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152-639: The qibla ( Arabic : قِبْلَة , lit.   'direction') 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

304-570: A domino effect known as Kessler syndrome . NASA's Orbital Debris Program tracks over 25,000 objects larger than 10 cm diameter in LEO, while the estimated number between 1 and 10 cm is 500,000, and the number of particles bigger than 1 mm exceeds 100 million. The particles travel at speeds up to 7.8 km/s (28,000 km/h; 17,500 mph), so even a small impact can severely damage a spacecraft. [REDACTED]  This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of

456-425: A book arguing for a southeastern qibla, writing that the north/northeast qibla was invalid and resulted from a lack of religious knowledge. In reaction, Abdali published a response to their arguments and criticism in an article entitled "The Correct Qibla" online in 1997. The two opinions resulted in a period of debate about the correct qibla. Eventually most North American Muslims accepted the north/northeast qibla with

608-575: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as

760-510: A congregational prayer, the imam stands in it or close to it, in front of the rest of the congregation. The mihrab 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 mihrab itself is attested only once in

912-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By

1064-519: A degree) —causes a more than 100-metre (330 ft) 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 ( d.  1240 )—consider ayn al-ka'ba to be obligatory during

1216-1081: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to

1368-540: 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 is the direction of the Kaaba , a cube-like building at the centre of the Sacred Mosque ( al-Masjid al-Haram ) in Mecca , in the Hijaz region of Saudi Arabia. Other than its role as qibla, it

1520-487: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic

1672-450: 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 ( hisab ) 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

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1824-466: A marker is added (such as lines drawn in the mosque) that can be followed instead of the mihrab . Muslims use various instruments to find the qibla direction when not near a mosque. The qibla compass is a magnetic compass which includes a table or a list of qibla angles from major settlements. Some electronic versions use satellite coordinates to calculate and indicate the qibla automatically. Qibla compasses have existed since around 1300, supplemented by

1976-690: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb  [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak

2128-636: A minority following the east/southeast qibla. The International Space Station (ISS) orbits the Earth at high speed—the direction from it to Mecca changes significantly within a few seconds. Before his flight to the ISS, Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor requested, and the Malaysian National Fatwa Council provided, guidelines which have been translated into multiple languages. The council wrote that the qibla determination should be "based on what

2280-616: A mosque or when standing for prayers. On the other hand, Muhammad Hadi Bashori in 2014 opines that "correcting the qibla is indeed a very urgent thing", and can be guided by simple methods such as observing the shadow. 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

2432-724: 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. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized :  al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )

2584-589: 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

2736-594: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from

2888-491: A satellite into a LEO, and a satellite there needs less powerful amplifiers for successful transmission, LEO is used for many communication applications, such as the Iridium phone system . Some communication satellites use much higher geostationary orbits and move at the same angular velocity as the Earth as to appear stationary above one location on the planet. Unlike geosynchronous satellites , satellites in low orbit have

3040-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",

3192-470: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for

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3344-441: A small field of view and can only observe and communicate with a fraction of the Earth at a given time. This means that a large network (or constellation ) of satellites is required to provide continuous coverage. Satellites at lower altitudes of orbit are in the atmosphere and suffer from rapid orbital decay , requiring either periodic re-boosting to maintain stable orbits, or the launching of replacements for those that re-enter

3496-429: A sphere (as opposed to the conventional trigonometry which deals with those of a two-dimensional triangle). If a location O {\displaystyle O} , the Kaaba Q {\displaystyle Q} , and the north pole N {\displaystyle N} form a triangle on the sphere of the Earth, then the qibla is indicated by O Q {\displaystyle OQ} , which

3648-433: A subset of LEO. These orbits, with low orbital inclination , allow rapid revisit times over low-latitude locations on Earth. Prograde equatorial LEOs also have lower delta-v launch requirements because they take advantage of the Earth's rotation. Other useful LEO orbits including polar orbits and Sun-synchronous orbits have a higher inclinations to the equator and provide coverage for higher latitudes on Earth. Some of

3800-591: 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 Aghlabids 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

