in the Muslim sources on the sacred direction or qibla toward the sacred Kaaba in Mecca. Here we are concerned only with modern studies of historical literature which discussed the ways in which one can actually determine the qibla. Essentially, the qibla directions used in early times were often derived using astronomical horizon phenomena such as the cardinal and solstitial directions – north, south, east & and west, or summer or winter sunrise & sunset, or the risings and settings of specific qibla-stars – as outlined in the little-known genre of folk astronomical and legal literature labelled ‫قبلة‬%% % % % % ‫ل ال‬%% % % % % ‫تب دالئ‬%% % % % % ‫ ك‬, kutub dalā’il al-qibla, “books on the (non-mathematical) means of finding the qibla“. The mathematically-derived qiblas (9th century onwards) were calculated from medieval geographical coordinates, using either simple approximate techniques or complicated trigonometric or geometrical procedures. In most major centres there was a palette of different qibla-directions favoured by one group or another, documented in the medieval sources, which partly accounts for the wide diversity of orientations of historical mosques in any given region. Since the mathematically-derived qiblas depend on geographical coordinates, the qibla directions derived by Muslims centuries ago with (by modern standards, inaccurate) coordinates are obviously not going to be identical with modern qibla directions such as one can now access for any location on earth by means of the internet. If one is interested in investigating orientations of historical mosques it is advisable to first try to understand how Muslims dealt with the determination of the qibla, keeping in mind that modern qibla-directions are less relevant than one might first think. No general bibliography on qibla determinations has been prepared before. The author will appreciate information on any relevant works that have been inadvertently omitted. References to specific medieval Islamic legal works on the qibla are to be found in the writings of Neumann, Dallal, King, Rius, and Schmidl. See also the article “Ḳibla (legal aspects)” by A. J. Wensinck in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn. 1 King: Bibliography of qibla determinations 1 Dec 2018 Early Western works The first modern scholar to turn his attention to mathematical qibla determinations was the German historian of Islamic mathematics and astronomy Karl Schoy (1877-1925), on whom see the obituary by J. Ruska in Isis 9 (1927), pp. 83-95. His collected papers are available as Beiträge zur arabisch-islamischen Mathematik und Astronomie, 2 vols., Frankfurt, 1988. The next was the American scholar Edward S. Kennedy (1912-2009), the leading scholar of the history of Islamic astronomy in the 2nd half of the 20th century, on whom see the obituary and bibliography in Suhayl – International Journal for the History of the Exact and Natural Sciences in Islamic Civilisation 9 (2009-2010), pp. 185-214. His collected papers are published in Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences, Beirut, 1983. It is planned to put this volume online as well as his publications on various works by two of the most significant Muslim scientists, al-Bīrūnī and al-Kāshī, as well as the monumental Geographical coordinates of localities from Islamic sources. For numerous writings by the two next generations of specialists in the history of Islamic astronomy and mathematics on mathematical methods for finding the qibla – especially Richard P. Lorch, Julio Samsó, Jan P. Hogendijk, J. Lennart Berggren, Ahmad Dallal and DAK – see www.staff.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/islam/ qibla.htm.  Reprints by Variorum of various studies by DAK are the following: Islamic Mathematical Astronomy (1986/1993); Islamic Astronomical Instruments (1987/1995); Astronomy in the Service of Islam (1993); and Islamic Astronomy and Geography (2012). All publications of DAK are available at davidaking.academia.edu. This bibliography does not include the standard references to the primary manuscript sources for the history of Islamic science, namely, the works of Heinrich Suter, Carl Brockelmann, Charles A. Storey, Fuat Sezgin, Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu et al., & Boris A. Rosenfeld et al. See further https://ismi.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de (2018). General works on Islamic astronomy (selected) Carlo Alfonso Nallino, “[Islamic Astronomy]”, in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, James Hastings, ed., 12 vols., Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, vol. 12 (1921), pp. 88-101. DAK, “Islamic astronomy”, in Christopher Walker, ed., Astronomy before the Telescope, London: British Museum Press, 1996, pp. 143-174, repr. in Islamic Astronomy and Geography, I, also available on www.muslimheritage.com/article/islamic-astronomy. Robert G. Morrison, “Islamic astronomy and astrology”, in Robert Irwin, ed.,  New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 4, Cambridge, etc.: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 589-613. Kennedy et al., Studies: E. S. Kennedy, Colleagues and Former Students, Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences, David A. King and Mary Helen Kennedy, eds., Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1983. Kennedy Festschrift: From Deferent to Equant: Studies in the History of Science in the Ancient and Medieval Near East in Honor of E. S. Kennedy, David A. King and George Saliba, eds., Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 500 (1987). 2 King: Bibliography of qibla determinations 1 Dec 2018 DAK, “Science in the service of religion: The case of Islam”, impact of science on society (UNESCO), no. 159 (1991), pp. 245-262 (available in several languages), repr. in Astronomy in the Service of Islam, I, available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/ 0008/000885/088535eo.pdf. – , In Synchrony with the Heavens – Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Islamic Civilization, vol. 1: The Call of the Muezzin, & vol. 2: Instruments of Mass Calculation, Leiden, etc.,: Brill, 2004-05. Clive N. Ruggles, ed., Handbook of archaeoastronomy and ethnoastronomy, 3 vols., New York, etc.,: Springer, 2015, contains the following articles: King, “Astronomy in the service of Islam”, pp. 181-196; Clemency Montelle, “Islamic mathematical astronomy‘‘, pp. 1909-1916; Tofigh Heidarzadeh, “Islamic astronomical instruments and observatories‘‘, pp. 1917-1926 (more references below). Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn., 13 vols., Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960-1980, especially articles “Anwā’ (pre-Islamic calendrical system)”; “Asṭurlāb (astrolabe)”; “Hay’a (astronomy); “Ḳibla (sacred direction)”; “Layl wa-nahār” (simple timekeeping); “Makka as centre of the world” (sacred geography); “Mīḳāt” (astronomical timekeeping and times of prayer)”; “Mizwala (sundials)”; “Rubʿ (quadrant)”; “Nudjūm” (star-lore); “Ru’yat al- hilāl (lunar crescent visibility)”; “Shakkāziyya (universal projections)”; “Ṭâsa (magnetic compass)”; and “Zīdj (astronomical handbooks and tables)”. BEA: Thomas Hockey et al., eds., The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, New York: Springer, 2007, available at http://islamsci.mcgill.ca/RASI/BEA/, and now https:// ismi.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/biographies-list (2018) (This is the standard reference work on the most significant Muslim astronomers.) DSB: Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 14 vols. and 2 supp. vols., New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970-80. (Biographical articles are sometimes preferable to the corresponding ones in BEA.) Lennart Berggren, Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam, New York, etc.: Springer, 1986. E. S. Kennedy & Mary Helen Kennedy, Geographical coordinates of localities from Islamic sources, Frankfurt: IGAIW, 1987. Islamic folk astronomy (selected) There is no general survey. Various aspects are treated in the following works: Paul Kunitzsch, Untersuchungen zur Sternnomenklatur der Araber, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1961. – , article “Ibn Qutayba”, in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, XI, pp. 246-247 (no article in BEA!). Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, VII: Astrologie – Meteorologie und Verwandtes, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1979, pp. 336-370. Charles Pellat, articles “Anwā’” & “Layl wa-nahār”, in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn. Anton H. Heinen, Islamic cosmology: A study of as-Suyūtī’s al-Hay’a al-saniya fi-l-hay’a al- sunnīya, Beirut, 1982 (a work for prime importance for understanding an independent, truly Islamic Arab cosmology, reviewed in Journal of the American Oriental Society 109 (1989), pp. 124-127). Miquel Forcada, “Mīqāt en los calendarios andalusíes”, al-Qantara 11 (1990), pp. 59-69. – , “Astrology and Folk Astronomy: The Mukhtasar min al-Anwā’ of Aḥmad b. Fāris”, Suhayl – International Journal for the History of the Exact and Natural Sciences in Islamic Civilisation 1 (2000), pp. 107-205 3 King: Bibliography of qibla determinations 1 Dec 2018 DAK, “Folk astronomy in the service of religion: The case of Islam”, in Clive L. N. Ruggles & Nicholas J. Saunders, eds., Astronomies and Cultures, Niwot CO: University Press of Colorado, 1994, pp. 124-138, and idem, “Applications of folk astronomy and mathematical astronomy to aspects of Muslim ritual”, The Arabist (Budapest Studies in Arabic), 13-14 (1995): 251-274. – , “A survey of arithmetical shadow-schemes for time-reckoning”, in idem, In Synchrony with the Heavens, III: pp. 457-528, previously published in Oriens 32 (1990), pp. 191-249. Petra G. Schmidl, Volkstümliche Astronomie im islamischen Mittelalter. Zur Bestimmung der Gebetszeiten und der Qibla bei al-Aṣbaḥî, Ibn Raḥîq und al-Fârisî, 2 vols., Leiden, etc.: Brill, 2007. (The first study of its kind, based on medieval Yemeni treatises on folk astronomy compiled by legal scholars and astronomers.) Daniel M. Varisco, “Islamic folk astronomy”, in Helaine Selin, ed., Astronomy across cultures – The [!] history of non-western astronomy, Dordrecht, etc.: Kluwer, 2000, pp. 615-650. Clive N. Ruggles, ed., Handbook of archaeoastronomy and ethnoastronomy, 3 vols., New York, etc.,: Springer, 2015, contains the following articles (see also above): Petra G. Schmidl, “Islamic folk astronomy”, pp. 1927-1934; Daniel Martin Varisco, “Folk astronomy and calendars in Yemen”, pp. 1935-1940. Danielle Adams, “Two Deserts – One Sky – Arab star calendars”, at onesky.arizona.edu (accessed 2018) (a new website featuring aspects of Arab