Mecca Time was a proposed time standard that uses the line of longitude that goes through
Mecca
Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red ...
,
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...
(39°49′34″ E of the
Greenwich Meridian
The historic prime meridian or Greenwich meridian is a geographical reference line that passes through the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, Royal Observatory, Greenwich, in London, England. The modern IERS Reference Meridian widely used today ...
) as its
Prime Meridian
A prime meridian is an arbitrary meridian (a line of longitude) in a geographic coordinate system at which longitude is defined to be 0°. Together, a prime meridian and its anti-meridian (the 180th meridian in a 360°-system) form a great c ...
. A clock based on this meridian would be at approximately
UTC+02:39:18.3.
The proposal was made by Sheikh
Yusuf al-Qaradawi
Yusuf al-Qaradawi ( ar, يوسف القرضاوي, translit=Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī; or ''Yusuf al-Qardawi''; 9 September 1926 – 26 September 2022) was an Egyptian Islamic scholar based in Doha, Qatar, and chairman of the International Union of ...
and other
Muslim
Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
clerics meeting in
Doha
Doha ( ar, الدوحة, ad-Dawḥa or ''ad-Dōḥa'') is the capital city and main financial hub of Qatar. Located on the Persian Gulf coast in the east of the country, north of Al Wakrah and south of Al Khor, it is home to most of the coun ...
,
Qatar
Qatar (, ; ar, قطر, Qaṭar ; local vernacular pronunciation: ), officially the State of Qatar,) is a country in Western Asia. It occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it sh ...
on April 21, 2008 for a conference titled "Mecca: the Center of the Earth, Theory and Practice".
Qatar conference
The "Mecca: the Center of the Earth, Theory and Practice" conference was organized and attended by Muslim theologians and other religious officials from across the world. The Qatar meeting was the culmination of efforts to seek answers for scientific questions from the
Qur'an
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , sing. ...
and other Islamic scriptures – a trend called "Ijaz al-Qur'an" (''Miraculous nature of the Qur'an'').
The conference promoted the belief that Islamic scripture also revealed scientific details, with Islamic scholars seeking to unearth and publicize the textual evidence.
The conference revived a decades-old controversial issue, contending that the Greenwich Meridian was imposed by the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
and
Western civilization
Leonardo da Vinci's ''Vitruvian Man''. Based on the correlations of ideal Body proportions">human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise ''De architectura''.
image:Plato Pio-Cle ...
during the
colonial period and that Islam, unlike other religions,
does not contradict science. One of the contentions was that unlike other
longitude
Longitude (, ) is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east–west position of a point on the surface of the Earth, or another celestial body. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek letter l ...
s, Mecca was in perfect alignment with the
magnetic north
The north magnetic pole, also known as the magnetic north pole, is a point on the surface of Earth's Northern Hemisphere at which the planet's magnetic field points vertically downward (in other words, if a magnetic compass needle is allowed t ...
.
Muslim clerics hail this as evidence of the greatness of the
qibla
The qibla ( ar, قِبْلَة, links=no, lit=direction, translit=qiblah) is the direction towards the Kaaba in the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, which is used by Muslims in various religious contexts, particularly the direction of prayer for the s ...
—the direction determined to be towards Mecca that Muslims across the world must turn towards while reciting prayers.
Mecca clock
On 11 August 2010, (
1 Ramadan,
AH 1431), the large clock at
Abraj Al Bait
The Clock Towers ( ar, أبراج الساعة, ʾAbrāǧ alsaa'a "Towers of the Clock") is a government-owned complex of seven skyscraper hotels in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. These towers are a part of the King Abdulaziz Endowment Project that aim ...
started to operate. Some Muslims hoped that this would establish "Mecca Time" as the world's defining time zone.
While officials had originally expressed the conviction that the clock might help to establish Mecca as a prime meridian, it was instead set to
Arabia Standard Time
UTC+03:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +03:00. In areas using this time offset, the time is three hours later than the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
Following the ISO 8601 standard, a time with this offset would be wri ...
(UTC+3).
Criticism
It is not clear what the speakers at the conference meant by "perfect alignment with the
North Magnetic Pole
The north magnetic pole, also known as the magnetic north pole, is a point on the surface of Earth's Northern Hemisphere at which the Earth's magnetic field, planet's magnetic field points vertically downward (in other words, if a magnetic comp ...
". As the
geomagnetic field
Earth's magnetic field, also known as the geomagnetic field, is the magnetic field that extends from Earth's interior out into space, where it interacts with the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun. The magnetic fi ...
of the earth continuously changes the deviation of the compass needle from true north (known as the
magnetic declination
Magnetic declination, or magnetic variation, is the angle on the horizontal plane between magnetic north (the direction the north end of a magnetized compass needle points, corresponding to the direction of the Earth's magnetic field lines) and ...
) also slowly changes. In the past, there were periods when the compass needle at Mecca pointed true north (and there will be future periods when this is true again) but at the moment the line of no compass deviation is located somewhat to the southeast of Mecca. In 2023 the (predicted)
magnetic declination
Magnetic declination, or magnetic variation, is the angle on the horizontal plane between magnetic north (the direction the north end of a magnetized compass needle points, corresponding to the direction of the Earth's magnetic field lines) and ...
of Mecca is 3.6° East and will continue to increase at about +0.04° per year.
[ Latitude: ; Longitude: ]
During the 1884
International Meridian Conference
The International Meridian Conference was a conference held in October 1884 in Washington, D.C., in the United States, to determine a prime meridian for international use. The conference was held at the request of U.S. President Chester A. Art ...
, when Greenwich was established as the
initial meridian, the
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...
, at that time
controlling Mecca, voted with the majority for Greenwich.
References
{{Reflist
Named meridians
Prime meridians
Culture in Mecca
History of Mecca