{"id":2371,"date":"2019-05-03T13:21:30","date_gmt":"2019-05-03T01:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/?p=2371"},"modified":"2019-05-03T13:21:30","modified_gmt":"2019-05-03T01:21:30","slug":"which-way-to-mecca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/which-way-to-mecca\/","title":{"rendered":"Which Way to Mecca?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Knowing the direction to Mecca is important to all Muslims.\u00a0 This post goes into the best way to find it. (Updated May, 2019 to take compass variation into account.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Today is Friday and all over the world, Muslims will join together for Friday prayers, like a wave washing over the world from east to west.\u00a0 By some estimates there are over 1.8 billion Muslims in the world and one of the many things that binds them together is prayer, or Salat<\/a>.\u00a0 Most people are aware that Muslims pray five times a day but not everyone is aware that when they pray, they all face the same place, Mecca, and more precisely, the Ka’aba, a squarish shrine of black marble that sits in the centre of the Great Mosque of Mecca.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
https:\/\/scoopempire.com\/heres-great-mosque-mecca-looks-like-space\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

(For the pedantic amongst you (meaning me), a better transliteration would be Makkah).\u00a0 This direction is known as the Qibla.\u00a0 Most mosques will be oriented along that direction, with an alcove inside (the mihrab) to indicate that direction.\u00a0 That forms quite a picture in my head of a worldwide practice – and must add greatly to a sense of unity.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am not a Muslim but I did live for two years in a very conservative Muslim country and learned quite a lot about Islam.\u00a0 I won’t claim to be an expert on Islam but I think I have a good familiarity.\u00a0 I’ll ask for forgiveness in advance if I’ve gotten something wrong here- and am more than happy to be better educated on this.\u00a0 Please!<\/em><\/p>\n

Recently, a friend asked me to help with determining that direction for a gathering they were organising.\u00a0 Off the top of my head, I thought that it has to be either roughly northeast or northwest depending on which way is shorter.\u00a0 Here’s a map similar to the one in my head that was behind my reasoning:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Based on that, I figured it’s probably northwest from here.\u00a0 This was important\u00a0and I wanted to be sure – so I consulted the internet (as you do).\u00a0 A issue like this is quite common for Muslims, especially when travelling.\u00a0 I can recall visiting countries in Asia and the Middle East where the qibla was shown as an arrow painted on the ceiling of hotel rooms<\/a>.\u00a0 (This guy<\/a> has some special issues.)\u00a0 It should come as no surprise that there are apps and websites that provide this service.\u00a0 The first website I consulted was Hamariweb.com<\/a>\u00a0which listed most New Zealand cities – here’s what they said was the qibla for Christchurch:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hang on – that’s really messing with my schema, thank you very much.\u00a0 West southwest?\u00a0 Zooming out I get this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Okay, so, yes, this does end up at Mecca, but is this correct?\u00a0 Better check somewhere else<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And note how Musjid Al Noor is oriented in this direction:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These are\u00a0all consistent, yes, but clearly I’m not understanding this.\u00a0 Does this have to do with great circles?<\/p>\n

Great Circles<\/strong><\/p>\n

With\u00a0 reading most maps, the curvature of the earth<\/a> doesn’t come into play very much, particularly if you’re looking at relatively small areas.\u00a0 But say you take an overseas trip – perhaps it’s your year to make the pilgrimage to Mecca (the Ha<\/a>j).\u00a0 When travelling long distances by air, planes take the most direct route, to save on fuel and time.\u00a0 When plotted on most world maps, these end up being curved lines rather than straight.\u00a0 These curved lines are referred to as Great Circles <\/a>and occur when\u00a0a plane (not an airplane…a geometric plane) intersects a sphere and passes through the centre of that sphere.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
https:\/\/www.caliper.com\/glossary\/what-is-a-great-circle.htm<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This represents the shortest distance between two points on the sphere’s surface<\/a>.\u00a0 When we project<\/a> the three dimensional nature of the earth’s surface into a flat, two dimensional space, distortions occur<\/a>, so these are really problems with how well our 2D maps represent a 3D object.\u00a0 The straight line an airplane would follow becomes curved because\u00a0the earth is relatively spherical.\u00a0 As shown in the map below, the shortest path an airplane would fly going from New York to Madrid is not the straight line drawn between them, but the curved great circle route above.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
https:\/\/gisgeography.com\/great-circle-geodesic-line-shortest-flight-path\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I did manage to find a great circle mapper and plugged in the airport codes for Christchurch (CHC) and Mecca (OJEN).\u00a0 Here’s what they came back with:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So, putting all this together, I’ll suggest to my friend that the qibla for Christchurch is on a compass bearing of 256 degrees West.<\/p>\n

Correcting for compass variation<\/strong><\/p>\n

We’re not quite done yet.\u00a0 Those of you who are marine inclined might be inclined to ask – is that bearing true or magnetic?\u00a0 Due to variations in the earth’s composition, there is usually a difference between true north (to the north pole) and magnetic north (the direction your compass points to) which need to be taken into account.\u00a0 The bearing to Mecca from the sites above are with respect to true north so to be accurate we need to correct the bearing based on the compass variation here.\u00a0 This turns out to be 24 degrees 1 minute East<\/a>.\u00a0 One of many nautical sayings helps us know how to take this into account: “Variation east, compass is least<\/a>” or less, so I need to subtract 24 from 256 to get the magnetic bearing – which is (let’s see, where’s that calculator…) 232 degrees.\u00a0 So to find the proper bearing to read of my compass, this is what I’ll use to find the direction to Mecca.<\/p>\n

While this is always an important thing for Muslims to be aware of, it is especially so now as Ramadan<\/a>, the Muslim month of fasting is about to begin.\u00a0 The sighting of the new moon will make it official but it should be sometime around Sunday the 5th.\u00a0 To all our Muslim brothers and sisters, Ramadan Kareem<\/a>!<\/p>\n

C \t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Knowing the direction to Mecca is important to all Muslims.\u00a0 This post goes into the best way to find it. (Updated May, 2019 to take compass variation into account.) Today is Friday and all over the world, Muslims will join together for Friday prayers, like a wave washing over the world from east to west.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}