3952-507: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means

4104-507: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as

4256-476: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted

4408-594: Is 17°30′ north of Mecca. Even though a line drawn on world maps—such as those using the Mercator projection—would suggest a southeastern direction to Mecca, the astronomical calculation using the great circle method does yield a north-of-east direction (56°33′). Nevertheless, most early mosques in the United States face east or southeast, following the apparent direction on world maps. As the Muslim community grew and

4560-737: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic

4712-590: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak

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4864-559: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It

5016-491: Is almost due north. This apparent counter-intuitiveness is caused by projections used by world maps, which by necessity distort the surface of the Earth. A straight line shown by the world map in using the Mercator projection is called the rhumb line or the loxodrome, which is used to indicate the qibla by a minority of Muslims. It can result in a dramatic difference in some places; for example, in some parts of North America

5168-627: Is also the holiest site for Muslims, also known as the House of God ( Bayt Allah ) and where the tawaf (the circumambulation ritual) 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

5320-551: 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 (09:18 UTC), and on 15 and 16 July at 12:27 SAST (09:27 UTC). Before

5472-478: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in

5624-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon

5776-472: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and

5928-407: Is derived from the cotangent rule which applies to any spherical triangle with angles A {\displaystyle A} , B {\displaystyle B} , C {\displaystyle C} and sides a {\displaystyle a} , b {\displaystyle b} , c {\displaystyle c} : Applying this formula in

6080-574: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference

6232-574: Is nowhere near that direction. In various places, there are also the "qiblas of the companions" ( qiblat al-sahaba ), those which were used there by the Companions of the Prophet —the first generation of Muslims, who are considered role models in Islam. Such directions were used by some Muslims in the following centuries, side by side with other directions, even after Muslim astronomers used calculations to find more accurate directions to Mecca. Among

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6384-855: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not

6536-496: Is only slightly less than on the Earth's surface. This is because the distance to LEO from the Earth's surface is much less than the Earth's radius. However, an object in orbit is in a permanent free fall around Earth, because in orbit the gravitational force and the centrifugal force balance each other out. As a result, spacecraft in orbit continue to stay in orbit, and people inside or outside such craft continuously experience weightlessness . Objects in LEO orbit Earth between

6688-414: Is possible" and recommended four options, saying that one should pray toward the first option if possible and, if not, fall back successively on the later ones: 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

6840-613: 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. Historical records and surviving old mosques show that throughout history

6992-572: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As

7144-401: Is the direction of the great circle passing through both O {\displaystyle O} and Q {\displaystyle Q} . The qibla can also be expressed as an angle, ∠ N O Q {\displaystyle \angle NOQ} (or ∠ q {\displaystyle \angle q} ), of the qibla with respect to the north, also called

7296-590: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that

7448-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into

7600-465: Is used for the area of space below an altitude of 2,000 km (1,200 mi) (about one-third of Earth's radius). Objects in orbits that pass through this zone, even if they have an apogee further out or are sub-orbital , are carefully tracked since they present a collision risk to the many LEO satellites. No human spaceflights other than the lunar missions of the Apollo program (1968-1972) and

7752-524: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while

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7904-459: The rasd al-qiblat 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. Spherical trigonometry provides the shortest path from any point on Earth to the Kaaba, even though the indicated direction might seem counterintuitive when imagined on a flat world map . For example, the qibla from Alaska obtained through spherical trigonometry

8056-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary

8208-774: The Idrisid period (8th–10th centuries) up to the Alawi period (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

8360-499: 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 mihrab (a wall niche) that indicates the direction of the qibla. The qibla is also the direction for entering the ihram (sacred state for the hajj pilgrimage); the direction to which animals are turned during dhabihah (Islamic slaughter);

8512-568: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to

8664-407: The inhiraf al-qibla . This angle can be calculated as a mathematical function of the local latitude ϕ {\displaystyle \phi } , the latitude of the Kaaba ϕ Q {\displaystyle \phi _{Q}} , and the longitude difference between the locality and the Kaaba Δ L {\displaystyle \Delta L} . This function

