Mecca Time was a proposed time standard that uses the line of longitude that goes through

Mecca Mecca, officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, is the capital of Mecca Province in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia; it is the Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow valley above ...

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

(39°49′34″ E of the

Greenwich Meridian The Greenwich meridian is a prime meridian, a geographical reference line that passes through the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, in London, England. From 1884 to 1974, the Greenwich meridian was the international standard prime meridian, ...

) as its

Prime Meridian A prime meridian is an arbitrarily chosen meridian (geography), meridian (a line of longitude) in a geographic coordinate system at which longitude is defined to be 0°. On a spheroid, a prime meridian and its anti-meridian (the 180th meridian ...

. A clock based on this meridian would be at approximately

UTC Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communica ...

+02:39:18.3. The proposal was made by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and other

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

clerics meeting in

Doha Doha ( ) 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 (city), Al Khor and Lusail, it is home to most of the country's population. It ...

Qatar Qatar, officially the State of Qatar, is a country in West Asia. It occupies the Geography of Qatar, Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it shares Qatar–Saudi Arabia border, its sole land b ...

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, also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation directly from God ('' Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which consist of individual verses ('). Besides ...

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 Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

and

Western civilization Western culture, also known as Western civilization, European civilization, Occidental culture, Western society, or simply the West, refers to the internally diverse culture of the Western world. The term "Western" encompasses the social no ...

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 lett ...

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 () is the direction towards the Kaaba in the Great Mosque of Mecca, Sacred Mosque in Mecca, which is used by Muslims in various religious contexts, particularly the direction of prayer for the salah. In Islam, the Kaaba is believed to ...

—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 (, formerly known as ), is a State ownership, government-owned complex of seven skyscraper hotels in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. These towers are part of the Abdullah of Saudi Arabia#Domestic affairs, King Abdulaziz Endowment Project ...

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 ahead of the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Following the ISO 8601 standard, a time with this offset would be writt ...

(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 of the earth continuously changes the deviation of the compass needle from true north (known as the

magnetic declination Magnetic declination (also called magnetic variation) is the angle between magnetic north and true north at a particular location on the Earth's surface. The angle can change over time due to polar wandering. Magnetic north is the direction th ...

) 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)

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 President of the United State ...

, when Greenwich was established as the initial meridian, the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...

, at that time controlling Mecca, voted with the majority for Greenwich.

References

{{Reflist Named meridians Prime meridians Culture in Mecca History of Mecca