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The qibla () is the direction towards the Kaaba in the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, which is used by Muslims in various religious contexts, particularly the direction of prayer for the salah. In Islam, the Kaaba is believed to be a sacred site built by prophets Abraham and Ishmael, and that its use as the qibla was ordained by God in several verses of the Quran revealed to Muhammad in the second Islamic calendar. Prior to this revelation, Muhammad and his followers in Medina faced Jerusalem for prayers. Most contain a (a wall niche) that indicates the direction of the qibla.
The qibla is also the direction for entering the (sacred state for the hajj pilgrimage); the direction to which animals are turned during (Islamic slaughter); the recommended direction to make (supplications); the direction to avoid when relieving oneself or spitting; and the direction to which the deceased are aligned when Islamic burial. The qibla may be observed facing the Kaaba accurately () or facing in the general direction (). Most Islamic scholars consider that is acceptable if the more precise cannot be ascertained.
The most common technical definition used by Muslim astronomers for a location is the direction on the great circle—in the Spherical Earth—passing through the location and the Kaaba. This is the direction of the shortest possible path from a place to the Kaaba, and allows the exact calculation () of the qibla using a spherical trigonometric formula that takes the coordinates of a location and of the Kaaba as inputs (see formula below). The method is applied to develop and websites for Muslims, and to compile qibla tables used in instruments such as the qibla compass. The qibla can also be determined at a location by observing the shadow of a vertical rod on the twice-yearly occasions when the Sun is directly overhead in Mecca—on 27 and 28 May at 12:18 Saudi Arabia Standard Time (09:18 UTC), and on 15 and 16 July at 12:27 SAST (09:27 UTC).
Before the development of astronomy in the Islamic world, Muslims used traditional methods to determine the qibla. These methods included facing the direction that the companions of Muhammad had used when in the same place; using the setting and rising points of celestial objects; using the direction of the wind; or using due south, which was Muhammad's qibla in Medina. Early Islamic astronomy was built on its Indian astronomy and Greek counterparts, especially the works of Ptolemy, and soon Muslim astronomers developed methods to calculate the approximate directions of the qibla, starting from the mid-9th century. In the late 9th and 10th centuries, Muslim astronomers developed methods to find the Compass rose of the qibla which are equivalent to the modern formula. Initially, this "qibla of the astronomers" was used alongside various traditionally determined qiblas, resulting in much diversity in medieval Muslim cities. In addition, the accurate geographic data necessary for the astronomical methods to yield an accurate result was not available before the 18th and 19th centuries, resulting in further diversity of the qibla. Historical mosques with differing qiblas still stand today throughout the Muslim world. The spaceflight of a devout Muslim, Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2007 generated a discussion with regard to the qibla direction from low Earth orbit, prompting the Islamic authority of his home country, Malaysia, to recommend determining the qibla "based on what is possible" for the astronaut.
The qibla status of the Kaaba (or the Sacred Mosque in which it is located) is based on the verses 144, 149, and 150 of the Surat al-Baqara chapter of the Quran, each of which contains a command to "turn your face toward the Sacred Mosque" (). According to Islamic traditions, these verses were revealed in the month of Rajab or Sha'ban in the second Islamic calendar (623 CE), or about 15 or 16 months after Muhammad's Hegira. Prior to these revelations, Muhammad and the Muslims in Medina had prayed towards Jerusalem as the qibla, the same direction as the prayer direction—the —used by the Jews of Medina. Islamic tradition says that these verses were revealed during a prayer congregation; Muhammad and his followers immediately changed their direction from Jerusalem to Mecca in the middle of the prayer ritual. The location of this event became the Masjid al-Qiblatayn ("The Mosque of the Two Qiblas").
There are different reports of the qibla direction when Muhammad was in Mecca (before his migration to Medina). According to a report cited by historian al-Tabari and exegete (textual interpreter) al-Baydawi, Muhammad prayed towards the Kaaba. Another report, cited by al-Baladhuri and also by al-Tabari, says that Muhammad prayed towards Jerusalem while in Mecca. Another report, mentioned in Ibn Hisham's biography of Muhammad, says that Muhammad prayed in such a way as to face the Kaaba and Jerusalem simultaneously. Today Muslims of all branches, including the Sunni Islam and the Shia Islam, all pray towards the Kaaba. Historically, one major exception was the Qarmatians, a now-defunct syncretic Shia sect which rejected the Kaaba as the qibla; in 930, they sacked Mecca and for a time took the Kaaba's Black Stone to their centre of power in Al-Ahsa Oasis, with the intention of starting a new era in Islam.
