Jane Recker has written for Washingtonian Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times. She is a graduate of Northwestern University and holds degrees in journalism and opera.
Jane has beautiful teeth!
Never to be used.
Read the title too quickly. I thought it said mosquitoes.
...two ovens, one of which was quite large...
Heh Jane, mebe the Islamist’s were burning the Jews, ever think of that....
While Islam began around 610 in today’s Saudi Arabia, it wasn’t until the ninth century that it became the majority religion in Israel.Funny thing, that beginning:
was it blown up?
There is only one region in Israel and that is Judism. And it is the solitarty religion in Israel by history and also by right of conquest.
May the temple fo Solomon be rebuilt on the Tmple Mount of Jerusalem.
Nothing that archeologists dig up will change that fact.
Also, the apse isn't facing due south. You can tell from the compass rose on the diagram from the Israeli Antiquities Agency (here) that it's a little east of south, about 175°. The compass heading from there to Mecca is 154°.
That's a 19° difference. Archaeologists state the Muhammadans were unusually precise (for the period) with the orientation of the apses, 50% being within 3° of the compass heading to Mecca and 80% within 5°. So either this was an outlier or it was never intended to be pointing toward Mecca.
In his documentary, Islam: The Untold Story, author Tom Holland is shown to the ruins of an early mosque (+/- 100 years after Muhammad's death) in Israel by Antiquities Authority archaeologist Dr. Tali Erickson-Gini (about 40 minutes into the video). That particular mosque has its apse facing to the east, which she remarks was not uncommon among early mosques, giving her to speculate that they simply might not have yet decided which direction they were supposed to be praying in.
There is no surviving evidence linking the desert sanctuary mentioned in the Quran with the city of Mecca until more than a century after Muhammad's death. Holland speculates that the location of Mecca was chosen out of political expediency by early 8th century Arab leaders who were intent on co-opting Islam to use as a social control over the masses. He offers that Mecca in particular might have been chosen because at that time it was free from any contamination from Jews or Christians.
In any case the Muhammadans have nothing but camp fire stories to support their claim that Mecca was this desert sanctuary.
