The Change of the Qiblah

The second juzʾ opens with the change of the Qiblah. One might say that worship in Islam was becoming more sharply focused upon its centre, Makkah Mukarramah.

As many will know, for some sixteen months after the Prophet (peace be upon him) moved to Madīnah Munawwarah, the Kaʿbah was not yet the Qiblah. Madīnah Munawwarah lies to the north of Makkah Mukarramah; Makkah Mukarramah lies in the south of the Hijaz, the western edge of the Arabian Peninsula, and Madīnah Munawwarah some four hours to the north of it. Continue northwards and one reaches Jerusalem and Shām.

While he was in Makkah Mukarramah, the Prophet (peace be upon him) would stand behind the Kaʿbah so as to face both the Kaʿbah and the north: facing Jerusalem, which was then the Qiblah, while facing the Kaʿbah so far as he could. Once he moved to Madīnah Munawwarah the two directions lay opposite each other — Jerusalem to the north, Madīnah Munawwarah being in the middle, and the Kaʿbah, al-Masjid al-Ḥarām in Makkah Mukarramah, to the south. He could not hold to both at once; a hundred and eighty degrees made it impossible.

And so, while praying, the Prophet (peace be upon him) would glance upwards. That was his way of looking for a revelation, for some change of guidance — of watching to see whether the Qiblah might be changed.

The passage opens accordingly:

The foolish among the people will soon ask what turned them from their Qiblah. After sixteen months the following verses were revealed:

Now We turn you towards a Qiblah that will please you, one you had hoped for and desired all along. But there would be those who made a discussion of it — foolish people who would raise it as a matter to debate, object to, wonder at and talk about. It is what the hosts of talk shows do; these were the forerunners of that trade, save that their object was not merely money or conversation, but the denigration of the Prophet (peace be upon him) and of the religion of Islam.

Some of the Jews in particular felt it, Bayt al-Maqdis, Jerusalem, having been in a manner their own Qiblah and their own direction; so that it was evidently galling to them that the Qiblah should now be severed from it altogether and moved to Makkah Mukarramah. Nor was it the Jews alone: the munāfiqīn, the hypocrites of the time, raised objections in the same way.

Allah (swt), however, says: fa-walli wajhaka shaṭra al-masjidi al-ḥarām — turn your face now towards al-Masjid al-Ḥarām, the sanctified masjid, the sanctified place of sujūd and of prayer. And in answer to those objections He reminds them what a direction amounts to in the first place, all directions being His.