Inside a mosque, the qibla is usually indicated by a , a niche in its qibla-facing wall. In a congregational prayer, the imam stands in it or close to it, in front of the rest of the congregation. The became a part of the mosque during the Umayyad period and its form was standardised during the Abbasid period; before that, the qibla of a mosque was known from the orientation of one of its walls, called the qibla wall. The term itself is attested only once in the Quran, but it refers to a place of prayer of the Israelites rather than a part of a mosque. The Amr ibn al-As Mosque in Fustat, Egypt, one of the oldest mosques, is known to have been built originally without a , though one has since been added.
("standing so as to face the Kaaba head-on") is a position facing the qibla so that an imaginary line extending from the person's line of sight would pass through the Kaaba. This manner of observing the qibla is easily done inside the Great Mosque of Mecca and its surroundings, but given that the Kaaba is less than wide, this is virtually impossible from distant locations. For example, from Medina, with a straight-line distance from the Kaaba, a one-degree deviation from the precise imaginary line—an error hardly noticeable when setting one's prayer mat or assuming one's posture—results in a shift from the site of the Kaaba. This effect is amplified when further than Mecca: from [[Jakarta]], Indonesia—some away, a one-degree deviation causes more than a shift, and even an [[arc second]]'s deviation——causes a more than shift from the location of the Kaaba. In comparison, the construction process of a mosque can easily introduce an error of up to five degrees from the calculated qibla, and the installation of prayer rugs inside the mosque as indicators for worshipers can add another deviation of five degrees from the mosque's orientation.
A minority of Islamic religious scholars—for example Ibn Arabi ()—consider to be obligatory during the ritual prayer, while others consider it obligatory only when one is able. For locations further than Mecca, scholars such as Abu Hanifa () and Al-Qurtubi () argue that it is permissible to assume , facing only the general direction of the Kaaba. Others argue that the ritual condition of facing the qibla is already fulfilled when the imaginary line to the Kaaba is within one's field of vision. For instance, there are legal opinions that accept the entire southeastern quadrant in Al-Andalus (Islamic Iberian Peninsula), and the southwestern quadrant in Central Asia, to be valid qibla. Arguments for the validity of include the wording of the Quran, which commands Muslims only to "turn one's face" toward the Great Mosque, and to avoid imposing requirements that would be impossible to fulfill if were to be obligatory in all places. The Shafi'i school of Islamic law, as codified in Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi's 11th-century , argues that one must follow the qibla indicated by the local mosque when one is not near Mecca or, when not near a mosque, to ask a trustworthy person. When this is not possible, one is to make one's own determination—to exercise —by the means at one's disposal.
[[File:Qibla from Yogyakarta on globe, English labels paths.svg|thumb|right|upright=1.3|alt=A globe, with a spherical triangle connecting Mecca, the North Pole, and Yogyakarta| For example, the qibla from the city of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, can be calculated as follows. The city's coordinates, , are 7.801389°S, 110.364444°E, while the Kaaba's coordinates, , are 21.422478°N, 39.825183°E. The longitude difference is (110.364444 minus 39.825183) 70.539261. Substituting the values into the obtains an answer of approximately 295°, or 25° north of west.]]
If a location , the Kaaba , and the north pole form a triangle on the sphere of the Earth, then the qibla is indicated by , which is the direction of the great circle passing through both and . The qibla can also be expressed as an angle, (or ), of the qibla with respect to the north, also called the inhiraf al-qibla. This angle can be calculated as a mathematical function of the local latitude , the latitude of the Kaaba , and the longitude difference between the locality and the Kaaba . This function is derived from the cotangent rule which applies to any spherical triangle with angles , , and sides , , :
Applying this formula in the spherical triangle (substituting ) and applying trigonometric identities obtain:
This formula was derived by modern scholars, but equivalent methods have been known to Muslim astronomers since the 9th century (3rd century ), developed by various scholars, including Habash al-Hasib (active in Damascus and Baghdad ), Al-Nayrizi (Baghdad, ), Ibn Yunus (10th–11th century), Ibn al-Haytham (11th century), and Al-Biruni (11th century). Today spherical trigonometry also underlies nearly all applications or websites which calculate the qibla.
