Qibla

Caringheart wrote: islamispeace wrote: If Petra was the "holy city" of Islam, there should be a large number of early Islamic inscriptions and artifacts, like we have in Mecca.  Instead, Petra has mostly Nabataean inscriptions.  Some later Islamic inscriptions have been found from the 2nd century AH.  In contrast, 1st century AH inscriptions of the Quran have been found in Mecca.  Why would this be so if Petra was the holy city of Islam and not Mecca?  Shouldn't the opposite be true?  Shouldn't we have earlier inscriptions in Petra and later ones in Mecca?  Greetings islamispeace, Are you referring to books? writings?  because this was covered in detail, summarized as follows: One can only surmise that the city of Petra is today bereft of all inscriptions because of the actions of zealous Muslims during Yazid�s reign.  In the end, the only book to survive in Arabia was the Glorious Qur'an. Everywhere the muslims conquered, books, writings, were destroyed... in Persia, Egypt, India... the evidence is there that Petra was a holy place of worship, as I layed out in my previous reply to you.  The archaeological evidence is there. Have you completely ignored the archaeological evidence? asalaam, CH Note:  I'm curious, where do you come up with your evidence of artifacts in Mecca?

What a load of garbage.  He knows that there is no evidence, so he assumes that there must have been a conspiracy by "zealous" Muslims to destroy any evidence.  How scholarly of him!

There are plenty of inscriptions throughout Arabia, both pre-Islamic and Islamic.  The Islamic inscriptions attest to the Muslim presence and the importance of Mecca to Islam.  Here is a list:

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Inscriptions/

That's the trouble with Google scholars such as yourself.  You sit at your computer, searching for random articles written by random people and with hardly any effort at honest research. 

Greetings islamispeace...

You, dear sir, do not read.  You refuse to read or process from anything other than your own biased sources.
islamic-awareness.org ? really?  How unbiased is that?  Don't they start with a premise... with an agenda of proving a point? 
Whereas the article and book which I have presented resulted purely from exploration with no pre-conceived agenda, just interest.

I'll read your latest, at islamic-awareness, also, because I believe in looking at, and trying to see both sides of any issue, (but truly who is it that has, and had, to gain from distorting, hiding, and/or changing, the truth?)

I just wish people could learn to 'tell it like it is' and 'let the chips fall where they may'.  But that is why I always look at both islamic and non-islamic recordings and look for the truth in the middle.

asalaam,
CH


Edited by Caringheart - 14 October 2014 at 2:35pm

Caringheart wrote: Greetings islamispeace... You, dear sir, do not read.  You refuse to read or process from anything other than your own biased sources. islamic-awareness.org ? really?  How unbiased is that?  Don't they start with a premise... with an agenda of proving a point?  Whereas the article and book which I have presented resulted purely from exploration with no pre-conceived agenda, just interest. I'll read your latest, at islamic-awareness, also, because I believe in looking at, and trying to see both sides of any issue, (but truly who is it that has, and had, to gain from distorting, hiding, and/or changing, the truth?) I just wish people could learn to 'tell it like it is' and 'let the chips fall where they may'.  But that is why I always look at both islamic and non-islamic recordings and look for the truth in the middle. asalaam, CH

You, dear lady, are a troll who sits at her computer doing Google searches instead of actual research.  In one such search, you found the article from one "Jeremy Smyth" which purports to present evidence from one "Dan Gibson" which contradicts the established history regarding Mecca's place in Islam.  Unfortunately, the "evidence" is flimsy at best.  Case in point: Gibson realizes that the archaeological evidence simply does not prove that Petra was the original Islamic "holy city", so naturally he assumes that the big, bad Muslims must have destroyed it as part of a conspiracy.  The rest of his "evidence" is based on leaps of faith.  He merely makes suggestions based on his presumption that Petra was the Muslim place of pilgrimage.  For example, we already dealt with the ridiculous claim that many early mosques did not face Mecca.  The articles from Islamic-Awareness completely refuted this claim.

Another flimsy argument is regarding the pagan Meccans' ability to raise large armies against the Muslims.  Gibson alleges that this meant that Mecca had to be a large city.  Naturally, he assumes that it must have been Petra that was the source of the large armies.  Unfortunately for Gibson, as is widely known in scholarly circles, Petra had been in a state of decline and decay since Roman times.  It had reached its zenith hundreds of years before the coming of Islam.  Even at this time, its population never reached more than 20,000 people!  So how exactly would Petra have been the source of the armies mentioned in the Islamic sources?       

islamispeace wrote: Caringheart wrote: islamispeace wrote: If Petra was the "holy city" of Islam, there should be a large number of early Islamic inscriptions and artifacts, like we have in Mecca.  Instead, Petra has mostly Nabataean inscriptions.  Some later Islamic inscriptions have been found from the 2nd century AH.  In contrast, 1st century AH inscriptions of the Quran have been found in Mecca.  Why would this be so if Petra was the holy city of Islam and not Mecca?  Shouldn't the opposite be true?  Shouldn't we have earlier inscriptions in Petra and later ones in Mecca?  Greetings islamispeace, Did you read this: The pre-Islamic Arabic is often referred to as the "Old Arabic" by scholars. The most obvious characteristic of the Old Arabic is the use of the definite article ʾl-, the precursor of classical Arabic ʾal-. Old Arabic seems to have remained a purely spoken language until the late fifth / early sixth centuries CE which means that no specific script was associated with it before that period. Thus, on the rare occasions when it was written, the script associated with the local language of prestige was used: South Arabian in the southern half of the Peninsula; Nabataean at Ḥijr, ʿEn ʿAvdat in the Negev, and at al-Namarah; a form of eastern Aramaic at Mleiha on the Oman Peninsula; and early Arabic, mainly in Syria. The Arabic script originated from the Nabataean script. T. N�ldeke was the first to establish the link between the Nabataean and Arabic scripts in 1865, which later confirmed against J. Starcky's Syriac thesis by Grohmann. The affiliation between Nabataean and Arabic scripts has now been fully documented by J. Healey. Following are the example of some of the inscriptions written in Old Arabic. So what?  How does this establish that Petra was the original "holy city" of Islam?  Are you "reaching" again?

Greetings islamispeace,

I was just replying to your questions, not trying to 'establish' anything.

asalaam,
CH