Is This The Real City Of Mecca? | Sacred City | Timeline

Five times a day, every day, more than a billion Muslims bow and recite a prayer to Allah given to them by Muhammad, their prophet. Every day five times a day they face a black rock in the holy

city

of Mecca and submit again to the religion of Islam every day they bow down as a corporate group around the world to express their solidarity as followers of Islam for whom Muhammad is their prophet, the Koran is their scripture and Mecca is their holy

city

; However, archaeological discoveries are beginning to point to a different story. Scholars are seriously examining and questioning the facts about the founding of Islam, and if they are right, how will

this

affect Muslims today?

We have tools at our disposal that have never been available before modern technology allowed us to reconstruct the early years of Islam and to understand things that have baffled historians for years around the world, universities, museums and libraries are placing books and ancient writings on the Internet so that scholars can access them. We can now verify these ancient manuscripts with just a few clicks of the mouse, both academics and hobbyists. Both can accurately verify through satellites locations and details that would previously have required great expense and effort and can share them instantly around the world through social networks and academic forums, so now, for the first time, an era begins completely new research into the founding of Islam. is coming to light and we can reconstruct what

real

ly happened in Arabia fifteen hundred years ago and historian Dan Gibson has lived most of his life in the Middle East.

He has exhaustively researched the peoples and places of the ancient world before Islam first arrived. arabia I am in my early 20s and have spent over 30 years exploring every corner of

this

incredible part of the world gathering evidence for a radical new theory that I believe will change our understanding of the last few years of study that have led me to the conclusion that Islam began somewhere other than where conventional history assumes and that in the early Islamic writings there are clues and references that reveal the hidden truth about the mystery of Mecca back in 2002 I had the opportunity to visit a conference on Nabataean studies organized here by Hussein Bin Talal University During the conference I had the opportunity to speak with prominent archaeologists from Saudi Arabia and Jordan I asked them specifically about the archaeological record in Mecca, although they did not wish to be named or quoted, they admitted that there was no archaeological record in Mecca before 800 AD.

He expected them to defend the view that Mecca was a walled city with houses, gardens, public buildings and temples. They said no, there was nothing like that. Did you know that the name Mecca is mentioned only once in the entire Muslim Quran? Scholars link other names with names from Mecca, such as the forbidden meeting place or the holy house or the place of Becca or weeping. All of these terms are universally associated with Mecca today, however the Quran itself does not tell us in so many words what they all refer to. Regarding Mecca, Muslim scholars see no reason to debate this, but in recent years some historians have raised questions.

They have noted that Mecca was a barren place and was not located in the ancient caravan. People have imagined that the caravans carried incense spices and other exotic products, but according to recent research, by the time of Muhammad the era of incense had already ended and the Arabs were dedicated to the trade of leather and clothing, items hardly capable of sustain a great city that was described as the mother of all cities and the center of the trade route look at this map where all the trade routes intersect there are three places in northern arabia that could be described as the center of the trade route The interesting thing is that Mecca was not even a stopping place because it was not even located on the caravan route.

In this film we will discover why there is a total lack of archeology in Mecca at the time of the prophet Muhammad, why the Descriptions of Mecca do not match the landscape and how an early Islamic civil war altered the truth about Islam, while Muslims around the world believe that their holy city and its founding leaders lived in Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, give gibson believes that the evidence actually points elsewhere during my studies of arabic history, i have come across evidence that points not to

mecca

but to northern arabia as the founding place of islam until now no one has disputed that

mecca

It is the holy city of Islam.

Every Muslim believes they should pray towards the black rock in Mecca, but years of study and countless trips to all parts of the Arabian peninsula have led me to a radical new understanding of Islamic history. I believe that in the process of understanding Islamic history a fundamental error has been made; It was not a deliberate falsehood, it was simply a misunderstanding of what happened during the founding years of Islam, so later Islamic writers corrected what they thought was an error in earlier stories when it was actually true: it is possible that more than billion people who follow the religion of Islam do not understand how and where their religion began and, if so, what implications does this evidence have for The average Muslim who wants to follow the instructions of Muhammad, his prophet, we will have to examine a moment of history and a setting that few of us understand.

For centuries, the histories of the classical world and the empires of the Middle East have been discussed but with little effort. This ignorance is true not only in the West but also in the Arabs themselves. The prophet Muhammad was born in 570 AD. in a time and place that few people today

real

ly know about her grandfather and his father. Nabataean merchants and in fact Muhammad himself married a merchant woman. One day Muhammad was meditating in a cave and an angel visited him. The angel taught him words of praise to Allah. Later his wife convinced Muhammad that it had really been an angel. and he was in fact called to be a prophet of God during his life, he received many visits from the same angel and every time there was a new revelation, these revelations from all of Muhammad's life were brought together in what we know today as the Quran which studied Adele Ishmari.

Islam at Kuwait Islamic College Over the years, he and Dan have formed a good friendship and have often been involved in deep discussions about the faith and its history. The foreigner Muhammad and his followers suffered persecution, so he and some of his followers fled to Medina. Now that city actually converted to Islam and Muhammad established a government there and we can actually date the Muslim calendar to this time period, shortly after this his followers began to attack the caravans and gained power, increasing in number until eventually more and more people joined them. The point where they became an expanded military presence, in fact, throughout Arabia.

Muhammad gave his vision of bringing Islam to the whole world. However, he died unexpectedly and at that time disputes broke out leading to civil wars, but despite these differences and divisions there. It was the continuous dream of spreading the faith to the entire world, eventually much of North Africa and Central Asia came under the control of Islam and today Islam is the second largest religion in the world today throughout the Middle East when construction companies want to dig for a foundation there must be someone present from the ministry of antiquities no matter if you are in jerusalem damascus or amman jordan wherever you dig you will most likely expose an ancient site of some kind in the city of mecca in Developers from Saudi Arabia are digging everywhere, erecting large buildings, hotels and skyscrapers, but to the surprise of archaeologists there are no ruins of a great and ancient city under Mecca.