When the qibla angle with respect to the north, , is known, true north needs to be known to find the qibla in practice. Common practical methods to find it include the observation of the shadow at the culmination of the sun—when the sun crosses exactly the local meridian. At this point, any vertical object would cast a shadow oriented in the north–south direction. The result of this observation is very accurate, but it requires an accurate determination of the local time of culmination as well as making the correct observation at that exact moment. Another common method is using the compass, which is more practical because it can be done at any time; the disadvantage is that the north indicated by a magnetic compass differs from true north. This magnetic declination can measure up to 20°, which can vary in different places on Earth and polar wandering.
The city of Mecca is among the places where this occurs, due to its location at 21°25′ N. It occurs twice a year, firstly on 27/28 May at about 12:18 Saudi Arabia Standard Time (SAST) or 09:18 UTC, and secondly on 15/16 July at 12:27 SAST (09:27 UTC). As the sun reaches the zenith of the Kaaba, any vertical object on earth that receives sunlight cast a shadow that indicates the qibla ( see picture). This method of finding the qibla is called ("observing the qibla"). Since night falls on the hemisphere opposite of the Kaaba, half the locations on Earth (including Australia as well as most of the Americas and the Pacific Ocean) cannot observe this directly. Instead, such places observe the opposite phenomenon when the Sun passes above the antipodal point of the Kaaba (in other words, the Sun passes directly underneath the Kaaba), causing shadows in the opposite direction from those observed during . This occurs twice a year, on 14 January 00:30 SAST (21:30 UTC the previous day) and 29 November 00:09 SAST (21:09 UTC the previous day). Observations made within five minutes of the moments or its antipodal counterparts, or at the same time of the day two days before or after each event, still show accurate directions with negligible difference.
A retroazimuthal projection is any map projection which preserves the angular direction (the azimuth) of the great circle path from any point of the map to a point selected as the center of the map. The initial purpose of its development was to help finding the qibla, by choosing the Kaaba as the center point. The earliest surviving works using this projection were two astrolabe-shaped brass instruments created in 18th-century Iran. They contain grids covering locations between Spain and China, label the locations of major cities along with their names, but do not show any coastline. The first of the two was discovered in 1989; its diameter is and it has a ruler with which one can read the direction of Mecca from the markings on the instrument's circumference, and the distance to Mecca from the markings on the ruler. Only the second one is signed by its creator, Muhammad Husayn. The first formal design of a retroazimuthal projection in the Western literature is the Craig projection or the Mecca projection, created by the Scottish mathematician James Ireland Craig, who worked at the Survey Department of Egypt, in 1910. His map is centered in Mecca and its range is limited to show the predominantly Muslim lands. Extending the map further than 90° in longitude from the center will result in crowding and overlaps.
There was a wide range of traditional methods in determining the qibla during the early Islamic period, resulting in different directions even from the same place. In addition to due south and the qiblas of the companions, the Arabs also knew a form of "folk" astronomy—called so by the historian of astronomy David A. King to distinguish it from conventional astronomy, which is an exact science—originating from pre-Islamic traditions. It used natural phenomenon, including the observation of the Sun, the Moon, the stars, and wind, without any basis in mathematics. These methods yield specific directions in individual localities, often using the fixed setting and rising points of a specific star, the sunrise or sunset at the equinoxes, or at the summer solstice or the . Historical sources record several such qiblas, for example: sunrise at the equinoxes (due east) in the Maghreb, sunset at the equinoxes (due west) in India, the origin of the north wind or the fixed location of the North Star in Yemen, the rising point of the star (Canopus) in Syria, and the midwinter sunset in Iraq. Such directions appear in texts of (Islamic jurisprudence) and texts of folk astronomy. Astronomers (aside from folk astronomers) typically do not comment on these methods, but they were not opposed by Islamic legal scholars. The traditional directions were still in use when methods were developed to calculate the qibla more accurately, and they still appear in some surviving medieval mosques today.
The first mathematical methods developed in the early 9th century were approximate solutions to the mathematical problem, usually using a flat map or two-dimensional geometry. Since in reality the Earth is spherical, the directions found were inexact, but they were sufficient for locations relatively close to Mecca (including as far away as Egypt and Iran) because the errors were less than 2°.
Exact solutions, based on three-dimensional geometry and spherical trigonometry, began to appear in the mid-9th century. Habash al-Hasib wrote an early example, using an orthographic projection. Another group of solutions uses trigonometric formulas, for example Al-Nayrizi's four-step application of Menelaus's theorem. Subsequent scholars, including Ibn Yunus, Abu al-Wafa, Ibn al-Haitham and Al-Biruni, proposed other methods which are confirmed to be accurate from the viewpoint of modern astronomy.