star-lore in a visual and reader- friendly fashion, at the same time respecting the original Arabic star-names). Gerald R. Tibbetts, Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean before the coming of the Portuguese ... , (Oriental Translation Fund, N.S. XLII), London: The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1971, repr. 1981. (It is often overlooked that Arab navigation is an aspect of Islamic folk astronomy, not of Islamic astronomy, which is based on observations and calculations.) Archaeoastronomy and ethnoastronomy Clive L. N. Ruggles, ed., Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy, 3 vols., New York, etc.,: Springer, 2015. (A work of monumental importance covering many relevant topics, with various chapters in Part II: Methods and Practices, and overviews by experts on the situation in most parts of the world, although, alas for our present purposes, Central and South Arabia are not covered.) Selected works on the determination of the qibla General DAK, “The sacred direction in Islam: A study of the interaction of religion and science in the Middle Ages”, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 10 (1985), pp. 315-328. – , “The determination of the sacred direction in Islam”, in World-maps for finding the direction and distance to Mecca, Leiden: Brill & London: Furqan Foundation, 1999, ch. 2, pp. 47-127. – , “The sacred geography of Islam”, in Mathematics and the Divine – A Historical Study, T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans, eds., Dordrecht: Elsevier, 2005, pp. 161-178, repr. in idem, Islamic Astronomy and Geography, VIII. Jerusalem and Mecca M. S. M. Saifullah, M. Ghoniem, ʿAbd al-Rahman Robert Squires & M. Ahmed, “The Qibla of early mosques: Jerusalem or Makkah?”’ (2001), available at www.islamic- awareness.org/History/Islam/Dome_Of_The_Rock/qibla.html (consulted 2016). 4 King: Bibliography of qibla determinations 1 Dec 2018 Angelika Neuwirth, “From the Sacred Mosque to the Remote Temple – Sūrat al-Isrā’ between text and commentary’’, in Jane Dammen McAuliffe & Barry D. Walfish & Joseph W. Goering, eds., With Reverence for the Word – Medieval scriptural exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 376-407. Simon Shtober, ““Lā yajūz an yakūn fī al-ʿālam li-Llāhi qiblatayn”: Judaeo-Islamic polemics concerning the qibla (625-1010)”, Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue 5 (1999), pp. 85-98. Uri Rubin, “Between Arabia and the Holy Land: A Mecca-Jerusalem axis of sanctity”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 34 (2008), pp 345-362. The orientation of the Kaaba Gerald S. Hawkins & David A. King, “On the astronomical orientation of the Kaaba”, Journal for the History of Astronomy 13 (1982), pp. 102-109, repr. in idem, Astronomy in the Service of Islam, XII (the first announcement, based on investigations of satellite images by GSH & and medieval Arabic texts on folk astronomy by DAK). DAK, “Faces of the Kaaba”, The Sciences (The New York Academy of Sciences) 22:5 (May/ June, 1982), pp. 16-20, and 22:6 (September, 1982), p. 2 (letter to the editor protesting an inappropriate subtitle added without author’s knowledge). Islamic sacred geography DAK, “Makka. iv. As centre of the world [sacred geography and orientation of mosques]”, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn., vol. VI, pp. 180-187, repr. in idem, Astronomy in the Service of Islam, X. – , “Some Ottoman schemes of sacred geography”, Proceedings of the II. International Symposium on the History of Turkish and Islamic Science and Technology, Istanbul, 1986, 2 vols., Istanbul: Istanbul Technical University, 1986, I, pp. 45-57. (Helps explain the orientation of Turkish mosques.) Petra G. Schmidl & Mónica Herrera Casais, “The earliest known schemes of Islamic sacred geography”, in A. Akasoy & W. Raven, eds., Islamic thought in the Middle Ages: Studies in text, transmission and translation in honour of Hans Daiber, Leiden: Brill, 2008, pp. 275-300. DAK, “The sacred geography of Islam”, in Mathematics and the Divine – A Historical Study, T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans, eds., Dordrecht: Elsevier, 2005, pp. 161-178, repr. in Islamic Astronomy and Geography, VIII. See also Schmidl, Volkstümliche Astronomie, for detailed analysis of some Yemeni schemes. The following two works have very little to do with the sacred geography discussed here: Annemarie Schimmel, “Sacred geography in Islam”, in Jamie Scott & P. Simpson-Housley, eds., Sacred places and profane spaces: Essays in the geographics of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, New York Greenwood, 1991, pp. 163-175. Thomas Jøhnk Hoffmann, “Dis/integrating the centre – Space, narrative, and cognition with special reference to the hadjdj and the Ka’ba, Temenos 35-36 (1999-2000), pp. 25-38. Studies of folk astronomical and legal texts on finding the qibla DAK, “Al-Bazdawī on the qibla in early Islamic Transoxania”, Journal for the History of Arabic Science 7 (1983/1986), pp. 3-38, repr. in idem, Islamic Astronomy and Geography, IX (text, translation and analysis of a highly significant and informative Arabic text by the late-11th-century judge and Ḥanafī legal scholar Abu ‘l-Yusr al-Bazdawī). 5 King: Bibliography of qibla determinations 1 Dec 2018 – , “Architecture and astronomy: The ventilators of medieval Cairo and their secrets”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 104 (1984), pp. 97-133 (based in part on the most significant legal work on the qibla, a treatise by al-Dimyāṭī, and historical records by al- Maqrīzī – see below). Mònica Rius Piniés, La Alquibla en al-Andalus y al-Magrib al-Aqsà, Barcelona: Institut “Millás Vallicrosa” de Història de la Ciència Àrab, 2000. (This is the first investigation of determination of the qibla in al-Andalus and the Maghrib in the light of medieval folk astronomical and legal texts on the qibla.) Petra G. Schmidl, Volkstümliche Astronomie im islamischen Mittelalter. Zur Bestimmung der Gebetszeiten und der Qibla bei al-Asbahî, Ibn Rahîq und al-Fârisî, 2 vols., Leiden, etc.: Brill, 2007. (The first study of its kind, based on medieval Yemeni treatises on folk astronomy compiled by legal scholars and astronomers.) Ahmad Dallal, Islam, science, and the challenge of history, New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2010 (features the legal discussions surrounding the disputed mosque orientations in Fez). Andreas Neumann, “Die Orientierung in Gebetsrichtung (istiqbāl al-qibla) in der islamischen Rechtswissenschaft. Entwurf eines Papers erstellt für Sonja Brentjes auf Basis von Enzyklopädien des fiqh”, June, 2011, available at www.academia.edu/ 29820776/ (accessed 2018) (not for beginners). Determination of the qibla by geometry or trigonometry General overviews Karl Schoy, article “Ḳibla. ii. Astronomical aspects” in Encyclopedia of Islam, 1st edn., Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1913-38. DAK, “Ḳibla. ii. Astronomical aspects”, in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, new edition, vol. V, fascs. 79-80, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1979, pp. 83-88, repr. in idem, Astronomy in the Service of Islam, IX. – , “The sacred geography of Islam”, in Mathematics and the Divine – A Historical Study, T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans, eds., Dordrecht: Elsevier, 2005, pp. 161-178, repr. in idem, Islamic Astronomy and Geography, VIII. al-Bīrūnī and his monumental work on mathematical geography al-Bīrūnī’s treatise ‫ن‬%% % % % ‫اك‬%% % % % ‫ات االم‬%% % % % ‫هاي‬%% % % % ‫د ن‬%% % % % ‫دي‬%% % % % ‫تاب تح‬%% % % % ‫ ك‬, Taḥdīd nihāyāt al-amākin, on mathematical geography and the determination of the qibla is available in the critical edition of P. Bulgakov in ‫ية‬%% %‫عرب‬%% %‫ات ال‬%% %‫طوط‬%% %‫د املخ‬%% %‫لة معه‬%% %‫ مج‬, Majallat Maʿhad al-makhṭūṭāt al-ʿarabiyya (Cairo) 8 (1962); Jamil Ali, transl., The Determination of the Coordinates of Cities ... by al-Bīrūnī, Beirut: American University of Beirut Press, 1967; and E. S. Kennedy, A Commentary upon al-Bīrūnī’s treatise Taḥdīd nihāyāt al-amākin – An 11th century treatise on Mathematical Geography, Beirut: American University of Beirut Press, 1973. (This book, compiled in Ghazna ca. 1025, is arguably the most significant work on the subject ever compiled, but it was not widely circulated and survives in a unique manuscript. Published materials on al-Bīrūnī are accessible through www.jphogendijk.nl/biruni.html.) Methods to determine the meridian E. S. Kennedy, The Exhaustive treatise on Shadows by Abu al-Rayḥān ... al-Bīrūnī – Translation and commentary, 2 vols., Aleppo: Institute for the History of Arabic Science, University of Aleppo, 1976, II, pp. 135-172. 6 King: Bibliography of qibla determinations 1 Dec 2018 – , “Bīrūnī ’s graphical determination of the local meridian”, Scripta mathematica 24 (1959), pp. 251-255, repr. in idem et al., Studies in the Islamic exact sciences, pp. 613-617. – , “al-Bīrūnī on determining the meridian”, The Mathematics Teacher 56 (1963), pp. 635-637, repr. in idem et al., Studies in the Islamic exact sciences, pp. 618-620. The use of the magnetic compass Petra Schmidl, “Two early Arabic sources on the magnetic compass”, Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 1 (1997-98), pp. 81-132. DAK, article “Ṭāsa [= magnetic compass]” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, also idem, World-maps, pp. 107-124, and In Synchrony with the Heavens, X: 94-101. Qibla-methods proposed by individual Muslim scientists An earlier list of relevant literature is on the website www.staff.science.uu.nl/ ~gent0113/islam/qibla.htm by Robert van Gent. DAK, “The earliest Islamic mathematical methods and tables for finding the direction of Mecca”, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften 3 (1986), pp. 82-149, with corrections listed ibid. 4 (1987/88), p. 270, repr. in idem, Astronomy in the Service of Islam, XIV (analyzes materials from the 8th and 9th centuries, including simple approximate procedures and already sophisticated tables displaying the qibla as an approximate function of longitude and latitude difference from Mecca). – , King, “al-Khwârizmî and new trends in mathematical astronomy in the ninth century”, Occasional Papers on the Near East (New York University, Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies) 2 (1983), 43 pp., esp. pp. 12-16. – , “Too many cooks ... – A newly-rediscovered account of the first Islamic geodetic measurements”, Suhayl – International Journal for the History of the Exact and Natural Sciences in Islamic Civilisation (Barcelona) 1 (2000), pp. 207-241, repr. in idem, Islam and Science, IV, pp. 451-485, and E-X. (One of the objects of the exercise was to determine, for the first time, the qibla at Baghdad.) E. S. Kennedy & Yusuf ‘Id, “A letter of al-Bīrūnī: Ḥabash al-Ḥāsib’s analemma for the qibla”, Historia Mathematica 1 (1973), pp. 3-11, repr. in Kennedy et al., Studies in the Exact Sciences, pp. 621-629 (the first method associated with an individual astronomer) Karl Schoy, “Abhandlung von al-Faḍl b. Ḥātim al-Nairīzī: Über die Richtung der Qibla ... ” Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Math.