The city where Muhammad was born was an important city that he had no problems building. a large number of men to work in caravans and march in their armies. Not only did it have a significant population but it was also an agricultural city, but the prophet Muhammad went out on his business and traveled very far until he reached the glens of Mecca and the beds of their valleys the wife of aisha mohammed mentioned that one of the men longed for mecca, that eye would spend the night in a valley full of various types of grass when we reached mecca we saw a village blessed with water and trees and we were delighted with it. we settled there al-bukhari tells of a prisoner who was eating grapes while chained with shackles and says that this was not the season of fruits in Mecca.

It is hard to believe that these things were written about Mecca. The area around Mecca is all rocks. and the desert mecca receives an average of less than 10 centimeters of rain per year with its extremely high temperatures and arid conditions, this is barely enough to grow vegetation let alone grow enough food to sustain a large population, however, The holy city of Islam is described as having fields with trees, grass and land, but there is no arable land near Mecca, it does not match ancient descriptions. Ibn Ashak mentions that the people of Mecca were reluctant to cut down trees in the

sacred

area, the presence of trees and plants in ancient times can be easily proven by the presence of spores and pollen in intact ancient soil to date there is no record Another enigma is that the city of Mecca is missing from all ancient maps of Arabia.

One would expect that an important merchant city would be mentioned in the early maps, but none show Mecca before the time. of Islam over the years. I have collected copies of many ancient maps of Arabia. I have translated them diligently, but I never found Mecca mentioned on a map before Islam did. You know that the name Mecca does not appear in any literature prior to the year 740 AD, that is, one hundred and twenty years after the founding of Islam. Don't you find it baffling that for the first 120 years of Islamic history none of the surrounding nations knew anything?

About the existence of Mecca, how could an important city, a city that could muster thousands of men in its army, a city that had agriculture, trees, grass, fruits and grapes, go unnoticed by other nations? How could a major city not be found with walls, temples and public buildings? in the annals of other nations, especially if it was a merchant city that carried on trade with all the nations around it and most disconcerting of all is that when we go to the physical location of this ancient city we find that there is no early archaeological record. It was an insignificant place, not even on a trade route, many historians today have concluded that the accounts of the founding of Islam are all myths.

Obviously, there is a huge discrepancy between what the Islamic records tell us and what archaeologists have been finding, so the conclusion they draw is that the Islamic records are simply invented myths. In my years of study I have become convinced that the first records are not myths but refer to another place that fits all of these descriptions. I believe that Muhammad was born and raised somewhere else and that Muslims look in the wrong direction when they pray according to commonly accepted Islamic history the kaaba was an important shrine in the city of mecca and the focus of pilgrimage in arabia a good starting point It could be studying the pilgrimage before the founding of Islam this umbra before Muhammad was at a time when the focal point of the Arab pilgrimage was to a place known as the forbidden meeting place, this place housed many pagan idols.

In order for us to understand what was happening in pre-Islamic Arabia, we need to understand the importance of

sacred

places in ancient Arabia. Since ancient times, Middle Eastern religions have equated gods with regions rather than being universal. Modern readers of history have long been influenced by Greek and Roman concepts of the pantheon of gods and have failed to realize the importance that the ancient Arabs placed on gods of specific regions in the eyes of the ancient Arabs. gods who lived in mesopotamia gods who lived in egypt and gods who lived in greece and so on the arab traders who passed through an area respected the local gods who were not opposed to gods from different places what they opposed was the representation of a god in human or animal form they prefer to use geometric shapes, for example here there is a god in the shape of a block and one over there has the shape of a triangle.

Each of these gods were considered local gods and had to be respected when passing through their territory. Such a view of religion naturally leads to accepting territories and places as sacred to specific gods, hence the area around a temple, such as a particular valley or a remote place in thedesert. could be considered sacred, it would have a compound where people could meet even with their enemies and be safe because violence was prohibited in the sacred compounds when tourists enter the majestic beauty of wadi rum here in southern Jordan, with which They are often absorbed. the exquisite beauty of this valley and the steep mountains that are lost a temple dedicated to the goddess lat or alat as some call her this Nabataean temple had a sacred area it was located in front of the temple with the mountains marking the sacred area before The Islamic Arabs were Divided into many groups, they worshiped different gods and often fought among themselves over tribal issues.

The only thing that kept them together was the pilgrimage to an ancient common meeting place which the Quran calls this masjad al-haram or the forbidden meeting place, masjad means meeting and is translated mosque today before Islam there were no mosques for what the mosque was simply a place of assembly the forbidden place of assembly was a sacred place of refuge and safety where regular activities ceased and violence was prohibited or haram the concept of haram or forbidden is very strong in Islamic Islam Allah has made Mecca a holy shrine and before it was a shrine and will be a shrine after no one is allowed to access its bushes, cut down its trees or hunt, so we have two descriptions of the original holy city.of Islam it was a haram place where killing was prohibited and was the center of pilgrimage for many centuries before the founding of islam now look here much of the graffiti found throughout the negev and south jordan was written by people on pilgrimage to the ancient city of petra in south jordan thousands of people carved their names and messages into the rocks as they headed to petra for pilgrimage this creates a problem for us mecca is unknown on maps and literature before and during the rise of islam descriptions such as The center of the trade route, the mother of all cities and the focal point of ancient pilgrimage, they don't fit, how can we solve this?

The answer comes from Islam itself: the qibla is universally understood to be towards Mecca and Saudi Arabia, no one. questions the direction of the qibla today, however the quran tells muslims that they have a qibla. The text of the Quran does not give the name of the city to which the prayer was originally made, it only mentions Masjid Al-Haram or the forbidden meeting place, Muslims believe that he originally prayed towards Jerusalem according to Islamic sources in the year 624 AD. Muhammad changed the qibla to Mecca Muhammad revealed this in sura 2 of the Quran, therefore we assigned the qibla to you, in fact it was a momentous change, except for those guided by Allah, Allah would never make their Faith without effect Now, shall we take you to a qibla that will please you?

Then turn your face in the direction of the al-haram mosque wherever you are, turn your face in that direction as the historian of the Arabian Peninsula that I have always been. interested in finding the location of the original qibla which direction Muhammad prayed before the qibla was changed was it Jerusalem as some claim was it Syria as some claim or was it some other direction if we were to do this study a hundred years ago It would require an incredible amount of work and research. We would have to travel the world searching for ancient sites to find the first mosques of Islam.