8816-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic

8968-429: The oblateness of Earth's spheroid figure and local topography . While definitions based on altitude are inherently ambiguous, most of them fall within the range specified by an orbit period of 128 minutes because, according to Kepler's third law , this corresponds to a semi-major axis of 8,413 km (5,228 mi). For circular orbits, this in turn corresponds to an altitude of 2,042 km (1,269 mi) above

9120-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In

9272-728: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c.  8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Low Earth orbit The term LEO region

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9424-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to

9576-410: The 12th century) and Samarkand (180°, 225°, 230°, 240°, and 270° were recorded in the 11th century). According to the doctrine of jihat al-ka'ba , the diverse directions of qiblas are still valid as long as they are still in the same broad direction. 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

9728-415: The 2024 Polaris Dawn have taken place beyond LEO. All space stations to date have operated geocentric within LEO. A wide variety of sources define LEO in terms of altitude . The altitude of an object in an elliptic orbit can vary significantly along the orbit. Even for circular orbits , the altitude above ground can vary by as much as 30 km (19 mi) (especially for polar orbits ) due to

9880-571: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of

10032-834: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ    [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized

10184-464: The 9th century (3rd century AH ), developed by various scholars, including Habash al-Hasib (active in Damascus and Baghdad c.  850 ), Al-Nayrizi (Baghdad, c.  900 ), 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

10336-452: The Earth, while the equator is the only line of latitude that is also a great circle (other lines of latitude are centered north or south of the centre of the Earth). The great circle is the theoretical basis in most models that seek to mathematically determine the direction of the qibla from a locality. In such models, the qibla is defined as the direction of the great circle passing through

10488-862: 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 jihat al-ka'ba 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 ayn al-ka'ba were to be obligatory in all places. The Shafi'i school of Islamic law, as codified in Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi 's 11th-century Kitab al-Tanbih fi'l-Fiqh , argues that one must follow

10640-583: 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

10792-498: The LEO region but are not in a LEO orbit because they re-enter the atmosphere . The distinction between LEO orbits and the LEO region is especially important for analysis of possible collisions between objects which may not themselves be in LEO but could collide with satellites or debris in LEO orbits. The mean orbital velocity needed to maintain a stable low Earth orbit is about 7.8 km/s (4.8 mi/s), which translates to 28,000 km/h (17,000 mph). However, this depends on

10944-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around

11096-690: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from

11248-515: 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 mihrab , though one has since been added. Ayn al-ka'ba ("standing so as to face the Kaaba head-on") is a position facing the qibla so that an imaginary line extending from

11400-576: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With

11552-526: The Sun appears to " shift " between the Northern and Southern Tropics seasonally; additionally, it appears to move from east to west daily as a consequence of the Earth's rotation. The combination of these two apparent motions means that every day the Sun crosses the meridian once, usually not precisely overhead but to the north or to the south of the observer. In locations between the two tropics—latitudes lower than 23.5° north or south—at certain moments of

11704-491: 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 (ISS) in 2007 generated

11856-522: The astronomically calculated qibla. Places long settled by Muslim populations tend to have resolved the question of the direction of the qibla over time. Other countries, like the United States and Canada, have had large Muslim communities only in the past several decades, and the determination of the qibla can be a matter of debate. The Islamic Center of Washington, D.C. was built in 1953 facing slightly north of east and initially puzzled some observers, including Muslims, because Washington, D.C. 's latitude

12008-433: The atmosphere. The effects of adding such quantities of vaporized metals to Earth's stratosphere are potentially of concern but currently unknown. The LEO environment is becoming congested with space debris because of the frequency of object launches. This has caused growing concern in recent years, since collisions at orbital velocities can be dangerous or deadly. Collisions can produce additional space debris, creating

12160-405: The compilation of astronomical tables. This new science was applied to develop new methods of determining the qibla, making use of the concept of latitude and longitude taken from Ptolemy's Geography as well as trigonometric formulae developed by Muslim scholars. Most textbooks of astronomy written in the medieval Islamic World contain a chapter on the determination of the qibla, considered one of

