Recordings › My thoughts on Dan Gibson's Petra research | Mufti Abu Layth · 19 Jul 2019 › Segment 1 of 1
Was the first qibla really Petra, as Dan Gibson claims?
qiblah kiblah kibla direction of prayer ka'ba kaabah masjed masaajid masajid mosque muftis sunna sunnat sunan prophetic practice dalil daleel adillah adilla proof koran quraan al-quran makka mekka andalusia moorish spain sunni ahl al-sunnah ahl as-sunnah ahlus sunnah ahl al-sunna shiah shiite shi'i twelver ithna ashari ulama ulema ulamaaDan Gibson's Petra qibla thesis: impressive research, unconvincing conclusion
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This segment0:00 to 6:45 · 6 min 45 sGeneral teaching
The answer in brief
machinesummary, machine-writtenMufti Abu Layth is not convinced that the first qibla was Petra: the statistical argument is a fallacy and Sunnis, Shia and Khawarij would never all have agreed on the Ka'bah. He still finds revisionist research compelling on some other matters and says Muslims should engage with it.
In more detail
The recording opens with Mufti Abu Layth answering whether he has emailed Dan Gibson; the transcript is unclear on his answer. He says Gibson is at the forefront of the claim that Muslims have Makkah wrong and that the first qibla was Petra, and that although he is not convinced, he is impressed by the commitment of non-Muslim researchers who spend decades on Islam, which Muslims secure in their beliefs should welcome. He says he has been reading Gibson's Early Islamic Qiblas [?], has not yet read Quranic Geography [?], and has watched much of his archaeology series, and describes the argument that the foundations of some sixty early mosques point more towards Petra than Makkah; he replies that this does not hold everywhere, since North Africa and al-Andalus point south, that early Muslims were never trying to hit the Ka'bah exactly, and that Gibson discloses but does not weigh the mosques that are closer to Makkah. He calls the statistician's probability argument a fallacy, because it is built on ten possible directions when the question is only ever two places, and adds the argument that Sunnis, Shia and Khawarij all agreed on the Ka'bah, when the Shia or Khawarij would surely have used a change of qibla against the mainstream. He closes by saying that revisionist and orientalist scholars such as Patricia Crone are not talking nonsense, that on some other matters they make compelling arguments that have made him re-evaluate details of his own narrative, and that Muslims should look into their work rather than dismiss it.
Question as read aloud · questioner not identifiedHave you emailed Dan Gibson, and what do you make of his research claiming that the early qibla pointed to Petra rather than Makkah?
- The question was reconstructed from Mufti Abu Layth's restatement; the questioner's own words are not in the recording
- Some terms in this segment are uncertain
Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth says he is not convinced by Dan Gibson's thesis that the early qibla was Petra, since its statistical argument is a fallacy and Sunnis, Shia and Khawarij would never all have agreed on the Ka'bah, though he finds revisionist research compelling on some other matters and says Muslims should engage with it.
