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Monday, September 5, 2011

Basic navigation: finding Qiblah direction using Shadow

Allah (SWT) Says in Surat Al Furqan, verse 45:



"Have you not considered your Lord - how He extends the shadow, and if He willed, He could have made it stationary? Then We made the sun for it an indication." Quran [25:45]


We do not have to search for the Sun everytime to search our direction, in fact, after Sun rises, it is much easier to see the Shadow to find our direction, this is valid especially if we are in a car or a bus and need to know which direction we are taking...


This picture was taken during a recent trip to the Omani desert. It was taken early morning. The vehicle is driving through valleys and we do not have to waste time searching for the Sun itself, we can make use of the shadow, and in this case, from the shadow, we could tell that the Sun is on the left hand side of the vehicle.
As we are in the early hours of the morning, on my left is thus East, on my right is West, the vehicle is moving towards the South.





Same day, during the return trip. Again, shadows on the ground, use the one from the light pole, or the vehicle itself. Sun is certainly on the rear left of the car, indicating the West....the vehicle is thus moving North East..
It is good practice to always keep these references when travelling in desert, especially driving away from black top roads and cities, don't rely only on GPS, but keep an eye on where the Sun, Shadow, Moon are compared to the vehicle movement...
A friend of mine got lost in the desert one day, they were in a 4 x 4 car, he picked up his friend from the airport, and drove towards their rig camp inside the desert. He said that during the trip, he saw the Moon on his left, then kept chatting with his friends, then after a while, he saw the Moon on his right hand side !...he immediately knew that they got lost, and that the vehicle turned around somewhere...They had to climb on a high hill, and sought for city light indication, they got lucky and noticed at very far distance the glowing orangy color of a gas flare from a refinery, and drove towards it until intersecting a black top road...if my friend did not notice early enough that they lost their way by keeping for reference the position of the Moon, they might have drove deeper inside the desert, and might have gone lost for good...

The next picture shows some shadow in a forest: if this is in the afternoon, the shadow would continue to elongate, but it will always indicate the East direction (as the Sun is setting in the West). If I was in North Africa and needed to pray towards Mekkah, I would thus need to face East, I would just need to put my prayer mat exactly at the same direction of the shadow on the ground, with the Sun behind me...



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