12312-574: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after

12464-455: The denser part of the atmosphere and below the inner Van Allen radiation belt . They encounter atmospheric drag from gases in the thermosphere (approximately 80–600 km above the surface) or exosphere (approximately 600 km or 400 mi and higher), depending on orbit height. Satellites in orbits that reach altitudes below 300 km (190 mi) decay quickly due to atmospheric drag. Equatorial low Earth orbits ( ELEO ) are

12616-509: 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

12768-420: 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

12920-418: The direction of sunset—which varies slightly throughout the year. Different opinions exist among Indonesian Islamic astronomers: Tono Saksono et al. argues in 2018 that facing the qibla during prayers is more of a "spiritual prerequisite" than a precise physical one, and that an exact direction to the Kaaba itself from thousands of kilometres away requires an extreme precision impossible to achieve when building

13072-554: The directions described as the qiblas of the companions are due south in Syria and Palestine, the direction of the winter sunrise in Egypt, and the direction of the winter sunset in Iraq. The direction of the winter sunrise and sunset are also traditionally favoured because they are parallel to the walls of the Kaaba. The determination of qibla has been an important problem for Muslim communities throughout history. Muslims are required to know

13224-454: 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

13376-587: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of

13528-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around

13680-403: The exact altitude of the orbit. Calculated for a circular orbit of 200 km (120 mi) the orbital velocity is 7.79 km/s (4.84 mi/s), but for a higher 1,500 km (930 mi) orbit the velocity is reduced to 7.12 km/s (4.42 mi/s). The launch vehicle's delta-v needed to achieve low Earth orbit starts around 9.4 km/s (5.8 mi/s). The pull of gravity in LEO

13832-607: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From

13984-647: The first generation of Starlink satellites used polar orbits which provide coverage everywhere on Earth. Later Starlink constellations orbit at a lower inclination and provide more coverage for populated areas. Higher orbits include medium Earth orbit (MEO), sometimes called intermediate circular orbit (ICO), and further above, geostationary orbit (GEO). Orbits higher than low orbit can lead to early failure of electronic components due to intense radiation and charge accumulation. In 2017, " very low Earth orbits " ( VLEO ) began to be seen in regulatory filings. These orbits, below about 450 km (280 mi), require

14136-567: The fixed setting and rising points of a specific star, the sunrise or sunset at the equinoxes , or at the summer or the winter solstices . 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

14288-414: The flat map shows Mecca in the southeast while the great circle calculation shows it to the northeast. In Japan the map shows it to the southwest, while the great circle shows it to the northwest. The majority of Muslims, however, follow the great circle method. A retroazimuthal projection is any map projection which preserves the angular direction (the azimuth ) of the great circle path from any point of

14440-510: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and

14592-491: The great circle method ranges from 110° to 113° throughout the country. Variations of the qibla also occur in Indonesia, the country with the world's largest Muslim population. The astronomically calculated qibla ranges from 291°—295° (21°—25° north of west) depending on the exact location in the archipelago. However, the qibla is often known traditionally simply as "the west", resulting in mosques built oriented due west or to

14744-590: 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 (or the Sacred Mosque in which it is located) 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" ( fawalli wajhaka shatr al-Masjid il-Haram ). According to Islamic traditions, these verses were revealed in

14896-597: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward

15048-613: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about

15200-604: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c.  603 –689)

15352-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA

15504-518: The list of qibla angles often written on the instruments themselves. Hotel rooms with Muslim guests may use a sticker showing the qibla on the ceiling or a drawer. With the advent of computing, various mobile apps and websites use formulae to calculate the qibla for their users. Because varying methods have been used to determine the qibla, mosques were built throughout history in different directions, including some that still stand today. Methods based on astronomy and mathematics were not always used, and

15656-403: The locality and the Kaaba. One of the properties of a great circle is that it indicates the shortest path connecting any pair of points along the circle—this is the basis of its use to determine the qibla. The great circle is similarly used to find the shortest flight path connecting the two locations—therefore the qibla calculated using the great circle method is generally close to the direction of