Now in a few moments we can do what used to take a lifetime. Google Earth allows us to look at sites from space. and websites like arcnet can combine the research of hundreds of students and teachers. We can examine structures according to several criteria. We choose Islamic buildings. We sort them by date in a chronological list and then determine when they were built. We check your qibla direction using Google Earth and cross-checking. this to determine when the direction of the qibla changed towards mecca this will give us solid data to work with now determining the direction of the qibla is not an exact science some of the earliest mosques like this are not exactly square so the Researchers must find the qibla wall and project at 90 degrees to that wall because the first buildings were not square we cannot use the side walls or the back walls this is the mihrab of an ancient mosque the first Arabs established the direction of the qibla using the stars and they were very accurate the best way to determine the direction of the qibla is to visit the mosque and use a real and accurate GPS unit, not all mosques can be used for this study, many of them were totally rebuilt over time, to the point that it is no longer possible to determine its original qibla direction, however, some mosques survive, for example, there is a mosque called the mosque of the two qiblas in the medina.

Islamic history tells us that it was in this same mosque that the companion leading the prayers was informed about the change of qibla, so he turned around and began praying towards Mecca. The question is where did he originally confront? Muslims have a ready answer. He prayed towards Jerusalem. Today, the Two Qibla Mosque faces Mecca, but in 1987 the mosque was completely torn down so that it could be rebuilt during the construction process. The ancient foundations were exposed and they discovered that it had a qibla wall that actually faced north, generally towards Jerusalem, so Muslims believe that originally the qibla was towards Jerusalem.

There is a simple way to put this to the test if we go to the first mosques that were built. where we can identify their prayer direction, we can plot them on a map and see if their lines converge, we will find one of three things: they all point in different directions, they all point to Jerusalem, or they all point somewhere else after the mosque. Of the two qiblas in Saudi Arabia, there are 11 other ancient mosques that we can investigate. These are located in China, Egypt, southern Jordan, Lebanon, central Jordan, Yemen, Israel, Iraq, Jerusalem, the West Bank and finally Lebanon, so if we go in the order in which they were built.

The second surviving mosque was built in Guangzhou, China Guangzhou is the modern name for what was known as the city of Canton when Marco Polo arrived in this city in 1300 AD. He discovered that more than 100,000 Arab and Persian merchants lived there. The Arabs had been trading. with the Chinese for hundreds and hundreds of years, all of this is well documented, so Abu Wakas and Muhammad's uncle traveled to China on a trade mission and, according to Chinese manuscripts, built a mosque for the Arabs in the canton in the year 627 AD or six years later. The Foundation of Islam I personally examined this mosque and used a GPS unit to determine the qibla direction of the mosque.

What I found was surprising. This mosque does not face Mecca. It is oriented 12 degrees north of Mecca, which means it does not face Jerusalem either. Its qibla passes to the south. From Jerusalem the next mosque was built in 641 AD. About 20 years after the founding of Islam in the city of Fustat on the outskirts of Cairo this mosque was rebuilt and expanded several times so that today the original foundation is no longer evident, however a description of the plan The original mosque survives and Islamic records tell us that the first qibla pointed east and then had to be corrected south towards Mecca.

The next surviving Islamic building is the Umayyad palace built here at Huma in southern Jordan around 700 AD. About 80 years after the founding of Islam, the Abbas family built a large manor house here. This house did not have a special area for the mosque. Rather, the faithful lined the courtyard here to pray. This house has a qibla direction but not towards Jerusalem. year a new mosque was built in baalbak in lebanon notice that its qibla does not point to mecca a year later the umaids built a large and impressive mosque here in the citadel of amman jordan this mosque points south mecca is there a a couple of years later This in the year 705 AD. u 84 years after the founding of Islam, Muslims built the great mosque of Sana in the capital city of Yemen, while this mosque points in the general direction of Mecca, it actually points west of Jerusalem the following year in 706 AD The Muslim Umayyad rulers built Khurbat al-minyah, a large palace complex in Israel on the coast of Galilee.

This palace complex had a specific room used as a mosque, according to the inscription placed at an entrance. It was built 87 years after the founding of Islam by the Muslim ruler al-Waleed this building and its mosque do not face Jerusalem that same year the Muslims also built the Wasid mosque in Iraq originally archaeologists claimed that this mosque pointed to Jerusalem however , further investigations have shown that this mosque points to the south of Jerusalem the next mosque is the al-aqsa mosque in Jerusalem itself this mosque is not the dome of the temple but the old mosque to the south of the dome this mosque is already in Jerusalem but It also has a qibla and does not point to Mecca.

The next mosque you see was built in 724 AD. 103 years after the founding of Islam this is the herbat al mafja mosque near Jericho in the Jordan Valley this palace was built near the end of the Umayyad dynasty. When looking at the plan we can see that the palace and its mosque faced south Instead of towards Mecca, that same year a mosque was built in Anjar, about 58 kilometers from Beirut. It was built near the end of the Umayyad period and no more than 30 years later it fell into ruins and was finally abandoned as it was never rebuilt we can easily determine the direction of the qibla which does not point towards Mecca or Jerusalem now let's put all this together on a map the result is surprising during the first 100 years of islam 100 of all the surviving mosques we have located so far face a place in the south of jordan instead of mecca from the north, southeast and west all the mosques face a First place, this is no small error in determining the direction of the qibla, they all point specifically to a single location directly below this point, which is the ancient city of Petra.

This is a city that we know well today, it is a popular tourist site, tourists come from all over the world to marvel at the great temples and monuments of this city. Could it be that Petra is the mother of all the cities described in the Quran was the center of the ancient Arab pilgrimage, so Petra could also be the birthplace of Muhammad and the founding city of Islam. Every good Muslim tells me that Muslims used to pray towards Jerusalem. They know this because Bukheri tells them so and I agree with Muharri. It was Jerusalem, but Bukhari wrote about 200 years after Muhammad and more than 100 years after the qibla change occurred, so he is not an eyewitness, he is simply collecting what people remember and in fact observing several contradictory ideas that were circulating at that time.

