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und noch einige unkommentierte und unübersetzte Passagen, selbst wenn ich dafür wieder rote Sterne bekommen sollte, kann es ja demnächst ganz sein lassen....
The determination of the qibla (direction of Mecca)
from a locality with given geographical coordinates can
also be regarded as a problem of spherical trigonometry.
In the eighth and ninth centuries only approximate
solutions of the problem were known, but exact
solutions were found in the ninth century, and tables
were computed in the twelfth century and later.
...
During the first two centuries of Islam, when mosques
were being built from Andalusia to Central Asia, the
Muslims had no truly scientific means of finding the
qibla. Clearly they knew roughly the direction they had
taken to reach wherever they were, and the direction of
the road on which pilgrims left for Mecca could be, and,
in some cases, actually was used as a qibla. But they also
followed two basic procedures, observing tradition and
developing a simple expedient. In the first case, some
authorities observed that the Prophet Muh.ammad when
he was in Medina (north of Mecca) had prayed due
south, and they advocated the general adoption of this
direction for the qibla. This explains why many early
mosques from
Andalusia to Central Asia face south.
Other authorities said that the Quranic verse quoted
above meant standing precisely so that one faced the
Ka˓ba. Now the Muslims of Meccan origin knew that
when they were standing in front of the walls or corners
of the Ka˓ba they were facing directions specifically
associated with the risings and settings of the sun and
certain fixed stars. They knew that the major axis of the
rectangular base of the edifice points toward the rising
point of Canopus, and the minor axis points toward
summer sunrise and winter sunset. These assertions
about the Ka˓ba’s astronomical alignments, found in
newly discovered medieval sources, have been confirmed
by modern measurements.
...
The corners of the Ka˓ba were associated even in
pre-Islamic times with the four main regions of
the surrounding world: Syria, Iraq, the Yemen, and
“the West.” Some Muslim authorities said that to face
the Ka˓ba from Iraq, for example, one should stand
in the same direction as if one were standing right in
front of the north eastern wall of the Ka˓ba. Thus the
first Muslims in Iraq built their mosques with the
prayer-walls toward winter sunset because they wanted
the mosques to face the north eastern wall of the Ka˓ba.
Likewise the first mosques in Egypt were built with
their prayer-walls facing winter sunrise so that the
prayer-wall was “parallel” to the north western wall of
the Ka˓ba. Inevitably there were differences of opinion,
and different directions were favored by particular
groups. Indeed, in each major region of the Islamic
world, there was a whole palette of directions used for
the qibla. Only rarely do the orientations of medieval
mosques correspond to the qiblas derived by computation.
Recently some medieval texts have been identified
which deal with the problem of the qibla in
Andalusia,
the Maghrib, Egypt, Iraq and Iran, and Central Asia.
Their study has done much to clarify the orientation of
mosques in these areas. In order that prayer in any
reasonable direction be considered valid, some legal
texts assert that while facing the actual direction of the
Ka˓ba ( ˓ayn) is optimal, facing the general direction of
the Ka˓ba ( jiha) is also legally acceptable.
...
Muslim astronomers from the eighth century onward
concerned themselves with the determination of the
qibla as a problem of mathematical geography. This
activity involved the measurement of geographical
coordinates and the computation of the direction of one
locality from another by procedures of geometry or
trigonometry. The qibla at any locality was defined as
the direction of Mecca along the great-circle on the
terrestrial sphere.
Muslims inherited the Greek tradition of mathematical
geography, together with Ptolemy’s lists of
localities and their latitudes and longitudes. By the
early ninth century observations were conducted in
order to measure the coordinates of Mecca and
Baghdad as accurately as possible, with the express
intention of computing the qibla at Baghdad. Indeed,
the need to determine the qibla in different localities
inspired much of the most sophisticated activity of the
Muslim geographers (see below).
Once the geographical data are available, a mathematical
procedure is necessary to determine the qibla.
The earliest Muslim astronomers who considered this
problem developed a series of approximate solutions,
all adequate for most practical purposes, but in the early
ninth century, if not before, an accurate solution by
solid trigonometry was formulated. The accurate
formulae derived by the Muslim astronomers from
the ninth century onward are impressive, and are
mathematically equivalent to the modern formula.
Muslim astronomers also compiled a series of tables
displaying the qibla for each degree of latitude and
longitude difference from Mecca, based on both
approximate and exact formulae, the first of these
being prepared in Baghdad in the ninth century.
Over the centuries, numerous Muslim scientists
discussed the qibla problem, presenting solutions
by spherical trigonometry, or reducing the threedimensional
situation to two dimensions and solving
it by geometry or plane trigonometry. They also
formulated solutions using calculating devices.
...
The alignment of medieval mosques reflects the fact
that the astronomers were not always consulted on their
orientation. But now that we know from textual sources
which directions were used as a qibla in each major
locality, we cannot only better understand the mosque
orientations but also recognize numerous cities in the
Islamic world that can be said to be qibla-oriented. In
some, such as Taza in Morocco and Khiva in Central
Asia, the orientation of the main mosque dominates the
orientation of the entire city. In the case of Cairo
various parts of the city and its suburbs are oriented in
three different qiblas. The new Fatimid city of al-
Qāhira, founded in the tenth century, faces winter
sunset, which was the qibla of the Companions of the
Prophet who erected the first mosque in Egypt in
nearby Fustat some three centuries previously. The later
Mamluk “City of the Dead” faces the qibla of the
astronomers. The predominant orientation of architecture
in the suburb of al-Qarāfa is toward the south,
another popular qibla. The splendid Mamluk mosques
and madrasas built along the main thoroughfare of the
old Fatimid city are aligned externally with the street
plan, and internally with the qibla of the astronomers:
one can observe the varying thickness of the walls
when standing in front of the windows inside the
mosque overlooking the street outside. This is an area
of the history of urban development in the Islamic
world which has only recently been studied for the first
time, not least because, prior to the discovery of the
textual evidence, it was by no means clear which
directions were used as qiblas; even if a qibla at variance
from the true qibla was clearly popular, it was not known
why.The first accurate longitude values of localities in the
Islamic world become available only with the systematic
scientific cartographic surveys of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. Thus most of the accurately
computed qiblas of the medieval astronomers could be
judged as being in error by a few degrees anyway.
aus: HELAINE SELIN (Hrsg.): Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Berlin Heidelberg New York 2008
übrigens änderten die Almohaden die Kiblarichtung.
