The Quran

144

Preface

قَد نَرىٰ تَقَلُّبَ وَجهِكَ فِي السَّماءِ ۖ فَلَنُوَلِّيَنَّكَ قِبلَةً تَرضاها ۚ فَوَلِّ وَجهَكَ شَطرَ المَسجِدِ الحَرامِ ۚ وَحَيثُ ما كُنتُم فَوَلّوا وُجوهَكُم شَطرَهُ ۗ وَإِنَّ الَّذينَ أوتُوا الكِتابَ لَيَعلَمونَ أَنَّهُ الحَقُّ مِن رَبِّهِم ۗ وَمَا اللَّهُ بِغافِلٍ عَمّا يَعمَلونَ

Yusuf Ali

We see the turning of thy face (for guidance) To the heavens¹: now Shall We turn thee to a Qiblah that shall please thee. Turn then Thy face in the direction of the sacred Mosque²: Wherever ye are, turn your faces in that direction. The people of the Book³ know well that that is the truth from their Lord. Nor is God unmindful of what they do.

This shows the sincere desire of Al Muṣṭafā to seek light from above in the matter of the Qiblah. Until the organisation of his own People into a well - knit community, with its distinctive laws and ordinances, he followed a practice based on the fact that the Jews and Christians looked upon Jerusalem as a sacred city. But there was no universal Qiblah among them. Some Jews turned towards Jerusalem, especially during the Captivity, as we shall see later. At the time of our Prophet, Jerusalem was in the hands of the Byzantine Empire, which was Christian. But the Christians oriented their churches to the East (hence the word “orientation”), which is a point of the compass, and not the direction of any sacred place. The fact of the altar being in the East does not mean that every worshipper has his face to the east: for, according at least to modern practice, the seats in a church are so placed that different worshippers may face in different directions. The Preacher of Unity naturally wanted, in this as in other matters, a symbol of complete unity, and his heart was naturally delighted when the Qiblah towards the Ka‘ba was settled. Its connection with Abraham gave it great antiquity: its character of being an Arab centre made it appropriate when the Message came in Arabic, and was preached through the union of the Arabs; at the time it was adopted, the little Muslim community was shut out of it, being exiles in Medīna, but it became a symbol of hope and eventual triumph, of which Muḥammad lived to see the fulfillment; and it also became the centre and gathering ground of all peoples in the universal pilgrimage, which was instituted with it.
The Sacred Mosque: i.e. the mosque wherein the Ka‘ba is located, in the sacred city of Mecca. It is not correct to suggest that the command making the Ka‘ba the Qiblah abrogates 2:115, where it is stated that East and West belong to God. This is perfectly true at all times, before and after the institution of the Qiblah. As if to emphasise this, the same words about East and West are repeated in this very passage, see 2:142 above. Where the Itqan mentions mansukh in this connection, I am sorry I cannot follow that opinion, unless mansukh is defined in a special way, as some of the commentators do. (R).
Glimmerings of such a Qiblah were already foreshadowed in Jewish and Christian practice but its universality was only perfected in Islam.