While some people were offering the morning prayer in Gubar, a man approached them and told them that this night a Quranic order had been revealed to the Apostle of Allah that he should face the Kaaba in Mecca, so you They should also turn their faces towards her. At that moment, their faces were towards Syria and upon hearing this they turned towards the Kaaba in Mecca. I think originally Muhammad, while living in Medina, prayed north towards Petra, which was in the Roman province of Syria, when Bucheri was collecting his stories, people had forgotten about Petra and everyone remembered that his great-grandfathers prayed towards Syria those raising the argument about becca raise an interesting point.

I agree that in Islamic literature the name becca is synonymous with the first holy city of Islam when Muhammad was young, people decided to rebuild the Kaaba in Among the rubble they found several building blocks with inscriptions written in Syriac, the language of The Nabataeans found a Jew who could translate it. I am Allah, the lord of bika. I created it on the day I created the sky and the earth and formed the sun. and the moon and I surround him with seven pious angels, he will stand while his two mountains rise as a blessing to his people with milk and water.

The word becca is an ancient Semitic word that means to weep or lament if a place was assigned the title becca. It would mean the place of crying. The name becca has never been used for Jerusalem. It appears only once in the Bible in Psalm 84. Here it is used in reference to a valley of weeping, but the Quran also speaks of a valley of weeping where to make. I was crying for Ismael. The Quran places this story in Becca, which is the ancient name of the place where the Kaaba was built. Surely this place was not Jerusalem, which is built on the top of a mountain and not in a valley.

I think the answer is quite simple. There were many major earthquakes in Petra, such as the one in 551 AD, just 19 years before Muhammad was born, we are told that during that earthquake much of Petra was destroyed. Petra could have been called the Becca Valley because manypeople died for so long. Many years after all the earthquakes, if Petra is the holy city of Islam, then there should be evidence of Muhammad's tribe, the Quraish around Petra, if Dan Gibson can find Muhammad's tribe, it will greatly support his theory of that Muhammad was from the region of Petra and not from Mecca. long ago this was known as the city of hawar or humema as it is known today archaeologists have discovered a farm belonging to the abasid family and a mosque built some time later when the muslims of iraq defeated the umayyads of damascus they wanted a member of Muhammad's family family to support and legitimize their revolt and that is why they came here to Humama 27 miles from Petra it was here where they found Muhammad's family and the Kures tribe they did not go to Mecca in Saudi Arabia or Medina they came here to hamema 27 miles outside petra it was here that they found the quraysh tribe and muhammad's family not in saudi arabia so far we have discovered that all the early mosques of islam faced the ancient city of petra, but does the city of petra fit petra to islamic descriptions of the original holy city of islam there is a story told by all of muhammad's early biographers it is about abdullah muhammad's father who one day was working in the field and came home with dirt in his hands, he approached to his first wife and said to her: lie with me, but she refused because he was dirty, so he came out washed from the earth and went to his next wife, Amina, she conceived and in this way Muhammad was born.

The important thing for us about this story is that all the early writers use the same word. for the dirt on abdullah's hands everyone uses an arabic word for soil, especially the soil of a cultivated plot or field, the problem is that there is no cult land available near mecca, however, when we reach petra, we discover that Petra had water fields and trees according to archaeologists there were public and private gardens, as well as running water brought to the city through aqueducts and clay pipes. Archaeologists have described fruit trees, grapes and gardens existing in ancient Petra, even today there are cultivated lands between Petra and Albeda, which is five kilometers away.

By analyzing ancient soil, researchers discovered that just 100 years ago the hills around Petra were covered with trees, including oaks, junipers, pistachios and carob trees, the holy city not only had trees and fields, but was also a walled city. , says ibn Ashak and they surrounded him. by the walls of mecca now this is very puzzling because mecca did not have walls some think that perhaps this was a house in mecca but ibn ishaq specifically says the walls of mecca but mecca was not a walled city so, what about petra? Petra was built in a valley on both sides of the valley there were large mountains with cliffs.

These cliffs were as good as city walls, so the people of Petra built walls from one mountain cliff to the other mountain cliff both on this side. of the valley as on the other side of the valley, so Petra had city walls, another distinctive feature in Petra is that it contains a very unique stream. Now usually you have a valley with mountains on one side, mountains on the other, and a stream running down the center of the valley, but in this case earthquakes long ago cracked these mountains so that there is a crack. on that mountain the water runs through that crack through the valley and comes out through the crack on the other side the Nabataeans built a hilly street from one mountain to the other mountain and next to it there was a rainwater course, let's go down there now in islam one of the duties of pilgrims is to go seven times between two mountains called marwa and safa the interesting thing is that bucheri tells us that muhammad chose to do this by running in the rainwater course between the two mountains but there are safa problems and marwa are just small rocks today they are located just inside the mosque building, as you can see in this drawing, there was no rainwater course between these two rocks, but here in petra the description fits exactly from a mountain to the other, there are four roads to the petra basin from petra.

It is in a valley that could be entered from either end of the valley during the year of the contest of Mecca the prophet entered Mecca through its upper part but there were also other ways to enter Petra ancient records tell us that it could be entered to the holy city and came out through a crack in the rocks in arabic this is called thanea al-bukhari mentions this several times the apostle of allah used to enter mecca from haitaniya and he used to leave mecca from lotania the prophet continued advancing until reaching the tanya through which one would go to them i.e. the people of quresh, there are two thenia entrances, one of them is the famous sikh one that tourists pass through to enter the city, the other It is across the columned street and leads to a labyrinth of canyons that eventually empty into Wadi Araba beneath the Dead Sea.

Petra also has many temples. Here is what is known today as the Temple of the Winged Lions or the Temple of Al -uzha behind me is what is known today as keser al-bint or the temple to the god dushara this short chain of mountains here was the home of the god and here in the very heart of the mountains is the temple to this god the ducera now ibn hisham tells us a very interesting story it is very early in islamic history only a few people have converted to islam at this time. One of them was a man known as Al-Tufal bin Ammar of Mecca.

He accepted Islam on one of his trips and once he returned to Mecca, his wife also decided to accept Islam. Fail then tells his wife that he should go to Dushera temple and get clean. There in the sacred area there was a trickle of water where one could wash. She did this and returned home and learned about Islam. Did this story take place in Mecca a thousand years ago? Miles away where there is no temple for Dushera or it took place here in Petra, if so then the temple of Duchera is there. She would have gone down to this temple, washed and gone home.