“I'm not convinced by his research although I give it to him I feel that he has done some amazing research”
Category: historical claim
Kind: general teachingTranscript
machine0:00 to 6:45 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
right so have I emailed an Gibson myself I have an email dan gibson i have watched a lot of his his kind of his series and i find it interesting dan gibson has been one of the he's at the forefront of this campaign that that the muslims have got mecca wrong that Mecca was in Petra I'm not convinced by his research although I give it to him I feel that he has done some amazing research though I I have to I am really
genuinely impressed by some of these people who I mean I don't know if impressed is the right word but I am wowed by their commitment the people who are not Muslim but they will spend decades of their lives to an issue of Islam and I feel that we as Muslims or to welcome that even if it challenges our notions because if we are confident and secure in what we believe then we ought to be able to stand the test of
time and the test of critiques um and critics so so I feel that his evidence is very interesting I have been going through his book early travelers in Islam and I haven't been through his other ones yet on geography knees in the Quran but I've been through a lot of his series of archaeology in Islam it's very fascinating and some of it has got me and I'm still researching some of the things it's ongoing but I'm not convinced and I feel that he has this one interview where he has a
mathematician that speaks about the standard deviation and because what Dan Gibson has done in essence is he's gone to 60 of the most ancient allegedly ancient machines in the world that have some foundations that he can trace and he feels their table our points more towards petra than it goes to my the Foundation's not the current building so the current building will point towards Makkah but the Foundation's allegedly point towards petra now you see that the issue with this is that that doesn't stand true in all the the things so North Africa clearly doesn't it doesn't point to
McCann or Petra seems to point south and the Lucia Muslim Spain seems to point south he does come up with a theory to explain that not convincing at all many places that are far off you see because Petra and Mecca are still the East are in Petra is in modern-day Jordan so it's very Muslims were never trying to hit the Kaaba spot on he then does some interesting research and shows how close are they to Mecca than they are to Petra and it's true in many of the Masjid he shows they are closer to Petra than the automata but in in many others they're
not and he doesn't take that into consideration it does he just discloses it but he doesn't take it into consideration as much he then has one of his interviews he has a statistician that is then showing the statistics and the standard deviation of these of these qibla points and he does a diagram where if there were 10 points and you had to point the fact that these mustards are pointing towards petra the probability of them like he brings it down to something like a billion or something something ridiculous because if you've got ten points but every time it keeps
pointing towards this one more than that then the statistics is to the power of 10 and whatever now it's I mean it's all mathematics and I'm not a but I could clearly see what was a fallacy in his reasoning and that was that he begins this this equation with ten points saying that if you had to point to ten directions and you kept getting this one but when it comes to Petra and Makkah you're just talking about two places
they ranked 10 there is no 10 Cabela's this simply Makkah as Muslims claim or Petra's these people are claiming that Muslims once believed in petra now that's it so there isn't this time this equation is a fallacy in my in anybody who watches that can see that so the other thing to refute which is compelling is that proto sauce hypothesis that how can it be that the she had the Sunnah the Sony mainstream Muslims and the Huaraz all agreed upon
the Kaaba they would never have agreed I mean they would have the Shia would have definitely or the Huaraz would have used that as evidence against the mainstream of Muslims like they did in many other things why would they hold back on petra so I feel that that that said I do find many of the things they're saying very interesting like I don't think what dan gibson all these people are saying some of the things that they're saying like Patricia crone and these people is nonsense I feel it's very compelling and it's made me on certain matters reevaluate my own narrative and I feel
that Islam the history is how it was but the nuances may not have been what we thought they were I do agree with that after you know a lot of this since I've been researching this Islam revisionist what orientalist what they're saying I feel that on some things they do have a point they're not actually you know like we have this thing that they are just totally blind they're not they actually make a compelling argument answer not necessarily the Qibla thing on other matters so they do they spend so many years of their life like what were the correlation what did they used to trade in what were these journeys where were
these journeys to write letters that it was slave where did they used to go what do the other the Greek records demonstrate these people have looked into all of these they're not just you know just sitting there chatting nonsense and I feel that Muslims should just dismiss them so easily we should look into it so yeah I hope that helps
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Cite this segment
Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2019-07-19-S01, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/3ux_blolsf8/s/1/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2019, July 19). Was the first qibla really Petra, as Dan Gibson claims? [Video, segment 2019-07-19-S01, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/3ux_blolsf8/s/1/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2019. "Was the first qibla really Petra, as Dan Gibson claims?" Video, segment 2019-07-19-S01, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded July 19, 2019. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/3ux_blolsf8/s/1/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2019-07-19-S01, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{Was the first qibla really Petra, as Dan Gibson claims?}}, year = {2019}, month = {7}, date = {2019-07-19}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/3ux_blolsf8/s/1/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/3ux_blolsf8/s/1/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2019-07-19-S01, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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