King vs Gibson - Qibla Dilemma EP.1

Dr David King (79 yrs old and considered the world authority on the Qibla) wrote a paper against Dan Gibson in 2019 concerning his research on the differing early Qiblas, because much of what Gibson found confronts most of what King has taught for years.
Gibson, who between 1979 – 2004 spent his time amongst the Bedouin in Arabia and Jordan went personally to find the Qiblas of all the earliest mosques. He did this because he was initially interested in why so much of the geography in the Qur’an didn’t make sense; such as referring to the prophet having daily contact with people from Thamud 24 times, the people of Ad 23 times, and the people of Midian 7 times, yet they all lived 600 miles too far north of Mecca, where the prophet was living.
Gibson noticed that according to the Qur’an and to the Islamic Traditions, where this prophet lived was in a valley, had streams, and fertile fruits, and olive trees, all of which doesn’t exist in Mecca.
So, he went to all of these places in Arabia to investigate these problems and wrote the book entitled ‘Qur’anic Geography’ in 2011.
In his travels he came across many ancient ruins of mosques. While looking at them he found that they all had Qibla walls (always the longest wall, in order to accommodate the many people who prayed in a long straight line, which faced towards a sanctuary), yet the earliest ones were all facing Petra, in Jordan and not Mecca.
The Qur’an in Surah 2:148-150 says that the Qibla should be towards Mecca (according to the later Islamic Traditions), but the Qur’an doesn’t say Mecca, but merely says to face the ‘al Masjid al-Haram’ (the place of bowing towards that which is forbidden).
Because these earliest Qiblas are not towards Mecca, Gibson wrote his book entitled ‘Early Islamic Qiblas’ concerning his research on the earliest Qiblas. His research included his trips to over 100 mosques. There he took the coordinates of all these Qibla walls using the Astra satellites (the most accurate measurements which we can use today).
Initially, he found that most of these mosques were facing a multiplicity of directions; yet, none of the earliest Qiblas were facing Mecca, which goes against both the Qur’an and the Islamic Traditions.
One would possibly think that the reason for these various directions was that they were simply ignorant and didn’t know how to face a city which was thousands and hundreds of miles away.
David King got a hold of Gibson’s book to critique it. He himself only went to one mosque to investigate its Qibla in his lifetime. Thus, no one had done the work Gibson had done. When King read the book, he got very angry and decided to write a quite emotional response. It is that response by David King against Dan Gibson which we will now turn to in our next episodes.
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Видео King vs Gibson - Qibla Dilemma EP.1 канала CIRA International