Is there a temple for Dushera in Mecca in Saudi Arabia? There are no temples, no cracks in the rock, no streams, no city walls, no grass, no trees, nothing, everything is here in Petra, and for the first 100 years all mosques in the entire Islamic world pointed here to Masjid Al-Haram, the forbidden meeting place here In Petra there is no other city in the world that fits this description so perfectly. Now Al-Haqtab had harassed him so much that he forced him to retreat to the upper part of Makkah and stopped on the mountain of Hira in front of the city.

It is interesting to note. that in this story mount hera is located at the top of mecca if you go to mecca today the cave of hera does not face the city but here in petra the high side of the city is north of the street with columns and the lower part of the city is south of the colonnaded street, in fact the city was divided in half by the colonnaded street, if petra is the holy city of mecca, then the cave where Muhammad received his first revelation It should be located there, ancient records say that the cave overlooked the city and that it was torn down since Muhammad tried to climb the mountain to throw himself, if that is the case, I think I know the place, but we will have to go there, here in this cave, we can see where there are many. several god blocks above there is a large crescent symbol this is the type of cave where young men would go to contemplate the meaning of life the descriptions and location of this cave are just as ancient records describe it on the outskirts of the city the entrance in front of the city and evidence that people spent time here in religious worship and meditation.

I believe this is one of the holiest places for all of Islam and it is here in Petra that the Quran commands all Muslims to face the forbidden meeting place when they pray. The forbidden gathering place was not a building, it was much more than this, it was a large area marked with special stones, these stones marked the boundary around the sacred area, no killing was allowed within this area, not even birds were killed, what type of stones? Would you need to mark an area like that? If you only had small round stones, they would get lost among the other stones in the desert.

They should have been larger stones and there should have been something special about them so that you would know for sure that this was the boundary of the sacred area. Today in Mecca there are no special cairns. Historians have long wondered what these cairns might have looked like, but They seem to have been lost in the years since then or perhaps they were never there. If Petra is the original holy city of Islam, then of course the special stones would not be in Mecca, they would be in Petra. Now there is a feature of Petra that is absolutely fascinating.

Every time tourists come to this city, they pass by a series of well-known square carved stones. Like gin rocks, this is a fanciful name given to them by local Bedouins. The interesting thing is that there are more than 20 of these large square stones that mark all the entrances to the city. Is it possible that they mark the forbidden shrine? that is why they are not located in mecca, if that is true then masjid al-haram or the forbidden shrine would have been located here and if it was located here then the kaaba would have been located here too, but it is not because a man called ibn zubair moved him so far in this program.

We have been examining the direction of prayer that Muslims originally faced, as we have seen all the mosques built during the first hundred years of Islam pointing to Petra using the two mosques in the citadel of Oman. Dan Gibson has determined the approximate years in which the direction of the qibla changed. Does Islamic history give us any clues as to why the direction of prayer might have changed? If we look at Islamic history at this exact moment we come face to face with the second Islamic civil war. Even better at this time in history, the governor of the holy city was Abdullah ibn Zubair, in his eyes he was particularly unhappy.

The holy city was the most important city in Islam, the mother of all cities, but the Umayyad rulers chose Damascus as the new capital. and many people were dissatisfied with the corruption and infighting in damascus, so in 683 AD, some 64 years after the founding of islam, ibn zubair declared himself caliph in the holy city and that started the second civil war islamic, the umayyads reacted strongly and sent an army against the holy city ibn zubair then did something shocking: he destroyed the kaaba, the ancient sacred shrine of islam, he bin zubair then demolished the shrine of the kaaba until it was level to the ground and excavated its foundation, then placed the black stone next to it, on a wooden stand and with a strip of silk, the Umayyads fought against ibn Zubir and his companions, but after 40 days came the news that the ruling caliph in Damascus had died and the yamaya generals insisted that the battle was not over but that it must be done.

Return to Damascus so that a new caliph could be established. Members of the Umayyad royal family had also come to the battle and insisted that they must return to Damascus under the protection of the entire army so that the entire army would leave. The face here is one of timing, the Islamic records are quite clear that when the caliph died, his 13-year-old son ruled in his place. Al Tabari, volume 20 specifically tells us that his son survived only 40 days after his father's death before he too was killed during this time the armies of the holy city returned to Damascus now a slow moving army would have taken many days to cover the 1400 kilometer walk across the desert from mecca in saudi arabia to damascus in syria if the army could move at 20 miles a day it would still have taken them 43 days if you add the time it took for the courier to carry the message, the time it took for the army to decide to return and mobilize and the 43 day march, there is simply not enough time for Mecca to be too. too far to be believable, however, if the holy city was Petra, then the distances would be drastically reduced.

This problem of distance plagues Islamic history again and again. Mecca in Saudi Arabia is simply too far away to fit into many of the stories of today's early Islamic history. With the lull in the war, Ibn Zubair had time to rebuild his defenses and prepare for the return of the Umayyad army. Now I want to show you something. Here are some of the volumes of al-Thabari's history of Islam that al-Thabari managed to compile. Write a wealth of material about what happened during each year of Islamic history. He devotes entire chapters to it, sometimes two chapters each year, but then something strange happens.

The battle for the holy city takes place over several years, but the 70th year of Islamic history is of great importance. Now note that Al Tabri dedicates 15 pages to describing what happens in the 69th year and dedicates 27 pages to describing what What happens in the year 71, but where is the year 70? LookThis for the year 70 al tabri only records a few lines of text, did you not find? more information for this year or later editors censored this year from al-thabri's record only a few lines, but what he records gives us some tantalizing details, he tells us that musa ibn zubair apparently a brother of abdullah brings supplies to the holy city Were these supplies?

Military equipment. No, he says he brought many horses and camels. I believe this is the year that Ibn Zubair's followers moved south from Petra to the deserts of Arabia to find a place where they could hold out against Omead's forces. The details of this year have been redacted from al-thabri's history, but we know that they obtained many horses and camels that would have no other purpose than to get many people out of the city. This lull in the war continued for the next year, so Ibn Zubair took advantage of the lull to undertake a religious project and decided to rebuild the Kaaba, but Al Tabri does not tell us where the new Kaaba was built, whether in Petra or a new one. safest place in distant mecca.