15808-408: The locality to Mecca. As the ellipsoid is a more accurate figure of the Earth than a perfect sphere, modern researchers have looked into using ellipsoidal models to calculate the qibla, replacing the great circle by the geodesics on an ellipsoid . This results in more complicated calculations, while the improvement in accuracy falls well within the typical precision of the setting out of a mosque or

15960-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya

16112-410: The many things connecting astronomy with Islamic law (sharia). According to David A. King, various medieval solutions for the determination of the qibla "bear witness to the development of mathematical methods from the 3rd/9th to the 8th/14th centuries and to the level of sophistication in trigonometry and computational techniques attained by these scholars". The first mathematical methods developed in

16264-458: 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

16416-455: The mean radius of Earth, which is consistent with some of the upper altitude limits in some LEO definitions. The LEO region is defined by some sources as a region in space that LEO orbits occupy. Some highly elliptical orbits may pass through the LEO region near their lowest altitude (or perigee ) but are not in a LEO orbit because their highest altitude (or apogee ) exceeds 2,000 km (1,243 mi). Sub-orbital objects can also reach

16568-438: 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

16720-490: 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

16872-654: 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 cartographic surveys in the 18th and 19th centuries. Modern coordinates, along with new technologies such as GPS satellites and electronic instruments, resulted in

17024-508: The month of Rajab or Sha'ban in the second Hijri year (623 CE), 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 mizrah —used by the Jews of Medina . Islamic tradition says that these verses were revealed during

17176-727: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum  [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve

17328-556: 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 changes over time . As observed from Earth,

17480-470: The number of mosques increased, in 1978, an American Muslim scientist, S. Kamal Abdali, wrote a book arguing that the correct qibla from North America was north or northeast as calculated by the great circle method which identifies the shortest path to Mecca. Abdali's conclusion was widely circulated and then accepted by the Muslim community, and mosques were subsequently reoriented as a result. In 1993, two religious scholars, Riad Nachef and Samir Kadi, published

17632-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on

17784-470: 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 rasd al-qiblat . 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

17936-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on

18088-411: 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 20 metres (66 ft) wide, this is virtually impossible from distant locations. For example, from Medina, with a 338-kilometre (210 mi) straight-line distance from the Kaaba, a one- degree deviation from

18240-425: The pilgrimage. Islamic etiquette ( adab ) 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 mihrab , a niche in its qibla-facing wall. In

18392-540: The placement of a mat. For example, calculations using the GRS 80 ellipsoidal model yields the qibla of 18°47′06″ for a location in San Francisco , while the great circle method yields 18°51′05″. The great circle model is applied to calculate the qibla using spherical trigonometry —a branch of geometry that deals with the mathematical relations between the sides and angles of triangles formed by three great circles of

18544-438: The precise imaginary line—an error hardly noticeable when setting one's prayer mat or assuming one's posture—results in a 5.9-kilometre (3.7 mi) shift from the site of the Kaaba. This effect is amplified when further than Mecca: from Jakarta , Indonesia—some 7,900 km (4,900 mi) away, a one-degree deviation causes more than a 100-kilometre (62 mi) shift, and even an arc second 's deviation— ( 1 ⁄ 3600 of

18696-405: The qibla angle with respect to the north, ∠ q {\displaystyle \angle q} , 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

18848-599: The qibla from a list of locations, grouped by their latitude and longitude differences from Mecca. The oldest known example, from c.  9th-century 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 muwaqqit (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

19000-403: The qibla in new locations. Mathematical methods based on astronomy would develop only at the end of the 8th century or the beginning of the 9th, and even then they were not initially popular. Therefore, early Muslims relied on non-astronomical methods. There was a wide range of traditional methods in determining the qibla during the early Islamic period, resulting in different directions even from

19152-436: 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 ijtihad —by the means at one's disposal. A great circle , also called the orthodrome, is any circle on a sphere whose centre is identical to the centre of the sphere. For example, all lines of longitude are great circles of

19304-415: 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 (Muhammad's tradition) also prescribes that Muslims face the qibla when entering the ihram (sacred state for hajj), after the middle jamrah (stone-throwing ritual) during

