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The astronomical orientation of the historical Grand mosques in Anatolia (Turkey)

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Abstract

In the ancient civilizations, the sky has been observed in order to understand the motions of the celestial bodies above the horizon. The study of faiths and practices dealing with the sky in the past has been attributed to the sun, the moon, and the prominent stars. The alignment and orientation of constructions to significant celestial objects were a common practice. The orientation was an important component of the religious structure design. Religious buildings often have an intentional orientation to fix the praying direction. In Islam, a sacred direction (Qibla) towards Kaaba located in the courtyard in the Sacred Mosque in Mecca has been used for praying and fulfilling varied ritual tasks. Therefore, the mosques had then to orientate towards the Qibla direction, being designated by a focal niche in the Qibla-wall, wherever they were built on Earth. In this study, the orientations of the historical Grand mosques in Turkey are surveyed with regard to the folk astronomy derived from pre-Islamic Arabian sources, early traditions of the Islamic period, and geometric-trigonometric computation in mathematical astronomy inherited and developed mostly from Greek sources according to the Islamic view of the World geography.

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Notes

  1. Kaaba (the divinely chosen centre of the Islamic world) is a black granite prismal-shaped sacred building located in the courtyard of the Sacred Mosque [Masjid al-Haram] in Mecca. According to the Muslim tradition, Kaaba was the first house built on earth by Prophet Adam for worshipping Allah and it was finally rebuilt on the foundations by Prophet Abraham and his son Prophet Ishmael. The location and basic structure of Kaaba have never changed over the centuries.

  2. This hadith can be found in the hadith collection of Jāmi‘at-Tirmidhī collected by al-Tirmidhi (d. 892). Chapter 2: Salah (Prayers), Hadith No: 342.

  3. Analemma is a projection procedure based on Greek mathematical astronomy for reducing the spherical problems to the planar problems.

  4. In the ancient Mediterranean world, the classical compass winds were referring the geographic direction and orientation with the winds as conceived of by the ancient Greece and Rome. The Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his Meteorology (ca. 340), introduced a 10-to-12 wind system. The Greek poet Homer (ca. 800) refers to the 4 winds in his Odyssey and in the Iliad. The medieval Muslim scholars came into contact with the Greek texts and the Meteorology of Aristotle was translated into Arabic by Hunayn bin Ishaq (809–873).

  5. Orthodrome is the intersection of the surface of a sphere with a plane passing through the centre of the sphere. For any two distinct points on a sphere, there is only one arc of a great circle representing the shortest path between the points. Loxodrome is an arc crossing all meridians of longitude with constant bearing.

  6. An astrolabe is a comprehensive inclinometer, historically utilized for calculating the position (altitude and azimuth) of the celestial objects above the horizon. A sundial is a device consisting of a dial and a gnomon that tells the time of day when there is sunlight by the apparent position of the sun in the sky. A quadrant is essentially a graduated quarter of a circle, set up for measuring the altitude of the sun, moon, planets, and stars in the sky.

  7. Zij is an Islamic astronomical book tabulating parameters utilized for astronomical calculations of the solar, lunar, planetary, and stellar positions above the horizon.

  8. Most of the professional astronomers associated with major mosques who practiced such applied astronomy for religious purposes (e.g. the calculation of the five daily prayer times, the determination of the Qibla direction, and the regulation of the lunar Islamic calendar) were called muwaqqits, literally “those concerned with timekeeping”.

  9. In abjad notation, the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet are assigned numerical values in decreasing sequence from right to left. See detailed information in Roegel (2008).

  10. In Geography of Ptolemy, the prime meridian ran through the Canaries, the westernmost land recorded.

  11. The first was the chapter about the magnetic compass (al-ṭāsa) in Muʿīn al-ṭullāb fī ʾl-ʿamal bi-ʾl-asṭurlāb by al-Ashraf (ca. 1300). The second was the chapter about the Qibla instrument for every locality in Muʿīn al-ṭullāb fī ʾl-ʿamal bi-ʾl-asṭurlāb by Ibn Simʿūn (ca. 1300). See detailed information in Schmidl (1997).

  12. A complete list of construction dates, locations, measured orientations, intended Qibla directions, and declinations for the Grand mosques (within this study) is obtainable from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by Afyon Kocatepe University Scientific Research Projects Coordination Department (Project No: 13.HIZ.DES.43). The authors are grateful to numerous graduate students of Geomatics Engineering of Afyon Kocatepe University for their support of the GNSS measurements in order to determine the Grand mosque orientations.

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Yilmaz, M., Tiryakioglu, I. The astronomical orientation of the historical Grand mosques in Anatolia (Turkey). Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. 72, 565–590 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-018-0215-1

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