I believe that the new Kaaba was built in Saudi Arabia and the black rock was moved there for safekeeping, so even if Ibn Zubair lost the holy city, he still had the rock and a new Kaaba after a new caliph was established , the Umayyad army returned this time. was larger and the Umayyads brought with them great weapons of war, including a stone-throwing machine called a manginique, the war between ibn zubair and al-hashaj took place for six months and 17 nights in the hollow of mecca yusofi bin maha said that I saw the mangenic with which the stones were held the sky thundered and lightning and the sound of thunder and lightning rose above that of the stones so that it masked it during the fight ibn zubair took refuge in a ruined building at side of the kaaba and this began Another battle that completed the destruction of the Kaaba area of ​​the holy city eventually Ibn Zubair lost the battle, but the cause was taken up by those in the city of Medina in Saudi Arabia and by the city of Kufa in Iraq.

I think during this time. the islamic world was embroiled in dispute whether they prayed towards petra or mecca the great islamic empire had divided in two originally the umayyads ruled from damascus and prayed towards petra but they were defeated in battle and now the eastern part of the empire was ruled by the Abbasids, who built their mosques facing Mecca. It was during this exact time that we see a change in the construction of mosques. Before this, every new mosque built faced Petra, but now, for the first time, some of the new mosques began to face. Mecca in Saudi Arabia, but the problem still existed.

What is done with the old mosques? They were built in front of Petra. It was during this time that mosques began hanging a sign on the wall to indicate the direction of prayer. It was said in the reign of Uthman. that the caliph ordered that posters be placed on the walls of the mosques in the medina this was so that the pilgrims could easily identify the direction in which they needed to direct their prayers now this is a very interesting development because until that time mosques were built then The worshipers only had to face the qibla wall and were facing the holy city, why would it be necessary to introduce a sign unless the direction of prayer had changed at this time?

Around 89 years after the founding of Islam, a niche was suddenly introduced into our structure. to denote the direction of prayer, this niche was added to older buildings and also incorporated into newer buildings today, the niche is standard in all mosques, but originally it was not, there was no niche until the direction of the qibla changed in the civil war, the Umayyads still prayed. towards petra, but the rebels in the holy city of medina and in kufa chose to pray towards the new qibla in saudi arabia when the armies of kufa mehti bin zubair bin abdullah al-musli spoke, praise be to god who has tested us with shackles and has tested you by forgiving us we are people who resort to the same qibla as you what a strange phrase we are people who resort to the same qibla as you Muslim historians argue that this means the same qibla as all other Muslims, but Now that we have discovered evidence of the qibla changing at this very moment, this phrase takes on a special meaning.

The people of Kufa join Ibn Zubair in accepting the Qibla from him. This is key to understanding much of what happens next, although Ibn Zubair eventually dies and appears to lose the civil war, the city of Kufa plays an important role in the development of the new Abbasid dynasty and Kufa becomes a theological center and place to copy qurans in the islamic world things were a disaster not only politically divided muslims were religiously divided obeying the wishes of allah as revealed by the prophet muhammad was at the very heart of islam if you were to obey muhammad and the quran and look towards the forbidden gathering place in petra or should you pray towards the holy house and The black rock found in Saudi Arabia so far Dan Gibson has mapped the existing mosques from the first century of Islam and they all point to Petra in Jordan.

So what about the mosques of the second century of Islam? Do they all point to Petra too? This is where things start to get interesting during my studies I discovered that mosques built during the 2nd century of Islam point in different directions this is what I call the time of confusion 102 years after the founding of Islam the mosque was built of Umar in southern syria in the ancient city of busra, as you can see, the orientation of the mosque does not point towards mecca, but it clearly does not point towards petra either five years later, the ruling muslims built a palace in the syrian desert known as keser al-hayar al-garby this is a drawing of the plan of the palace and the mosque in the corner of the complex the whole complex seems to be somewhere between petra and mecca a couple of years later the kasa al-haya palace was built Ishaki about one hundred kilometers north of Palmyra, if we examine the plan of the palace buildings, we notice that the palace and its mosque do not seem to align with either Mecca or Petra, once again, it indicates an intermediate point, is it possible that Has something happened that made the builders not want it?

To choose Petra or Mecca, they then pointed the qibla between the two. We can see on the map that the qibla points exactly between the two cities. It is not a small error in calculation, but a deliberate avoidance of Petra and Mecca, so we must find. an answer elsewhere to explain that change 109 years after the founding of Islam, a mosque was built in Banghor, Pakistan, like all other mosques of the time, it only had a qibla wall without a niche, however, this mosque pointed towards Mecca in Saudi Arabia, here we are. We have the first mosque that we can identify that points to Mecca, others may have been built that no longer exist, but this mosque is important because it is the oldest mosque that is preserved and we can really say that it was facing Mecca in Saudi Arabia and the surprising thing is that it was built about 100 years after the death of Muhammad.

This is very late for Muslim historians and is going to cause all kinds of problems in traditional Islamic history. One of the most important buildings in our studio is located here in the citadel of Oman, Jordan. The Umayyad palace was built about 122 years after the founding of Islam. If you remember, we saw an Umayyad mosque built here. This mosque points directly towards Petra, but when they built the palace, its qibla direction was directly towards Mecca, so clearly the qibla direction changed. At some point between the construction of those buildings and the construction of this palace, this will help us determine how and when the direction of the qibla changed.

Remember that it was during the construction of this palace that the name of Mecca first appears in literature anywhere in the next major mosque that was built. It was built 32 kilometers south of Oman, Jordan, this was known as the Mushata palace and mosque and was built in 743 AD, as you can see it was a very large and impressive Umayyad palace with the mosque located in the southern part of the structure in front of Petra. in fact, the entire complex faces Petra. What makes this interesting is that it appears that Islam is now divided into several groups.

There were traditionalists who built their mosques like this one facing Petra, but there were reformers whose mosques faced Mecca and there were others who did not. in any of the groups and refused to select any of those qiblas During this time a significant change took place in Islamic history The Umayyad rulers of Islam in Damascus were defeated by the Abbasids of Kuffar in 754 AD. Al-Mansoor the new caliph commissioned the construction of a new eastern capital who chose Baghdad in Iraq as his site the new city was built with a spectacular design rather than the haphazard form common to most Middle Eastern cities this city It was built in a big circle.