Muslim astronomers subsequently used these methods to compile tables showing the qibla from a list of locations, grouped by their latitude and longitude differences from Mecca. The oldest known example, from Baghdad, contained entries for each degree and arc minute up to 20°. In the 14th century, Shams al-Din al-Khalili, an astronomer who served as a (timekeeper) in the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, compiled a qibla table for 2,880 coordinates with longitude differences of up to 60° from Mecca, and with latitudes ranging from 10° to 50°. King opines that among the medieval qibla tables, al-Khalili's work is "the most impressive from the view of its scope and its accuracy".
The accuracy of applying these methods to actual locations depend on the accuracy of its input parameters—the local latitude and the latitude of Mecca, and the longitude difference. At the time of the development of these methods, the latitude of a location could be determined to several arc minutes' accuracy, but there was no accurate method to determine a location's longitude. Common methods used to estimate the longitude difference included comparing the local timing of a lunar eclipse versus the timing in Mecca, or measuring the distance of caravan routes; the Central Asian scholar Al-Biruni made his estimate by averaging various approximate methods. Because of longitudinal inaccuracy, medieval qibla calculations (including those using mathematically accurate methods) differ from the modern values. For example, while the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo was built using the "qibla of the astronomers", but the mosque's qibla (127°) differs somewhat from the results of modern calculations (135°) because the longitude difference used was off by three degrees.
Accurate longitude values in the Islamic world were available only after the application of cartography surveying in the 18th and 19th centuries. Modern coordinates, along with new technologies such as and electronic instruments, resulted in the development of practical instruments to calculate the qibla. The qibla found using modern instruments might differ from the direction of mosques, because a mosque might be built before the advent of modern data, and orientation inaccuracies might have been introduced during the building process of modern mosques. When this is known, sometimes the direction of the mosque's mihrab is still observed, and sometimes a marker is added (such as lines drawn in the mosque) that can be followed instead of the mihrab.
In 1990, the scholar of geography Michael E. Bonine conducted a survey of the main mosques of all major cities in present-day Morocco—constructed from the Idrisid dynasty (8th–10th centuries) up to the Alawi Sultanate (17th century to present). While modern calculations yield the qiblas of between 91° (almost due east) in Marrakesh and 97° in Tangier, only mosques constructed in the Alaouite period are constructed with qiblas relatively close to this range. The qibla of older mosques vary considerably, with concentrations occurring between 155°–160° (slightly east of south) as well as 120°–130° (almost southeast). In 2008, Bonine also published a survey of the main city mosques of Tunisia, in which he found that most were aligned close to 147°. This is the direction of the Great Mosque of Kairouan, originally built in 670 and last rebuilt by the Aghlabid dynasty in 862, which is often credited as the model used by the other mosques. Among the mosques surveyed, the Great Mosque of Sousse was the only one with a significant difference, facing further south at 163°. The actual direction to Mecca as calculated using the great circle method ranges from 110° to 113° throughout the country.
In the history of the region, disputes about the qibla had also occurred in the then-Dutch East Indies in the 1890s. When the Indonesian scholar and future founder of Muhammadiyah, Ahmad Dahlan, returned from his Islamic and astronomy studies in Mecca, he found that mosques in the royal capital of Yogyakarta had inaccurate qiblas, including the Kauman Great Mosque, which faced due west. His efforts in adjusting the qibla were opposed by the traditional ulama of the Yogyakarta Sultanate, and a new mosque built by Dahlan using his calculations was demolished by a mob. Dahlan rebuilt his mosque in the 1900s, and later the Kauman Great Mosque would also be reoriented using the astronomically calculated qibla.
In line with the fatwa council, other Muslim scholars argue for the importance of flexibility and adapting the qibla requirement to what an astronaut is capable of fulfilling. Khaleel Muhammad of San Diego State University opined "God does not take a person to task for that which is beyond his/her ability to work with." Kamal Abdali argued that concentration during a prayer is more important than the exact orientation, and he suggested keeping the qibla direction at the start of a prayer instead of "worrying about possible changes in position". Before Sheikh Muszaphar's mission, at least eight Muslims had flown to space, but none of them publicly discussed issues relating to worship in space.
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