World-Maps for Finding the Direction and Distance to Mecca: Innovation and Tradition in Islamic Science

Abstract

Presents an overview of the ways in which Muslims over the centuries have determined the sacred direction towards Mecca (qibla) and then describes, in detail, two 17th-century brass Iranian maps discovered in 1989 and 1995. The author shows that the geographical data derives from a 15th-century Central Asian source and that the mathematics underlying the grid was developed in 9th-century Baghdad.