The designers went to a completely new area and used ashes to draw the city plan on the ground before construction. The city, which was completed in 767 AD, was two kilometers in diameter, as can be seen in this drawing. The main mosque of the city did not have a niche indicating the direction of prayer. Later, a wall was used as a qibla wall and that wall pointed directly to Mecca, as would all other mosques built from now on by the Abbasid rulers, if all this is true, then the prophet Muhammad and the first Four rightly guided caliphs in Islam and the following Umayyad rulers who ruled Islam from Damascus prayed towards the city of Petra, but at the end of the Umayyad reign something happened that caused the builders to change the direction of their mosques, some pointed to Petra, others to Mecca and some chose to be neutral. and point between the two this created a problem for the western half of islam the people in the west were still loyal to the early umayyads so the islamic world is now divided in two the abasid rulers in iraq control the eastern part of the empire and The Umayyad rulers control North Africa and Spain This is an important moment in Islamic history because the Umayyads in Spain now flourish in culture and begin to build beautiful and impressive buildings The builders in Spain had a problem Traditionally all the Umayyads prayed towards petra but as we are I'm going to see that something devastating happened that resulted in future mosques no longer facing that direction.

Their enemies, the Abbasids, now pray towards Mecca in Saudi Arabia, so they do not want to choose that direction of prayer. So what should the Umayyads do while examining the built mosques? by the Spanish Umayyads I discovered the most surprising development: these builders chose neither Petra nor Mecca now, as we have seen, some of the builders in the Middle East chose to point their qiblas between the two cities, but the builders in North Africa and Spain decided to do it. something completely different over the years historians have always been puzzled by these mosques, their qiblas seem to point somewhere in South Africa, but all the African and Spanish mosques point to slightly different places, it all seems very confusing, however, When plotted on a map, we can see that all the mosques in North Africa and Spain have qiblas parallel to a line drawn between Petra and Mecca, so instead of choosing Petra or Mecca, they chose to make their qiblas parallel to a line drawn between the two cities, if you are still not convinced I want to show you something else.

Remember when we talked about the second Islamic civil war? Ibn Zubair barricaded himself in the holy city and the Syrian Umayyad army surrounded him and kept him there for four months during the month of October. The Syrians brought a catapult to the city walls where they threw stones directly at the holy places of Islam. How is it possible? Normally people live behind the city walls. A catapult would simply knock down people's houses, but in this case he said the catapult hit the holy places of Islam right in the center of the city, how is this possible?

Well, here in Petra there is a unique feature. Petra had walls in the north and in the south the city walls crossed the valley, but in the north the city walls did not go all the way. On the way to the canyon because there was a watercourse that ran along the canyon, I believe that the Syrians took their catapult along the dry course of the river to the place where they could throw rocks into the very heart of the city, hitting the Kaaba and the places Islamic archaeologists from Brown University have been excavating here in Petra for many years.

Their project was to excavate what is known as the great temple area. Upon discovering the temple, Dan was surprised to find evidence that supported his theory. One of the interesting features ofthis building. It's just that people built defenses here against attacks. Look here at this door, they closed it in order to defend themselves. This happened sometime after the earthquake of 551 AD. We can date the defenses here by the tiles that were used in the construction of these. However, there are no recorded battles in Petra during this time, so we know that this happened during the founding years of Islam, but this is not the only evidence we have during the excavations.

Archaeologists discovered more than 400 catapult stones. These stones are buried approximately to the right. place at exactly the right time, this is an extremely strong indication that the battle took place here and that the first original Kaaba was near this place, which is why Islam was divided between the traditionalists and the reformers. The traditionalists prayed towards Petra in Jordan and the reformers prayed. towards Mecca in Saudi Arabia and others deliberately chose a middle path. How were they going to resolve this dilemma? petra the city of tears suffered a fatal calamity massive earthquakes shook the oil region destroying buildings temples and houses the damage was so severe that the city was never rebuilt again the evidence of that first kaaba disappeared now the stones of the catapult destroyed much of it her.

Ibn Zubair destroyed the rest in 713 an earthquake destroyed the dam that diverted water around Petra, so each year the flood waters washed away any evidence that remained. the memory of petra faded from sight the chroniclers of islamic history writing about 150 years later never mentioned it by name in time the memories of these two places merged into one that of mecca in saudi arabia from now on Going forward all the qiblas would point here It was not until modern archaeological tools, satellite photos and the Internet enabled the creation of networks of historians, academics and scholars to understand the events that influence the writing of Islamic history.

First we must recognize several things. I think there was a literary void. in the early Islamic empire created by zealous Muslims who destroyed books and manuscripts erased inscriptions burned libraries and destroyed all literature except the Quran, which was mostly fragments of what people remembered from the revelations Muhammad gave this destruction of written material by Islamic forces. One piece of evidence that has been well documented is a letter from 640 AD. from the caliph to General Amru, leader of the Muslim armies in Egypt, who asked the caliph what he should do with the thousands of manuscripts he found in warehouses in Alexandria.

The caliph's response. has been recorded and known for centuries as for the books you mentioned here, this is my answer, if their content is in accordance with the revelations of Allah, we can do without them, because in that case the revelations of Allah are more than enough If, on the other hand, they contain matter that is not in accordance with Allah's revelations, there can be no need to preserve them, precede them and destroy them. The Muslim writer Ibn al-Kifty tells us that the books were distributed in the public baths of Alexandria where they were used. to feed the stoves that kept the baths comfortably warm they say it took six months to burn all that massive material Eutychius The patriarch of Constantinople recorded that there were four thousand baths that received books from the Alexandrian library this book burning however did not begin in Egypt but Four years earlier, in Persia, Caliph Umar's army met the Persian armies at the Battle of Cardassia in 636 AD.

At the beginning of January 637, the Muslim vanguard reached the outskirts of Tessephon and besieged the city for two months, eventually the city fell and the Muslims occupied it during the fighting. The palaces and library of Tessephon were deliberately burned at the end. The only book that managed to survive in Arabia was the glorious Quran. When it comes to the history of the Quran, historians have struggled. It seems that most of the Quran was retained orally rather than in writing, while the Arabs were great memorizers and had the ability to retain the entire Quran. The retention of materials in an oral tradition suffers from several difficulties, first and foremost the accuracy of the memories of the individuals involved.

