Qibla
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. According to Islamic tradition, 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 Hijri year. Prior to this revelation, Muhammad and his followers in Medina faced Jerusalem for prayers. Most mosques contain a that indicates the direction of the qibla.
The qibla is also the direction for entering the , the direction to which animals are turned during , the recommended direction to make , the direction to avoid when relieving oneself or spitting, and the direction to which the deceased are aligned when buried. 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 Earth's Sphere—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. The method is applied to develop mobile applications 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, and on 15 and 16 July at 12:27 SAST.
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 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 exact direction 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 Islamic world. The spaceflight of a devout Muslim, Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, to the International Space Station 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.
Location
The qibla is the direction of the Kaaba, a cube-like building at the centre of the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, in the Hijaz region of Saudi Arabia. Other than its role as qibla, it is also the holiest site for Muslims, also known as the House of God and where the is performed during the Hajj and umrah pilgrimages. The Kaaba has an approximately rectangular ground plan with its four corners pointing close to the four cardinal directions. According to the Quran, it was built by Abraham and Ishmael, both of whom are prophets in Islam. Few historical records remain detailing the history of the Kaaba before the rise of Islam, but in the generations prior to Muhammad, the Kaaba had been used as a shrine of the pre-Islamic Arabic religion.The qibla status of the Kaaba is based on the verses 144, 149, and 150 of the al-Baqarah 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 Hijri year, or about 15 or 16 months after Muhammad's migration to Medina. 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.
There are different reports of the qibla direction when Muhammad was in Mecca. According to a report cited by historian al-Tabari and exegete 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 and the Shia, 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, with the intention of starting a new era in Islam.
Religious significance
Etymologically, the Arabic word means "direction". In Islamic ritual and law, it refers to a special direction faced by Muslims during prayers and other religious contexts. Islamic religious scholars agree that facing the qibla is a necessary condition for the validity of salah—the Islamic ritual prayer—in normal conditions; exceptions include prayers during a state of fear or war, as well as non-obligatory prayers during travel. The hadith also prescribes that Muslims face the qibla when entering the , after the middle during the pilgrimage. Islamic etiquette calls for Muslims to turn the head of an animal when it is slaughtered, and the faces of the dead when they are buried, toward the qibla. The qibla is the preferred direction when making a supplication and is to be avoided when defecating, urinating, and spitting.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.
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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, 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 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.