19456-521: The qibla more accurately, and they still appear in some surviving medieval mosques today. The study of astronomy—known as ilm al-falak ("science of the celestial orbs") in the Islamic intellectual tradition—began to appear in the Islamic World in the second half of the 8th century, centred in Baghdad, the principal city of the Abbasid Caliphate . Initially, the science was introduced through

19608-515: The qibla of Muhammad in Medina), and 204° (the setting point of Canopus). The modern qibla for Cairo is 135°, which was not known at the time. This diversity also results in the non-uniform layout in Cairo's districts, because the streets are often oriented according to the varying orientation of the mosques. Historical records also indicate the diversity of qiblas in other major cities, including Córdoba (113°, 120°, 135°, 150°, and 180° were recorded in

19760-462: The qibla to perform their daily prayers, and it is also needed to determine the orientation of mosques. When Muhammad lived among the Muslims in Medina (which, like Mecca, is also in the Hejaz region), he prayed due south, according to the known direction of Mecca. Within the few generations after Muhammad's death in 632, Muslims had reached places far away from Mecca, presenting the problem of determining

19912-403: The qibla was often determined by simple methods based on tradition or "folk science" not based on mathematical astronomy. Some early Muslims used due south everywhere as the qibla, literally following Muhammad's instruction to face south while he was in Medina (Mecca is due south of Medina). Some mosques as far away as al-Andalus to the west and Central Asia to the east face south, even though Mecca

20064-521: The recommended direction to make du'a (supplications); 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 ( ayn al-ka'ba ) or facing in the general direction ( jihat al-ka'ba ). Most Islamic scholars consider that jihat al-ka'ba is acceptable if the more precise ayn al-ka'ba cannot be ascertained. The most common technical definition used by Muslim astronomers for

20216-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within

20368-414: The ritual prayer, while others consider it obligatory only when one is able. For locations further than Mecca, scholars such as Abu Hanifa ( d.  699 ) and Al-Qurtubi ( d.  1214 ) argue that it is permissible to assume jihat al-ka'ba , 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

20520-617: 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

20672-442: The same determination method could yield different qiblas due to differences in the accuracy of data and calculations. Egyptian historian Al-Maqrizi (d. 1442) recorded various qibla angles used in Cairo at the time: 90° (due east), 117° (winter sunrise, the "qibla of the sahaba"), 127° (calculated by astronomers, such as Ibn Yunus), 141° ( Mosque of Ibn Tulun ), 156° (the rising point of Suhayl/Canopus), 180° (due south, emulating

20824-603: 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

20976-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there

21128-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of

21280-402: The spherical triangle △ N O Q {\displaystyle \triangle NOQ} (substituting B = ∠ q = ∠ N O Q {\displaystyle B=\angle q=\angle NOQ} ) and applying trigonometric identities obtain: This formula was derived by modern scholars, but equivalent methods have been known to Muslim astronomers since

21432-563: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of

21584-400: The star Suhayl ( Canopus ) in Syria, and the midwinter sunset in Iraq. Such directions appear in texts of fiqh (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

21736-579: 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 rasd al-qiblat ("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

21888-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to

22040-454: The two was discovered in 1989; its diameter is 22.5 centimetres (8.9 in) 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

22192-412: The use of novel technologies for orbit raising because they operate in orbits that would ordinarily decay too soon to be economically useful. A low Earth orbit requires the lowest amount of energy for satellite placement. It provides high bandwidth and low communication latency . Satellites and space stations in LEO are more accessible for crew and servicing. Since it requires less energy to place

22344-489: 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,

22496-422: The works of Indian authors, but after the 9th century the works of Greek astronomers such as Ptolemy were translated into Arabic and became the main references in the field. Muslim astronomers preferred Greek astronomy because they considered it to be better supported by theoretical explanations and therefore it could be developed as an exact science; however, the influence of Indian astronomy survives especially in

22648-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study

22800-430: The year (usually twice a year) the Sun passes almost directly overhead. This happens when the Sun crosses the meridian while being at the local latitude at the same time. 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

22952-537: 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

23104-559: 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. Etymologically, the Arabic word qibla ( قبلة ) 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

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