They must be perfect in the case of the Quran arguments arose about the various verses, how they should be translated and whether or not they should be included in the complete second. The problem of transferring knowledge from the scholar to the novice is often a difficult step in In the case of the Quran, most of the men who memorized Muhammad's sayings were also warriors, as is often the case, warriors die in battle and Their knowledge of the Quran perished with them. This is amply illustrated in the Battle of Yamama, when an estimated 450 men. those who had memorized the quran were killed kudaifa bin al-yaman arrived at uthman at the time when the people of damascus and the people of iraq were waging war to conquer armenia and azerbaijan godaifa was afraid because the people of damascus and the people of iraq They had differences in the recitation of the Quran, so he said to Uthman, or chief of the believers, save this nation before they differ over the revelations, so Utman sent a message to Hafsah saying: Send us your manuscript of the Quran so that We can compile the Quranic materials into perfect copies and return the manuscript that Hafsah sent to you and then a group of men sat down to create a new copy of the Quran.

Uthman said to the three Quraysh men. In case you disagree, write it in the Quraish dialect, as the Quran was revealed in their language when several copies appeared. were written Uthman returned the original manuscript to Hafsa Uthman then sends to each Muslim province a copy of what has been written and orders that all the rest of the Quranic material, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or even in complete copies, be burned and so The burning continued until now. At that time even Quranic materials were burned, but that did not stop the discussion about what should or should not be included in the Quran when the new Qurans reached various provinces.

The people argued against them. Saheed Bint Habit said that he missed a verse from Surat Al-Qazab when we copied the Quran and he used to hear the apostle of Allah recite it, so we searched for it and found it with Usain Mabin Tabitha Ansari. These five or six copies were now the only Qurans in the entire Muslim empire. Uthman's order to burn all the rest of the Quranic material was attempted. to erase all the Qurans everywhere except the few that were in the hands of the provincial governors, in effect all the non-Muslim books were destroyed and then the Muslims destroyed all their own books and writings except five or six copies, remember the Islamic empire at this time.

It stretched from the Atlantic Ocean through the Middle East to Afghanistan and there were only five or six copies of the Koran and all those millions of square kilometers this is what I mean when I talk about a literary void much later, when the Abbasids took control. of the Islamic empire recognized this literary gap and set out to correct it. The problem was that they were interested in producing an Abbasid version of Islamic history, so all materials produced under Abbasid control reflected the politically correct version of a Basset history. These stories and hadiths over the previous 250 years or more were collected, copied and distributed.

Books that were written earlier were destroyed or edited by later writers who thought they had found errors in them under a basic rule. Massive scientific and religious academic projects were carried out. The Abbasid rulers encouraged academic development that would not only present the early years of Islam in a good light but would also confirm their own right to rule the empire during this period of time, as the great Islamic historians write in their treatise on Islamic history and Also edit the above accounts, for example, we do not have an original banished biography of Muhammad, as Eben Hisham under the Abbasids corrected what he called serious errors in the original account after the editing of Ibn Hashem, the rest of the great Islamic historians They started writing. their stories and present us with an Islamic history that was designed to fit the religious and political worldview of the Abbasids of their time.

Is it possible that today's Muslims are victims of an Abbasid cover-up? Did the Abbasids deliberately steer Muslims away from prayer? to the forbidden meeting place in Petra as commanded by the Quran and have them pray towards the black rock that now resides in Mecca. Are Muslims still being misled by Abbasid propaganda? I believe the stage was set when the early Muslim leaders put together the various fragments of the Quran. The problem wasn't the collection, it was the destruction of anything that opposed his point of view. There is a big divide here between Western thought and Muslim thought.

In Western thought, later manuscripts are less reliable as they are copies of copies to which we must return. source material as it is more accurate, Muslims, on the other hand, think that earlier manuscripts are less reliable and later manuscripts replace earlier manuscripts even in the Quran, later revelations replace or abrogate earlier revelations, once that you allow the concept of abrogation, you open yourself to accepting all kinds of changes if the abasids altered history they went as far as altering the text of the quran, for example, how did the name of mecca come to sura 48 abu bakr, the Muhammad's successor, made the first compilation of Quranic material.

Uthman who followed him used that? collection and were later added to it, historians tell us that even after Uthman compiled his Quran, people remembered even more verses that Muhammad had revealed every time a new Quran came out, it was promoted as the most complete Quran, the previous ones were good, but the newest. some were more complete with more revelations in them. Did the Abbasids bring out an even more complete Quran that contained a mention of Mecca? Today we have many of the Kufi Abbasid Qurans in museums from Istanbul to Samarkand. These Qurans use the Kufic script invented in the city of Kufa, but what about earlier Qurans written in other scripts?

I have searched many of the early Quranic scrolls written in pre-Kufic script. It should not be surprising that none of the pre-Kufic materials include verses about changing the qibla or the The historians of the city of Mecca have questioned me that I am trying to rewrite all of Islamic history. I assure you that I am not trying to do this. I'm just suggesting a small change long ago, the holy city of Islam was known as Becca. I believe that name was used for the city of Petra after repeated earthquakes killed many people after Ibn Zubair moved the black stone to Mecca.

The scribes only had to make one small change to the Islamic writing in Arabic. Becca is written like this. It is very easy to change the base. to a meme look again that's all it took it's virtually undetectable to later readers did the abasid scribes correct an earlier reference to becca in the quran and make it mecca? I think all the evidence points to petra as the ancient city of becca, the founding place of islam, all the mosques from the first century of islam point to the forbidden meeting place in petra and all the descriptions fit petra not mecca , Muslims are instructed in the Quran to pray towards the forbidden meeting place, the Quran says nothing About the black rock, it is clear that although Dan Gibson's research is rooted in Islamic history and he has a great affection for the Arab world, his theories will be a challenge to Muslims as religions around the world come under increasing scrutiny to prove the veracity of their origins. all religions should consider serious research which they may find difficult.

Islam must ask itself whether it is possible that more than a billion people have been misled by Abbasid propaganda about how and where their religion began and, if true, what implications this has for the average Muslim today. you