-phys. Klasse, 1922, pp. 55-68, repr. in idem, Beiträge zur arabisch-islamischen Mathematik, 2 vols., Frankfurt: IGAIW, 1988, I, pp. 252-265. Jan P. Hogendijk, “Al-Nayrīzī’s mysterious determination of the azimuth of the qibla at Baghdad”, SCIAMVS 1 (2000), pp. 49-70. Richard P. Lorch, “Naṣr ibn ʿAbdallāh’s instrument for finding the qibla”, Journal for the History of Arabic Science 6 (1982), pp. 123-131. Takanori Suzuki, “A solution of the qibla-problem by Abu ‘l-Qāsim Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghandajānī”, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften 4 (1987/88), pp. 139-148. Karl Schoy, “Abhandlung des … Ibn al-Haitam (Alhazen) über die Bestimmung der Richtung der Qibla”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 75 (1921), pp. 242-253, repr. in idem, Beiträge, I, pp. 230-241. (Ibn al-Haytham had two different methods for finding the qibla.) 7 King: Bibliography of qibla determinations 1 Dec 2018 Ahmad Dallal, “Ibn al-Haytham’s universal solution for finding the direction of the qibla by calculation”, Arabic Science and Philosophy 5 (1995), pp. 145-193. (This article describes Ibn al-Haytham’s other method.) Ali Moussa, “Mathematical methods in Abū al-Wafā’’s Almagest and the qibla determinations”, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 21 (2011), pp. 1-56. Kennedy, E. S., “Applied mathematics in the tenth century: Abū'l-Wafāʾ calculates the distance Baghdad – Mecca”, Historia Mathematica 11 (1984), pp. 193–206. – , E. S. Kennedy, A Commentary upon al-Bîrûnî's Kitâb Tahdîd nihayât al-amâkin, 1973, based on the translation by Jamil Ali,  The Determination of the coordinates  of cities: al-Bîrûnî’s [nihâyat] al-amâkin, 1966 (the most important single work on the qibla by the leading scientist of medieval Islam). J. Lennart Berggren, “A comparison of four analemmas for determining the azimuth of the qibla”, Journal for the History of Arabic Science 4 (1980), pp. 69-80. — , “The Origins of al-Bīrūnī’s “Method of the Zījes” in the theory of sundials”, Centaurus 28 (1985), pp. 1-16. Julio Samsó & Honorino Mielgo, “Ibn Isḥāq al-Tūnisī and Ibn Muʿādh al-Jayyānī on the qibla”, 25 pp., first published in Samsó, Islamic astronomy and medieval Spain, Aldershot & Brookfield VT, 1994, VI. Joan Carandell, “An analemma for the determination of the azimuth of the qibla in the Risāla fī ʿilm al-ẓilāl of Ibn al-Raqqām”, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften 1 (1984), pp. 61-72. Jan P. Hogendijk, “The qibla table in the Ashrafī Zīj”, in Anton  von Gotstedter, ed., Ad Radices: Festband zum fünfzigjährigen Bestehen des Instituts für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994, pp. 81-94. Richard P. Lorch, “The qibla table attributed to al-Khāzinī”, Journal for the History of Arabic Science 4 (1980), pp. 259-264, repr. in idem, Arabic Mathematical Sciences: Instruments, Texts, Transmission, Aldershot & Brookfield VT: Ashgate, 1995. Ahmad S. Dallal, An Islamic Response to Greek Astronomy: Kitāb Ta‛dīl Hayʾat al-Aflāk of Sadr al-Sharī‛a, Leiden, etc.: E. J. Brill, 1995, esp. ch. 18 (pp. 296-309 & 448-451). Randy K. Schwartz, “Al-qibla and the new spherical trigonometry: The examples of al- Bīrūnī and al-Marrākushī”, Paper presented at Tenth Maghrebian Colloquium on the History of Arabic Mathematics (COMHISMA10), Tunis, Tunisia, May 31, 2010. (al- Marrākushī’s method was not derived by spherical trigonometry.) DAK, “al-Khalīlī’s qibla table”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 34 (1975), pp. 81-122, repr. in Islamic Mathematical Astronomy, XIII, also available at http://muslimheritage.com/ article/al-khalili-spherical-astronomy (describes a spectacular table from 14th-century Damascus showing the qibla in degrees and minutes for each degree of longitude and latitude in the entire Muslim world). Glen Van Brummelen, “The numerical structure of al-Khalīlī’s tables”, Physis 28 (1991), pp. 667-697. (A brilliant investigation of al-Khalīlī’s universal auxiliary tables, concluding with suggestions about the way he compiled his universal qibla table.) – , “Seeking the Divine on Earth: The direction of prayer in Islam”, Math Horizons 21:1 (Sept. 2013), pp. 15-17. Cartographical solutions 8 King: Bibliography of qibla determinations 1 Dec 2018 Karl Schoy, “Die Mekka- oder Qiblakarte (Gegenazimutale mittabstandstreue Projektion mit Mekka als Kartenmitte)” (1917) (the first European map preserving direction and distance to Mecca at the centre). DAK & Richard P. Lorch, “Qibla charts, qibla maps, and related instruments’’, in J. B. Harley & David Woodward, eds., History of Cartography, vol. 2, book 1: Cartography in the traditional Islamic and South Asian societies, Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1992, pp. 189-205. DAK, “Two Iranian world maps for finding the direction and distance to Mecca”, Imago Mundi – The International Journal for the History of Cartography 49 (1997), pp. 62-82 and 1 pl. – , World-Maps for finding the direction and distance to Mecca: Innovation and tradition in Islamic science, Leiden: Brill & London: Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, 1999, xxix + 638 pp. – , “Safavid world-maps centred on Mecca – A third example and some new insights on their original inspiration”, in idem, In Synchrony with the Heavens, VIIc: pp. 823-846. Jan P. Hogendijk, “Three instruments for finding the direction and distance to Mecca: European cartography or Islamic astronomy?”, text of a lecture available at www.jphogendijk.nl/talks/qib.pdf (accessed 2018) (shows that the inspiration is Islamic). Instruments for finding the qibla DAK & Richard P. Lorch, “Qibla charts, qibla maps, and related instruments’’, in J. B. Harley & David Woodward, eds., History of Cartography, vol. 2, book 1: Cartography in the traditional Islamic and South Asian societies, Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1992, pp. 189-205. King, World-Maps for finding the direction of Mecca, pp. 89-124, and idem, In Synchrony with the heavens, I: 94-99. (On qibla-indicators in general.) Lists of historical qibla-values* for different localities DAK, World-Maps for finding the direction of Mecca, pp. 71-124 & 453-638. (Investigation of tables by the 12th-century scientist al-Khāzinī for 250 localities derived from a world- map based on the geographical tables of the 11th-century polymath al-Bīrūnī; the monumental anonymous 15th-century Timurid geographical table from Kish with qiblas and distances to Mecca for 274 localities; and various smaller Egyptian, Syrian and Iranian tables in manuscripts or engraved on instruments, as well as an Ottoman table of qiblas for 90 localities – see below.) – , “Mathematical geography in 15th-century Egypt – An episode in the decline of Islamic science”, Islamic Thought in the Middle Ages – Studies in Text, Transmission and Translation, in Honour of Hans Daiber, Anna Akasoy & Wim Raven, eds., (Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science, Texts and Studies, Hans Daiber, ed., vol. LXXV), Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2008, pp. 319-344, repr. in idem, Islamic astronomy and geography, XII. (An analysis of a 15th-century Egyptian geographical table for 425 localities.) – , “An Ottoman list of qibla-values for cities in the Ottoman Empire”, on www.davidaking.academia.edu (2018) (serves 90 localities, previously published in World-Maps ... ). * The reader should keep in mind that modern qibla-values (based on modern geographical coordinates) are different. Procedures for determine the meridian (incl. “the Indian circle”) 9 King: Bibliography of qibla determinations 1 Dec 2018 Note: Determining the meridian or local north-south line is a prerequisite to laying out the qibla. E. S. Kennedy, The Exhaustive treatise on Shadows by Abu al-Rayḥān ... al-Bīrūnī – Translation and commentary, 2 vols., Aleppo: Institute for the History of Arabic Science, University of Aleppo, 1976, II, pp. 135-172. – , “Bīrūnī’s graphical determination of the local meridian”, Scripta mathematica 24 (1959), pp. 251-255, repr. in idem et al., Studies in the Islamic exact sciences, pp. 613-617. – , “al-Bīrūnī on determining the meridian”, The Mathematics Teacher 56 (1963), pp. 635-637, repr. in idem et al., Studies in the Islamic exact sciences, pp. 618-620. Jamil Ali, trans., The Determination of the Coordinates of Cities ... by al-Bīrūnī, pp. 255-256, and E. S. Kennedy, A Commentary upon Bīrūnī’s Taḥdīd, pp. 214-215. Simple procedures for architects to lay out mosques Note: These existed in abundance, but no survey has been undertaken. Jamil Ali, trans., The Determination of the Coordinates of Cities ... by al-Bīrūnī, pp. 255-256, and E. S. Kennedy, A Commentary upon Bīrūnī’s Taḥdīd, pp. 214-215. (Six procedures for Ghazna proposed by al-Bīrūnī.) DAK, “The Ottoman mosques fallacy” (see below) (examples based on al-Bīrūnī). Orientations of mosques and religious architecture (by region) Note: Numerous works by historians of Islamic architecture leave out mention of the qibla and mosque orientations altogether. Those who do not but who ignore locally-accepted qibla-directions are not included here. General George Sarton, “Query: Orientation of the mihrab in mosques”, Isis 20 (1933), pp. 262-264, see also ibid., 24 (1935), pp. 109-111; 34 (1942), p. 2; 35 (1944), p. 176; & 38 (1947), pp. 95-96. (An interesting exchange which took place before any serious work had been done on the history of qibla determinations. Mainly concerned with the situation in the Maghrib.) DAK, “Astronomical alignments in medieval Islamic religious architecture”, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 385 (1982), pp. 303-312, repr. in Astronomy in the Service of Islam, XIII. – , “The orientation of medieval Islamic religious architecture and cities”, Journal for the History of Astronomy 26 (1995), pp. 253-274 (a new version is in In Synchrony with the Heavens, VIIa: 741-771. Suliman Bashear, “Qibla musharriqa and early Muslim prayer in churches”, The Muslim World 81 (1991), pp. 267-282. Michelina di Cesare, “A qibla mušarriqa for the first al-Aqṣà Mosque? A new stratigraphic, planimetric, and chronological reading of Hamilton’s excavation, ... ”, Annali, Sezione orientale 77 (2017) 66–96. Robert G. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as others saw it – A survey and evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian writings on early Islam, Princeton NT: Darwin Press, 1997, pp. 560-573 (a fresh approach to the qibla in early Islam). H. Masud Taj, “Facing the city: the influence of qibla on street-line orientation in Islamic cities”, Proceedings of Symposium on Mosque Architecture, College of Architecture & Planning, King Saud University, 1419H - 1999, 38 (1999), pp. 173-181. 10 King: Bibliography of qibla determinations 1 Dec 2018 Magdalena Pinker, “Supernatural motifs in chronicled descriptions of the foundation of early Arabic-Islamic towns”, HEMISPHERES 32 (2017), pp. 79-90. Hejaz V. V. Bartold = Васи́лий Влади́мирович Барто́льд = Wilhelm Barthold, “Zur Orientierung der ersten muhammedanischen Moscheen”, Der Islam 18 (1929): pp. 245-250, repr. in idem, Собрание сочинений = Collected works (Собрание сочинений, 9 vols., Moscow: Oriental Literature Publishing House = Издательство Восточной литературы), 1963-1977, vol. 6 (1966), pp. 537-542 (should be consulted). Iran Michael E. Bonine, “The morphogenesis of Iranian cities’’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (1979): 208-224 (a study of singular importance). Central Asia DAK, “Al-Bazdawī on the qibla in early Islamic Transoxania”, Journal for the History of Arabic Science 7 (1983/1986), pp. 3-38, repr. in idem, Islamic Astronomy and Geography, IX. Cairo Christel M. Kessler, “Mecca-oriented architecture and urban growth of Cairo”, in Atti del terzo congresso di studi arabi e islamici (Ravello, 1-6 September 1966), Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1967, p. 425. – , ”Mecca-oriented urban architecture in Mamluk Cairo: The Madrasa-Mausoleum of Sultan Shaʿban II”, in Arnold H. Green, ed., In Quest of an Islamic Humanism: Arabic and Islamic Studies in Memory of Mohamed al-Nowaihi, Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1984, pp. 97-108. – , “Mecca-oriented architecture within an urban context: On a largely unexplored building practice of medieval Cairo”, in Antony Hutt, ed., Arab Architecture: Past and Present, An exhibition presented by the Arab-British Chamber of Commerce at the Royal Institute of British Architects, London, 1984, Durham: Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Durham, 1983, pp. 13-20. – , “Mecca-oriented building in mediaeval Cairo”, in Focus on Arab Architecture, Past . . . and Present, A Record of a Four-week Exhibition and Associated Functions, London, 24 January-17 February 1984, London: Arab-British Chamber of Commerce, 1984, pp. 44-52. – , “The ‘Imperious Reasons’ that flawed the minaret-flanked setting of Sulṭān Ḥasan’s Mausoleum in Cairo -- Another note on medieval Cairene on-site planning according to street-alignments and Mecca-orientations”, Damaszener Mitteilungen (German Archaeological Institute, Damascus) 11 (1999), pp. 307-316, pls. 40-41. DAK, “Architecture and astronomy: The ventilators of medieval Cairo and their secrets”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 104 (1984), pp. 97-133; with a revised version in In Synchrony with the Heavens, VIIb: 741-771) (the orientation of astronomically-aligned medieval ventilators reveals the secret of the orientations of the street-plan of Fatimid Cairo and Fatimid & Mamluk religious architecture in Cairo). al-Andalus DAK, “Some medieval values of the qibla at Cordova”, an appendix to “Three sundials from Islamic Andalusia”, Journal for the History of Arabic Science 2 (1978), pp. 358-392, esp. pp. 370-387, repr. in idem, Islamic astronomical instruments, XV. 11 King: Bibliography of qibla determinations 1 Dec 2018 Alfonso Jiménez, “La qibla extraviada’’, Cuadernos de Madīnat al-Zahrā' 3 (1991): 189-209 (an important study, the first of its kind for any region of the medieval Muslim world, presenting the orientations of all surviving historical mosques in the Iberian Peninsula). Mònica Rius Piniés, La Alquibla en al-Andalus y al-Magrib al-Aqsà, Barcelona: Institut “Millás Vallicrosa” de Història de la Ciència Àrab, 2000. (This is the first investigation of mosque orientations in al-Andalus and the Maghrib in the light of medieval folk astronomical and legal texts on the qibla. The following three entries are representative of a dozen articles by the same author.) – , “La qibla des mosquées andalouses”, in Les Andalousies de Damas à Cordoue, Paris: Institut du Monde Arabe, 2000, p. 205 – , “La alquibla de Madinat al-Zahra y otras mezquitas andalusíes”, in Catálogo de la exposición El Esplendor de los Omeyas cordobeses, Granada: Fundación Legado Andalusī, 2001, pp. 424-430. – , “Qibla in the Mediterranean’’, in Ruggles, ed., Handbook of archaeoastronomy and ethnoastronomy, 2015, pp. 1687-1694. DAK, “The enigmatic orientation of the Great Mosque of Córdoba”, Suhayl – International Journal for the History of the Exact and Natural Sciences in Islamic Civilisation (2018), to appear, preprint available on www.davidaking.academia since 2016 (shows how the street-plan of the Roman suburb of Colonia Patricia influenced the layout of the Mosque and how schemes of Islamic sacred geography confirmed that the Mosque was appropriately oriented with respect to the NW wall of the Kaaba). The Maghrib Marcel Philibert, La Qibla et le miḥrāb. Differences constatées dans la direction des mosquées maghrébines, raisons possibles, orientation par des procedés modernes, Algiers: privately distributed, 1972 (inspired and valuable). Michael E. Bonine, “The sacred direction and city structure: A preliminary analysis of the Islamic cities of Morocco’’, Muqarnas 7(1990): 50-72 (fundamental). – , “Romans, astronomy and the qibla: urban form and orientation of Islamic cities of Tunisia’’, in J. C. Holbrook & R. T. Medupe & J. O. Urama, eds., African Cultural  Astronomy – Current Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy Research in Africa, Berlin (?): Springer, 2008, pp. 145-178 (fundamental). Mònica Rius Piniés, La Alquibla en al-Andalus y al-Magrib al-Aqsà, Barcelona: Institut “Millás Vallicrosa” de Història de la Ciència Àrab, 2000. (This is the first investigation of mosque orientations in al-Andalus and the Maghrib in the light of medieval folk astronomical and legal texts on the qibla.) Abbey Stockstill, “A tale of two mosques: Marrakesh’s Masjid al-Jami’ al-Kutubiyya”, Muqarnas – An Annual on the Visual Cultures of the Islamic World, Gülru Necipoğlu, ed., 35 (2018): 65-82. (Marks a new era in the history of Islamic architecture.) Turkey Frank E. Barmore, “Turkish mosque orientation and the secular variation of the magnetic declination”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 44 (1985), pp. 81-98. – , “Some Ottoman schemes of sacred geography”, Proceedings of the II. International Symposium on the History of Turkish and Islamic Science and Technology, Istanbul, 1986, 2 vols., Istanbul: Istanbul Technical University, 1986, I, pp. 45-57. (Helps understand the orientation of Turkish mosques.) 12 King: Bibliography of qibla determinations 1 Dec 2018 Mustafa Yilmaz & Ibrahim Tiryakioglu, “The astronomical orientation of the historical Grand mosques in Anatolia (Turkey)”, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 72 (2018), pp. 565–590 (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-018-0215-1) (important). The Balkans Milutin Tadić & Zlatko J. Kovačić, “Orientation of the fifteenth and sixteenth century mosques in the former Yugoslavia”, J. Geogr. Inst. Cvijic ( = Journal of the Geographical Institute “Jovan Cvijić” SASA, (Belgrade) 66:1 (2016), pp. 1–17, Greece George Pantazis and Evangelia Lambrou, Investigating the orientation of eleven mosques in Greece”, Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 12:2 (2009), pp. 159-166. Miscellania Recent publications in languages other than English Pierre Thuissier, “L’Islam et la science : le problème de la qibla”, La Recherche 18:185 (février 1987), pp. 252-255 (based entirely on DAK). Jan P. Hogendijk, “Middeleeuws islamitische methoden voor het vinden van de richting van Mekka”, Nieuwe Wiskrant 12:4 (1993), pp. 45-52. DAK, “Kibla. Aspects astronomiques”, and “Makka. Comme centre du monde”, in Encyclopédie de l’Islam, Leiden: Brill, 1955-2005. – , “La science au service de la religion : le cas de l’Islam”, Impact : science et société (UNESCO, Paris) no. 159 (1991), pp. 283-302 (also available in English and several other languages, but not Arabic; this French version available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ images/0008/000885/088535fo.pdf). – , “Astronomie et société musulmane : qibla, gnomonique, mîqât”, in Rushdi Rashed, ed., in collaboration with Régis Morelon, Histoire des sciences arabes, 3 vols., Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1997, I, pp. 173-215. – , “Astronomie im Dienste des Islam”, in Anton von Gotstedter, ed., Ad radices – Festband zum fünfzigjährigen Bestehen des Instituts für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994, pp. 99-124. – , “Astronomie und Mathematik als Gottesdienst: Das Beispiel Islam”, in Jochen Brüning and Eberhard Knobloch, eds., Die mathematischen Wurzeln der Kultur – Mathematische Innovationen und ihre kulturellen Folgen, Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2005, pp. 91-123. – , “La scienza al servizio della religione: il caso dell’Islâm”, in Clelia Sarnelli Cerqua, & Ornella Marra & Pier Giovanni Pelfer, eds., La civiltà islamica e le scienze, Atti del Simposio Internazionale, Firenze, Palazzo Panciatichi, 23 Novembre 1991, Florence: CUEN, 1995, pp. 129-150. – , ‫الم‬%% ‫ى در اس‬%% ‫اب‬%% ‫بله ي‬%% ‫ ق‬, Finding Qibla in Islam, translated into Persian by Hossein Nahid, Tehran, 1379 HS, 90 pp. Miscellaneous non-historical writings Mohammad Ilyas, A Modern Guide to astronomical calculations of Islamic calendar, times & qibla, Kuala Lumpur: Berita Publishing, 1984, pp. 169-174. – , “Qibla and Islamic prayer times”, in: Helaine  Selin, ed., Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997, pp. 834-836. Denis Roegel, “An extension of al-Khalīlī’s qibla table to the entire world”, HAL archives ouvertes.fr (research report) 2008, pp. 1-779, at <inria-00336090>. (Why?) 13 King: Bibliography of qibla determinations 1 Dec 2018 Waldo Tobler, “Qibla, and related, map projections”, Cartography and Geographic Information Science 29 (2002), pp. 17-23. S. Kamal Abdali, “The Correct Qibla” (1997), available at http://nurlu.narod.ru/qibla.pdf (accessed 2018). (Deals mainly with the dichotomy on the qibla in North America between those Muslims who favour south-east and those who favour south-west. Weak on historical matters and on relevant bibliography.) Enter the revisionists Note: Recent works which investigate historical mosque orientations using MODERN directions of Mecca