An 85 minute documentary film

1. Over 20 new buildings have been listed, most of them Umayyad buildings in Jordan. Plus one in Eretria, and one in Somaliland.

2. The mosque in Guangzhou was reviewed with several changes being made in the database listing. a) The date of this mosque has been challenged by our review. While Muhammad’s uncle did indeed visit China and introduced Islam to Muslims living there, there is doubt that this mosque was constructed at this time. After reviewing the options, we decided to move the date of this mosque construction to the 8th century. b) The Qibla direction of this mosque was also reviewed, mostly because of how the sphere of the earth is affected when dealing with very long distances. While this mosque points north of Mecca, it is unclear if it should be listed at a Petra mosque or a Between mosque. So it’s classification was removed, and changed to “Unknown.”

3. Discussions were started with Dove Satellites (https://www.satimagingcorp.com/) to obtain custom images of some Umayyad buildings.

4. The Wasit mosque data was reviewed as we have not been able to work from personally taken measurements. Everyone seems to be working from plans drawn by Creswell in the 1940s. We have been trying to obtain drawings made by F. Safar in the 1930s, who was responsible for the actual excavation. Without being able to check Safar and Creswell’s measurements, we cannot be absolutely certain of the accuracy of their information. Since this mosque is crucial to understanding the “Between” mosques that followed, it is critical that we obtain new measurements taken at the mosque ruins.

 Dan Gibson's Research into Islamic Qiblas

Copyright 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 Dan R. Gibson