inevitably come up with false conclusions. Here two examples. Dan Gibson and the aftermath Website: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Gibson_(historian). Dan Gibson, Qur’ânic Geography: a survey and evaluation of the geographical references in the Qur’ân with suggested solutions for various problems and issues, Saskatoon, Canada: Independent Scholars Press, 2011 (several reviewers, none informed about orientations). – , Early Islamic Qiblas: A Survey of mosques built between 1AH/622 C.E. and 263 AH/876 C.E. (with maps, charts and photographs), 296 pp., Vancouver BC: Independent Scholars Press, 2017 (several reviewers, none informed about orientations). DAK, “From Petra back to Mecca – From pibla back to qibla” (2017), available at www.davidaking.academia.edu, also www.muslimheritage.com/article/from-petra- back-to-makka (critique of Gibson, Early Islamic Qiblas). Gibson’s responses in 2017 to King: www.researchgate.net/publication/321708416, also www.academia.edu/34514746/. Édouard-Marie Gallez’s critique (2017): “King et Khan : Crone et Cook ont-ils renié leur travail ?”, at www.academia.edu/35454474/ DAK reply to Père Gallez: “Gibson & Gallez – False piblas and fake calumnias - Did the elusive “Judéo-Nazaréens” use astrolabes to negotiate the narrow Siq of Petra?” at davidaking.academia.edu, currently (2018) at www.academia.edu/35868755/. Rick Oakes, “Evaluation of Dr David King’s book review of Dan Gibson “Early Islamic Qiblas”” (2018), available at www.academia.edu/37676717/. Gibson, “Comparing two qibla theories” (2018), at http://thesacredcity.ca/ Comparing%20Two%20Qibla%20Theories.pdf. – , “Qibla Tool” (2018), available at http://thesacredcity.ca/data/index.html. Mark Anderson, “Is Petra Islam’s true birthplace—or Mecca?”, at https:// understandingislam.today/ui3/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/ Is_Petra_Islams_true_birthplace.pdf. (This should be required reading for anyone interested in the subject. Unfortunately DAK is reported to have said that the earliest Muslims “calculated” the qibla but this is what Gibson falsely claims for directions to Petra, whereas in fact I had stated that they “determined” it. They calculated nothing.) Ahmed Amine Khelifa, L’islam de Pétra : Réponse à la thèse de Dan Gibson – présentation et revue critique, privately published (www.ahmedamine.net), n.d. [2018] (problematic). Video: Al Fadi & Jay Smith, “The earliest mosques don’t face Mecca! Gibson’s new research” (ca. 30 mins.), available at https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=0ZKcpDEEJnA (reveals the utility of Gibson’s ‘findings’ for certain interest groups). DAK, “The Petra fallacy – Early mosques do face the Sacred Kaaba in Mecca but Dan Gibson doesn’t know how” (2018), available at www.davidaking.academia. 14 King: Bibliography of qibla determinations 1 Dec 2018 Excursus: The archaeoastronomical reality of Petra and Nabataea Christine Dell’Amore, “Ancient city of Petra built to align with the Sun – The Nabatean culture erected the city to highlight solstices, equinoxes” (2014), https:// news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140317-petra-jordan-nabatean-sun- civilization-ancient-culture/. Tom Paradise & Christopher Angel, “Nabataean architecture and the Sun”, ArcUser (esri.com) (Winter 2015), pp. 16-19, available at www.esri.com/esri-news/arcuser/ winter-2015/nabataean-architecture-and-the-sun. Juan Antonio Belmonte & A. César González-García, “Petra and the Nabataeans”, in Clive L. N. Ruggles, ed., Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy, Springer, 2015, pp. 1813-1822. – & – & Andrea Polcaro, “Light and Shadows over Petra: astronomy and landscape in Nabataean lands”, Nexus Network Journal 15 (2013), pp. 487-501, available at www.iac.es/proyecto/arqueoastronomia/media/Belmonteetal_Nexus_Preprint.pdf. Liritzis & F. M. Al-Otaibi & B. Castro & A. Drivaliari, “Nabataean tombs orientation by remote sensing: provisional results”, Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 15:3 (2015), pp. 289-299 (on 32 tombs in Petra and Madā’in Ṣāliḥ). See also DAK, “Astronomical alignments”, pp. 307-307 and 312, nn. 10-11, for references to literature on potential astronomical alignments in Central and Southern Arabia. These references from almost 40 years ago need to be updated. A. J. Deus A. J. Deus, “Orientation of structures in early islam” (2016), at www.academia.edu/ 28103240/. (Reveals the author’s penchant for investigating historical orientations by means of modern maps and geographical data, ignoring known medieval geographical limitations and mathematical procedures.) – , “Monuments of Jihad – The thought process of determining qibla orientations by Turks”, at www.academia.edu/37688323/ (text), and “Raw Analysis Turkish Mosque Orientations ‘Monuments of Jihad’”, at www.academia.edu/37688075/ (graphics), and “Flipbook for Turkish Mosque orientations” (data flipped), at www.academia.edu/ 37688045/, all accessed Nov., 2018. (Based on an illusion.) DAK, “The Ottoman mosque fallacy – Places of worship facing the Kaaba or “Monuments of Jihad”? A. J. Deus has got it all hopelessly wrong” (Nov., 2018), on davidaking.academia.edu. 15

References (125)

  1. DAK, "Science in the service of religion: The case of Islam", impact of science on society (UNESCO), no. 159 (1991), pp. 245-262 (available in several languages), repr. in Astronomy in the Service of Islam, I, available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/ 0008/000885/088535eo.pdf. -, In Synchrony with the Heavens -Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Islamic Civilization, vol. 1: The Call of the Muezzin, & vol. 2: Instruments of Mass Calculation, Leiden, etc.,: Brill, 2004-05.
  2. Clive N. Ruggles, ed., Handbook of archaeoastronomy and ethnoastronomy, 3 vols., New York, etc.,: Springer, 2015, contains the following articles: King, "Astronomy in the service of Islam", pp. 181-196; Clemency Montelle, "Islamic mathematical astronomy'', pp. 1909-1916; Tofigh Heidarzadeh, "Islamic astronomical instruments and observatories'', pp. 1917-1926 (more references below). Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn., 13 vols., Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960-1980, especially articles "Anwā' (pre-Islamic calendrical system)"; "Asṭurlāb (astrolabe)"; "Hay'a (astronomy);
  3. "Ḳibla (sacred direction)"; "Layl wa-nahār" (simple timekeeping); "Makka as centre of the world" (sacred geography);
  4. "Mīḳāt" (astronomical timekeeping and times of prayer)"; "Mizwala (sundials)"; "Rubʿ (quadrant)"; "Nudjūm" (star-lore); "Ru'yat al- hilāl (lunar crescent visibility)"; "Shakkāziyya (universal projections)"; "Ṭâsa (magnetic compass)"; and "Zīdj (astronomical handbooks and tables)". BEA: Thomas Hockey et al., eds., The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, New York: Springer, 2007, available at http://islamsci.mcgill.ca/RASI/BEA/, and now https://
  5. DSB: Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 14 vols. and 2 supp. vols., New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970-80. (Biographical articles are sometimes preferable to the corresponding ones in BEA.)
  6. Lennart Berggren, Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam, New York, etc.: Springer, 1986. E. S. Kennedy & Mary Helen Kennedy, Geographical coordinates of localities from Islamic sources, Frankfurt: IGAIW, 1987.
  7. DAK, "Folk astronomy in the service of religion: The case of Islam", in Clive L. N. Ruggles & Nicholas J. Saunders, eds., Astronomies and Cultures, Niwot CO: University Press of Colorado, 1994, pp. 124-138, and idem, "Applications of folk astronomy and mathematical astronomy to aspects of Muslim ritual", The Arabist (Budapest Studies in Arabic), 13-14 (1995): 251-274.
  8. -, "A survey of arithmetical shadow-schemes for time-reckoning", in idem, In Synchrony with the Heavens, III: pp. 457-528, previously published in Oriens 32 (1990), pp. 191-249.
  9. Petra G. Schmidl, Volkstümliche Astronomie im islamischen Mittelalter. Zur Bestimmung der Gebetszeiten und der Qibla bei al-Aṣbaḥî, Ibn Raḥîq und al-Fârisî, 2 vols., Leiden, etc.: Brill, 2007. (The first study of its kind, based on medieval Yemeni treatises on folk astronomy compiled by legal scholars and astronomers.)
  10. Daniel M. Varisco, "Islamic folk astronomy", in Helaine Selin, ed., Astronomy across cultures -The [!] history of non-western astronomy, Dordrecht, etc.: Kluwer, 2000, pp. 615-650.
  11. Clive N. Ruggles, ed., Handbook of archaeoastronomy and ethnoastronomy, 3 vols., New York, etc.,: Springer, 2015, contains the following articles (see also above): Petra G. Schmidl, "Islamic folk astronomy", pp. 1927-1934;
  12. Daniel Martin Varisco, "Folk astronomy and calendars in Yemen", pp. 1935-1940.
  13. Danielle Adams, "Two Deserts -One Sky -Arab star calendars", at onesky.arizona.edu (accessed 2018) (a new website featuring aspects of Arab star-lore in a visual and reader- friendly fashion, at the same time respecting the original Arabic star-names).
  14. Gerald R. Tibbetts, Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean before the coming of the Portuguese ... , (Oriental Translation Fund, N.S. XLII), London: The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1971, repr. 1981. (It is often overlooked that Arab navigation is an aspect of Islamic folk astronomy, not of Islamic astronomy, which is based on observations and calculations.)
  15. Archaeoastronomy and ethnoastronomy Clive L. N. Ruggles, ed., Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy, 3 vols., New York, etc.,: Springer, 2015. (A work of monumental importance covering many relevant topics, with various chapters in Part II: Methods and Practices, and overviews by experts on the situation in most parts of the world, although, alas for our present purposes, Central and South
  16. General DAK, "The sacred direction in Islam: A study of the interaction of religion and science in the Middle Ages", Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 10 (1985), pp. 315-328.
  17. -, "The determination of the sacred direction in Islam", in World-maps for finding the direction and distance to Mecca, Leiden: Brill & London: Furqan Foundation, 1999, ch. 2, pp. 47-127.
  18. -, "The sacred geography of Islam", in Mathematics and the Divine -A Historical Study, T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans, eds., Dordrecht: Elsevier, 2005, pp. 161-178, repr. in idem, Islamic Astronomy and Geography, VIII.
  19. Jerusalem and Mecca M. S. M. Saifullah, M. Ghoniem, ʿAbd al-Rahman Robert Squires & M. Ahmed, "The Qibla of early mosques: Jerusalem or Makkah?"' (2001), available at www.islamic- awareness.org/History/Islam/Dome_Of_The_Rock/qibla.html (consulted 2016).
  20. Angelika Neuwirth, "From the Sacred Mosque to the Remote Temple -Sūrat al-Isrā' between text and commentary'', in Jane Dammen McAuliffe & Barry D. Walfish & Joseph W. Goering, eds., With Reverence for the Word -Medieval scriptural exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 376-407.
  21. Simon Shtober, ""Lā yajūz an yakūn fī al-ʿālam li-Llāhi qiblatayn": Judaeo-Islamic polemics concerning the qibla (625-1010)", Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue 5 (1999), pp. 85-98.
  22. Uri Rubin, "Between Arabia and the Holy Land: A Mecca-Jerusalem axis of sanctity", Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 34 (2008), pp 345-362. . King, "On the astronomical orientation of the Kaaba", Journal for the History of Astronomy 13 (1982), pp. 102-109, repr. in idem, Astronomy in the Service of Islam, XII (the first announcement, based on investigations of satellite images by GSH & and medieval Arabic texts on folk astronomy by DAK).
  23. DAK, "Faces of the Kaaba", The Sciences (The New York Academy of Sciences) 22:5 (May/ June, 1982), pp. 16-20, and 22:6 (September, 1982), p. 2 (letter to the editor protesting an inappropriate subtitle added without author's knowledge).
  24. -, "Architecture and astronomy: The ventilators of medieval Cairo and their secrets", Journal of the American Oriental Society 104 (1984), pp. 97-133 (based in part on the most significant legal work on the qibla, a treatise by al-Dimyāṭī, and historical records by al- Maqrīzī -see below).
  25. Mònica Rius Piniés, La Alquibla en al-Andalus y al-Magrib al-Aqsà, Barcelona: Institut "Millás Vallicrosa" de Història de la Ciència Àrab, 2000. (This is the first investigation of determination of the qibla in al-Andalus and the Maghrib in the light of medieval folk astronomical and legal texts on the qibla.)
  26. Petra G. Schmidl, Volkstümliche Astronomie im islamischen Mittelalter. Zur Bestimmung der Gebetszeiten und der Qibla bei al-Asbahî, Ibn Rahîq und al-Fârisî, 2 vols., Leiden, etc.: Brill, 2007. (The first study of its kind, based on medieval Yemeni treatises on folk astronomy compiled by legal scholars and astronomers.)
  27. Ahmad Dallal, Islam, science, and the challenge of history, New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2010 (
  28. Karl Schoy, article "Ḳibla. ii. Astronomical aspects" in Encyclopedia of Islam, 1st edn., Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1913-38.
  29. DAK, "Ḳibla. ii. Astronomical aspects", in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, new edition, vol. V, fascs. 79-80, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1979, pp. 83-88, repr. in idem, Astronomy in the Service of Islam, IX. -, "The sacred geography of Islam", in Mathematics and the Divine -A Historical Study, T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans, eds., Dordrecht: Elsevier, 2005, pp. 161-178, repr. in idem, Islamic Astronomy and Geography, VIII.
  30. % ‫ك‬ , Taḥdīd nihāyāt al-amākin, on mathematical geography and the determination of the qibla is available in the critical edition of P. ‫مج‬ , Majallat Maʿhad al-makhṭūṭāt al-ʿarabiyya (Cairo) 8 (1962);
  31. Jamil Ali, transl., The Determination of the Coordinates of Cities ... by al-Bīrūnī, Beirut: American University of Beirut Press, 1967; and E. S. Kennedy, A Commentary upon al-Bīrūnī's treatise Taḥdīd nihāyāt al-amākin -An 11th century treatise on Mathematical Geography, Beirut: American University of Beirut Press, 1973. (This book, compiled in Ghazna ca. 1025, is arguably the most significant work on the subject ever compiled, but it was not widely circulated and survives in a unique manuscript. Published materials on al-Bīrūnī
  32. S. Kennedy, The Exhaustive treatise on Shadows by Abu al-Rayḥān ... al-Bīrūnī -Translation and commentary, 2 vols., Aleppo: Institute for the History of Arabic Science, University of Aleppo, 1976, II, pp. 135-172.
  33. -, "Bīrūnī 's graphical determination of the local meridian", Scripta mathematica 24 (1959), pp. 251-255, repr. in idem et al., Studies in the Islamic exact sciences, pp. 613-617.
  34. -, "al-Bīrūnī on determining the meridian", The Mathematics Teacher 56 (1963), pp. 635-637, repr. in idem et al., Studies in the Islamic exact sciences, pp. 618-620.
  35. Petra Schmidl, "Two early Arabic sources on the magnetic compass", Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 1 (1997-98), pp. 81-132.
  36. DAK, article "Ṭāsa [= magnetic compass]" in Encyclopaedia of Islam, also idem, World-maps, pp. 107-124, and In Synchrony with the Heavens, X: 94-101.
  37. DAK, "The earliest Islamic mathematical methods and tables for finding the direction of Mecca", Zeitschrift für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften 3 (1986), pp. 82-149, with corrections listed ibid. 4 (1987/88), p. 270, repr. in idem, Astronomy in the Service of Islam, XIV (analyzes materials from the 8th and 9th centuries, including simple approximate procedures and already sophisticated tables displaying the qibla as an approximate function of longitude and latitude difference from Mecca).
  38. -, King, "al-Khwârizmî and new trends in mathematical astronomy in the ninth century", Occasional Papers on the Near East (New York University, Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies) 2 (1983), 43 pp., esp. pp. 12-16.
  39. -, "Too many cooks ... -A newly-rediscovered account of the first Islamic geodetic measurements", Suhayl -International Journal for the History of the Exact and Natural Sciences in Islamic Civilisation (Barcelona) 1 (2000), pp. 207-241, repr. in idem, Islam and Science, IV, pp. 451-485, and E-X. (One of the objects of the exercise was to determine, for the first time, the qibla at Baghdad.)
  40. E. S. Kennedy & Yusuf 'Id, "A letter of al-Bīrūnī: Ḥabash al-Ḥāsib's analemma for the qibla", Historia Mathematica 1 (1973), pp. 3-11, repr. in Kennedy et al., Studies in the Exact Sciences, pp. 621-629 (the first method associated with an individual astronomer)
  41. Karl Schoy, "Abhandlung von al-Faḍl b. Ḥātim al-Nairīzī: Über die Richtung der Qibla ... " Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Math.-phys. Klasse, 1922, pp. 55-68, repr. in idem, Beiträge zur arabisch-islamischen Mathematik, 2 vols., Frankfurt: IGAIW, 1988, I, pp. 252-265.
  42. Jan P. Hogendijk, "Al-Nayrīzī's mysterious determination of the azimuth of the qibla at Baghdad", SCIAMVS 1 (2000), pp. 49-70.
  43. Richard P. Lorch, "Naṣr ibn ʿAbdallāh's instrument for finding the qibla", Journal for the History of Arabic Science 6 (1982), pp. 123-131.
  44. Takanori Suzuki, "A solution of the qibla-problem by Abu 'l-Qāsim Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghandajānī", Zeitschrift für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften 4 (1987/88), pp. 139-148.
  45. Karl Schoy, "Abhandlung des … Ibn al-Haitam (Alhazen) über die Bestimmung der Richtung der Qibla", Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 75 (1921), pp. 242-253, repr. in idem, Beiträge, I, pp. 230-241. (Ibn al-Haytham had two different methods for finding the qibla.)
  46. Ahmad Dallal, "Ibn al-Haytham's universal solution for finding the direction of the qibla by calculation", Arabic Science and Philosophy 5 (1995), pp. 145-193. (This article describes Ibn al-Haytham's other method.)
  47. Ali Moussa, "Mathematical methods in Abū al-Wafā''s Almagest and the qibla determinations", Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 21 (2011), pp. 1-56.
  48. Kennedy, E. S., "Applied mathematics in the tenth century: Abū'l-Wafāʾ calculates the distance Baghdad -Mecca", Historia Mathematica 11 (1984), pp. 193-206.
  49. -, E. S. Kennedy, A Commentary upon al-Bîrûnî's Kitâb Tahdîd nihayât al-amâkin, 1973, based on the translation by Jamil Ali, The Determination of the coordinates of cities: al-Bîrûnî's [nihâyat] al-amâkin, 1966 (the most important single work on the qibla by the leading scientist of medieval Islam).
  50. J. Lennart Berggren, "A comparison of four analemmas for determining the azimuth of the qibla", Journal for the History of Arabic Science 4 (1980), pp. 69-80.
  51. -, "The Origins of al-Bīrūnī's "Method of the Zījes" in the theory of sundials", Centaurus 28 (1985), pp. 1-16.
  52. Julio Samsó & Honorino Mielgo, "Ibn Isḥāq al-Tūnisī and Ibn Muʿādh al-Jayyānī on the qibla", 25 pp., first published in Samsó, Islamic astronomy and medieval Spain, Aldershot & Brookfield VT, 1994, VI. Joan Carandell, "An analemma for the determination of the azimuth of the qibla in the Risāla fī ʿilm al-ẓilāl of Ibn al-Raqqām", Zeitschrift für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften 1 (1984), pp. 61-72.
  53. Jan P. Hogendijk, "The qibla table in the Ashrafī Zīj", in Anton von Gotstedter, ed., Ad Radices: Festband zum fünfzigjährigen Bestehen des Instituts für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994, pp. 81-94.
  54. Richard P. Lorch, "The qibla table attributed to al-Khāzinī", Journal for the History of Arabic Science 4 (1980), pp. 259-264, repr. in idem, Arabic Mathematical Sciences: Instruments, Texts, Transmission, Aldershot & Brookfield VT: Ashgate, 1995.
  55. Ahmad S. Dallal, An Islamic Response to Greek Astronomy: Kitāb Ta‛dīl Hayʾat al-Aflāk of Sadr al-Sharī‛a, Leiden, etc.: E. J. Brill, 1995, esp. ch. 18 (pp. 296-309 & 448-451).
  56. Randy K. Schwartz, "Al-qibla and the new spherical trigonometry: The examples of al- Bīrūnī and al-Marrākushī", Paper presented at Tenth Maghrebian Colloquium on the History of Arabic Mathematics (COMHISMA10), Tunis, Tunisia, May 31, 2010. (al- Marrākushī's method was not derived by spherical trigonometry.)
  57. DAK, "al-Khalīlī's qibla table", Journal of Near Eastern Studies 34 (1975), pp. 81-122, repr. in Islamic Mathematical Astronomy, XIII, also available at http://muslimheritage.com/ article/al-khalili-spherical-astronomy (describes a spectacular table from 14th-century Damascus showing the qibla in degrees and minutes for each degree of longitude and latitude in the entire Muslim world).
  58. Glen Van Brummelen, "The numerical structure of al-Khalīlī's tables", Physis 28 (1991), pp. 667-697. (A brilliant investigation of al-Khalīlī's universal auxiliary tables, concluding with suggestions about the way he compiled his universal qibla table.)
  59. -, "Seeking the Divine on Earth: The direction of prayer in Islam", Math Horizons 21:1 (Sept. 2013), pp. 15-17. Cartographical solutions Note: Determining the meridian or local north-south line is a prerequisite to laying out the qibla. E. S. Kennedy, The Exhaustive treatise on Shadows by Abu al-Rayḥān ... al-Bīrūnī -Translation and commentary, 2 vols., Aleppo: Institute for the History of Arabic Science, University of Aleppo, 1976, II, pp. 135-172.
  60. -, "Bīrūnī's graphical determination of the local meridian", Scripta mathematica 24 (1959), pp. 251-255, repr. in idem et al., Studies in the Islamic exact sciences, pp. 613-617.
  61. -, "al-Bīrūnī on determining the meridian", The Mathematics Teacher 56 (1963), pp. 635-637, repr. in idem et al., Studies in the Islamic exact sciences, pp. 618-620.
  62. Jamil Ali, trans., The Determination of the Coordinates of Cities ... by al-Bīrūnī, pp. 255-256, and E. S. Kennedy, A Commentary upon Bīrūnī's Taḥdīd, pp. 214-215.
  63. Jamil Ali, trans., The Determination of the Coordinates of Cities ... by al-Bīrūnī, pp. 255-256, and E. S. Kennedy, A Commentary upon Bīrūnī's Taḥdīd, pp. 214-215.
  64. George Sarton, "Query: Orientation of the mihrab in mosques", Isis 20 (1933), pp. 262-264, see also ibid., 24 (1935), pp. 109-111; 34 (1942), p. 2; 35 (1944), p. 176; & 38 (1947), pp. 95-96.
  65. DAK, "Astronomical alignments in medieval Islamic religious architecture", Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 385 (1982), pp. 303-312, repr. in Astronomy in the Service of Islam, XIII. -, "The orientation of medieval Islamic religious architecture and cities", Journal for the History of Astronomy 26 (1995), pp. 253-274 (a new version is in In Synchrony with the Heavens, VIIa: 741-771.
  66. Suliman Bashear, "Qibla musharriqa and early Muslim prayer in churches", The Muslim World 81 (1991), pp. 267-282.
  67. Michelina di Cesare, "A qibla mušarriqa for the first al-Aqṣà Mosque? A new stratigraphic, planimetric, and chronological reading of Hamilton's excavation, ... ", Annali, Sezione orientale 77 (2017) 66-96.
  68. Robert G. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as others saw it -A survey and evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian writings on early Islam, Princeton NT: Darwin Press, 1997, pp. 560-573 (a fresh approach to the qibla in early Islam).
  69. H. Masud Taj, "Facing the city: the influence of qibla on street-line orientation in Islamic cities", Proceedings of Symposium on Mosque Architecture, College of Architecture & Planning, King Saud University, 1419H -1999, 38 (1999), pp. 173-181.
  70. Magdalena Pinker, "Supernatural motifs in chronicled descriptions of the foundation of early Arabic-Islamic towns", HEMISPHERES 32 (2017), pp. 79-90.
  71. Hejaz V. V. Bartold = Васи ́лий Влади ́мирович Барто ́льд = Wilhelm Barthold, "Zur Orientierung der ersten muhammedanischen Moscheen", Der Islam 18 (1929): pp. 245-250, repr. in idem, Собрание сочинений = Collected works (Собрание сочинений, 9 vols., Moscow: Oriental Literature Publishing House = Издательство Восточной литературы), 1963-1977, vol. 6 (1966), pp. 537-542 (should be consulted).
  72. Iran Michael E. Bonine, "The morphogenesis of Iranian cities'', Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (1979): 208-224 (a study of singular importance).
  73. Central Asia DAK, "Al-Bazdawī on the qibla in early Islamic Transoxania", Journal for the History of Arabic Science 7 (1983/1986), pp. 3-38, repr. in idem, Islamic Astronomy and Geography, IX.
  74. Cairo Christel M. Kessler, "Mecca-oriented architecture and urban growth of Cairo", in Atti del terzo congresso di studi arabi e islamici (Ravello, 1-6 September 1966), Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1967, p. 425.
  75. -, "Mecca-oriented urban architecture in Mamluk Cairo: The Madrasa-Mausoleum of Sultan Shaʿban II", in Arnold H. Green, ed., In Quest of an Islamic Humanism: Arabic and Islamic Studies in Memory of Mohamed al-Nowaihi, Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1984, pp. 97-108.
  76. -, "Mecca-oriented architecture within an urban context: On a largely unexplored building practice of medieval Cairo", in Antony Hutt, ed., Arab Architecture: Past and Present, An exhibition presented by the Arab-British Chamber of Commerce at the Royal Institute of British Architects, London, 1984, Durham: Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Durham, 1983, pp. 13-20.
  77. -, "Mecca-oriented building in mediaeval Cairo", in Focus on Arab Architecture, Past . . . and Present, A Record of a Four-week Exhibition and Associated Functions, London, 24
  78. January-17 February 1984, London: Arab-British Chamber of Commerce, 1984, pp. 44-52. -, "The 'Imperious Reasons' that flawed the minaret-flanked setting of Sulṭān Ḥasan's Mausoleum in Cairo --Another note on medieval Cairene on-site planning according to street-alignments and Mecca-orientations", Damaszener Mitteilungen (German Archaeological Institute, Damascus) 11 (1999), pp. 307-316, pls. 40-41.
  79. DAK, "Architecture and astronomy: The ventilators of medieval Cairo and their secrets", Journal of the American Oriental Society 104 (1984), pp. 97-133; with a revised version in In Synchrony with the Heavens, VIIb: 741-771) (the orientation of astronomically-aligned medieval ventilators reveals the secret of the orientations of the street-plan of Fatimid Cairo and Fatimid & Mamluk religious architecture in Cairo).
  80. al-Andalus DAK, "Some medieval values of the qibla at Cordova", an appendix to "Three sundials from Islamic Andalusia", Journal for the History of Arabic Science 2 (1978), pp. 358-392, esp. pp. 370-387, repr. in idem, Islamic astronomical instruments, XV.
  81. Alfonso Jiménez, "La qibla extraviada'', Cuadernos de Madīnat al-Zahrā' 3 (1991): 189-209 (an important study, the first of its kind for any region of the medieval Muslim world, presenting the orientations of all surviving historical mosques in the Iberian Peninsula).
  82. Mònica Rius Piniés, La Alquibla en al-Andalus y al-Magrib al-Aqsà, Barcelona: Institut "Millás Vallicrosa" de Història de la Ciència Àrab, 2000. (This is the first investigation of mosque orientations in al-Andalus and the Maghrib in the light of medieval folk astronomical and legal texts on the qibla. The following three entries are representative of a dozen articles by the same author.)
  83. -, "La qibla des mosquées andalouses", in Les Andalousies de Damas à Cordoue, Paris: Institut du Monde Arabe, 2000, p. 205
  84. -, "La alquibla de Madinat al-Zahra y otras mezquitas andalusíes", in Catálogo de la exposición El Esplendor de los Omeyas cordobeses, Granada: Fundación Legado Andalusī, 2001, pp. 424-430.
  85. -, "Qibla in the Mediterranean'', in Ruggles, ed., Handbook of archaeoastronomy and ethnoastronomy, 2015, pp. 1687-1694.
  86. DAK, "The enigmatic orientation of the Great Mosque of Córdoba", Suhayl -International Journal for the History of the Exact and Natural Sciences in Islamic Civilisation (2018), to appear, preprint available on www.davidaking.academia since 2016 (shows how the street-plan of the Roman suburb of Colonia Patricia influenced the layout of the Mosque and how
  87. The Maghrib Marcel Philibert, La Qibla et le miḥrāb. Differences constatées dans la direction des mosquées maghrébines, raisons possibles, orientation par des procedés modernes, Algiers: privately distributed, 1972 (inspired and valuable).
  88. Michael E. Bonine, "The sacred direction and city structure: A preliminary analysis of the Islamic cities of Morocco'', Muqarnas 7(1990): 50-72 (fundamental).
  89. -, "Romans, astronomy and the qibla: urban form and orientation of Islamic cities of Tunisia'', in J. C. Holbrook & R. T. Medupe & J. O. Urama, eds., African Cultural Astronomy -Current Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy Research in Africa, Berlin (?): Springer, 2008, pp. 145-178 (fundamental).
  90. Mònica Rius Piniés, La Alquibla en al-Andalus y al-Magrib al-Aqsà, Barcelona: Institut "Millás Vallicrosa" de Història de la Ciència Àrab, 2000. (This is the first investigation of mosque orientations in al-Andalus and the Maghrib in the light of medieval folk astronomical and legal texts on the qibla.)
  91. Abbey Stockstill, "A tale of two mosques: Marrakesh's Masjid al-Jami' al-Kutubiyya", Muqarnas -An Annual on the Visual Cultures of the Islamic World, Gülru Necipoğlu, ed., 35 (2018): 65-82. (Marks a new era in the history of Islamic architecture.)
  92. Mustafa Yilmaz & Ibrahim Tiryakioglu, "The astronomical orientation of the historical Grand mosques in Anatolia (Turkey)", Archive for History of Exact Sciences 72 (2018), pp. 565-590 (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-018-0215-1) (important).
  93. The Balkans Milutin Tadić & Zlatko J. Kovačić, "Orientation of the fifteenth and sixteenth century mosques in the former Yugoslavia", J. Geogr. Inst. Cvijic ( = Journal of the Geographical Institute "Jovan Cvijić" SASA, (Belgrade) 66:1 (2016), pp. 1-17,
  94. Greece George Pantazis and Evangelia Lambrou, Investigating the orientation of eleven mosques in Greece", Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 12:2 (2009), pp. 159-166.
  95. Miscellania Recent publications in languages other than English Pierre Thuissier, "L'Islam et la science : le problème de la qibla", La Recherche 18:185 (février 1987), pp. 252-255 (based entirely on DAK).
  96. Jan P. Hogendijk, "Middeleeuws islamitische methoden voor het vinden van de richting van Mekka", Nieuwe Wiskrant 12:4 (1993), pp. 45-52.
  97. DAK, "Kibla. Aspects astronomiques", and "Makka. Comme centre du monde", in Encyclopédie de l'Islam, Leiden: Brill, 1955-2005.
  98. -, "La science au service de la religion : le cas de l'Islam", Impact : science et société (UNESCO, Paris) no. 159 (1991), pp. 283-302 (also available in English and several other languages, but not Arabic; this French version available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ images/0008/000885/088535fo.pdf).
  99. -, "Astronomie et société musulmane : qibla, gnomonique, mîqât", in Rushdi Rashed, ed., in collaboration with Régis Morelon, Histoire des sciences arabes, 3 vols., Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1997, I, pp. 173-215.
  100. -, "Astronomie im Dienste des Islam", in Anton von Gotstedter, ed., Ad radices -Festband zum fünfzigjährigen Bestehen des Instituts für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994, pp. 99-124.
  101. -, "Astronomie und Mathematik als Gottesdienst: Das Beispiel Islam", in Jochen Brüning and Eberhard Knobloch, eds., Die mathematischen Wurzeln der Kultur -Mathematische Innovationen und ihre kulturellen Folgen, Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2005, pp. 91-123.
  102. -, "La scienza al servizio della religione: il caso dell'Islâm", in Clelia Sarnelli Cerqua, & Ornella Marra & Pier Giovanni Pelfer, eds., La civiltà islamica e le scienze, Atti del Simposio Internazionale, Firenze, Palazzo Panciatichi, 23 Novembre 1991, Florence: CUEN, 1995, pp. 129-150.
  103. % % % ‫اس‬ ‫در‬ ‫%ى‬ % % % ‫%اب‬ % % % ‫ي‬ ‫%بله‬ % % % ‫ق‬ , Finding Qibla in Islam, translated into Persian by Hossein Nahid, Tehran, 1379 HS, 90 pp. Miscellaneous non-historical writings
  104. Mohammad Ilyas, A Modern Guide to astronomical calculations of Islamic calendar, times & qibla, Kuala Lumpur: Berita Publishing, 1984, pp. 169-174.
  105. -, "Qibla and Islamic prayer times", in: Helaine Selin, ed., Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997, pp. 834-836.
  106. Denis Roegel, "An extension of al-Khalīlī's qibla table to the entire world", HAL archives ouvertes.fr (research report) 2008, pp. 1-779, at <inria-00336090>. (Why?)
  107. Waldo Tobler, "Qibla, and related, map projections", Cartography and Geographic Information Science 29 (2002), pp. 17-23.
  108. S. Kamal Abdali, "The Correct Qibla" (1997), available at http://nurlu.narod.ru/qibla.pdf (accessed 2018).
  109. Dan Gibson, Qur'ânic Geography: a survey and evaluation of the geographical references in the Qur'ân with suggested solutions for various problems and issues, Saskatoon, Canada: Independent Scholars Press, 2011 (several reviewers, none informed about orientations).
  110. -, Early Islamic Qiblas: A Survey of mosques built between 1AH/622 C.E. and 263 AH/876 C.E. (with maps, charts and photographs), 296 pp., Vancouver BC: Independent Scholars Press, 2017 (several reviewers, none informed about orientations).
  111. DAK, "From Petra back to Mecca -From pibla back to qibla" (2017), available at www.davidaking.academia.edu, also www.muslimheritage.com/article/from-petra- back-to-makka (critique of Gibson, Early Islamic Qiblas).
  112. Gibson's responses in 2017 to King: www.researchgate.net/publication/321708416, also www.academia.edu/34514746/.
  113. Édouard-Marie Gallez's critique (2017): "King et Khan : Crone et Cook ont-ils renié leur travail ?", at www.academia.edu/35454474/ DAK reply to Père Gallez: "Gibson & Gallez -False piblas and fake calumnias -Did the elusive "Judéo-Nazaréens" use astrolabes to negotiate the narrow Siq of Petra?" at davidaking.academia.edu, currently (2018) at www.academia.edu/35868755/.
  114. Rick Oakes, "Evaluation of Dr David King's book review of Dan Gibson "Early Islamic Qiblas"" (2018), available at www.academia.edu/37676717/.
  115. Gibson, "Comparing two qibla theories" (2018), at http://thesacredcity.ca/ Comparing%20Two%20Qibla%20Theories.pdf.
  116. -, "Qibla Tool" (2018), available at http://thesacredcity.ca/data/index.html. Mark Anderson, "Is Petra Islam's true birthplace-or Mecca?", at https:// that the earliest Muslims "calculated" the qibla but this is what Gibson falsely claims for directions to Petra, whereas in fact I had stated that they "determined" it. They calculated nothing.)
  117. Ahmed Amine Khelifa, L'islam de Pétra : Réponse à la thèse de Dan Gibson -présentation et revue critique, privately published (www.ahmedamine.net), n.d. [2018] (problematic). Video: Al Fadi & Jay Smith, "The earliest mosques don't face Mecca! Gibson's new research" (ca. 30 mins.), available at https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=0ZKcpDEEJnA (reveals the utility of Gibson's 'findings' for certain interest groups). Nabataea Christine Dell'Amore, "Ancient city of Petra built to align with the Sun -The Nabatean culture erected the city to highlight solstices, equinoxes" (2014), https:// news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140317-petra-jordan-nabatean-sun- civilization-ancient-culture/.
  118. Tom Paradise & Christopher Angel, "Nabataean architecture and the Sun", ArcUser (esri.com) (Winter 2015), pp. 16-19, available at www.esri.com/esri-news/arcuser/ winter-2015/nabataean-architecture-and-the-sun.
  119. Juan Antonio Belmonte & A. César González-García, "Petra and the Nabataeans", in Clive L. N. Ruggles, ed., Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy, Springer, 2015, pp. 1813-1822.
  120. -& -& Andrea Polcaro, "Light and Shadows over Petra: astronomy and landscape in Nabataean lands", Nexus Network Journal 15 (2013), pp. 487-501, available at www.iac.es/proyecto/arqueoastronomia/media/Belmonteetal_Nexus_Preprint.pdf.
  121. Liritzis & F. M. Al-Otaibi & B. Castro & A. Drivaliari, "Nabataean tombs orientation by remote sensing: provisional results", Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 15:3 (2015), pp. 289-299 (on 32 tombs in Petra and Madā'in Ṣāliḥ).
  122. See also DAK, "Astronomical alignments", pp. 307-307 and 312, nn. 10-11, for references to literature on potential astronomical alignments in Central and Southern Arabia. These references from almost 40 years ago need to be updated.
  123. A. J. Deus A. J. Deus, "Orientation of structures in early islam" (2016), at www.academia.edu/ 28103240/. (Reveals the author's penchant for investigating historical orientations by means of modern maps and geographical data, ignoring known medieval geographical limitations and mathematical procedures.)
  124. -, "Monuments of Jihad -The thought process of determining qibla orientations by Turks", at www.academia.edu/37688323/ (text), and "Raw Analysis Turkish Mosque Orientations 'Monuments of Jihad'", at www.academia.edu/37688075/ (graphics), and "Flipbook for Turkish Mosque orientations" (data flipped), at www.academia.edu/ 37688045/, all accessed Nov., 2018. (Based on an illusion.)
  125. DAK, "The Ottoman mosque fallacy -Places of worship facing the Kaaba or "Monuments of Jihad"? A. J. Deus has got it all hopelessly wrong" (Nov., 2018), on davidaking.academia.edu.

Related papers

Bibliography of books, articles and websites on historical qibla determinations
David A King

There is an enormous amount of literature in the Muslim sources on the sacred direction or qibla toward the sacred Kaaba in Mecca. Here we are concerned only with modern studies of historical literature which discussed the ways in which one can actually determine the qibla. Essentially, the qibla directions used in early times were often derived using astronomical horizon phenomena such as the cardinal and solstitial directions -north, south, east & and west, or summer or winter sunrise & sunset, or the risings and settings of specific qibla-stars -as outlined in the little-known genre of folk astronomical and % % % % ‫ك‬ , kutub dalā'il al-qibla, "books on the (non-mathematical) means of finding the qibla". The mathematically-derived qiblas (9th century onwards) were calculated from medieval geographical coordinates, using either simple approximate techniques or complicated trigonometric or geometrical procedures. In most major centres there was a palette of different qibla-directions favoured by one group or another, documented in the medieval sources, which partly accounts for the wide diversity of orientations of historical mosques in any given region. Since the mathematically-derived qiblas depend on geographical coordinates, the qibla directions derived by Muslims centuries ago with (by modern standards, inaccurate) coordinates are obviously not going to be identical with modern qibla directions such as one can now access for any location on earth by means of the internet. If one is interested in investigating orientations of historical mosques it is advisable to first try to understand how Muslims dealt with the determination of the qibla, keeping in mind that modern qibla-directions are less relevant than one might first think. No general bibliography on qibla determinations has been prepared before. The author will appreciate information on any relevant works that have been inadvertently omitted. References to specific medieval Islamic legal works on the qibla are to be found in the writings of Neumann, Dallal, King, Rius, and Schmidl. See also the article "Ḳibla (legal aspects)" by A. J. Wensinck in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn.

View PDFchevron_right
An Ottoman list of qibla-values for localities in the Ottoman Empire
David A King

2018

View PDFchevron_right
The qibla by the sun and stars / Islamic sacred geography / sources
David A King

The sources for the study of historical notions of the world around the Kaaba are identified here for the first time. They include prescriptions for finding the sacred direction or qibla by means of the sun and stars.

View PDFchevron_right
168 - KING 1996 - Astronomy in Islamic society, qibla, gnomonics and prayer-times (< Enc. Hist. Arabic Science).pdf
David A King
View PDFchevron_right
The Qibla Direction of the Great Mosque Inherited from the Islamic Kingdom in Java: Myth and Astronomy Perspective
Fairuz Sabiq

ADDIN

The determination of the direction of the qibla at the Great Mosque that was inherited from the Islamic Kingdom of Java had executed by waliyullah. Through the folklore and history of the Land of Java or known as a Babad, those stories explained that waliyullah was the person who determining direction of Qibla by raising his right-hand and holding Masjidil Haram in Makkah. On the other hand, he was holding mustoko of the mosque. A line between his right and left-hand as a line of direction of the mosque’s Qibla. This kind of story was widespread in society as a myth. This myth was related to karomah (divine distinction) of waliyullah. Therefore, Qibla of the mosque could not be changeabled, eventhough, the qibla direction of Great Mosque is not unidirectional with direction of Masjidil Haram. People’s opinions said that Qibla direction of the mosque is right according to jihatul Ka’bah. This research is integrated with myth and astronomy. The results of this research are different f...

View PDFchevron_right
580 California St., Suite 400
San Francisco, CA, 94104
© 2025 Academia. All rights reserved