Be'er Ora

Mosque Name: Be’er Ora Open Air Mosque

Country: Negev, Israel

City: Beer Ora (Bir Ora)

Year of construction (AH): unknown Early Islamic

Year of construction (AD): unknown Early Islamic

Beer Ora North (B)

GPS: 29.713675 34.985348

Beer Ora South (A)

GPS: 29.6906 34.98182

Original Qibla: Petra & Mecca

Rebuilt facing Mecca: never

For a Link to the Qibla Tool Click Here

Description:

The small town of Be’er Ora is in the Negev, in the southern Arava Valley, about twenty kilometers north of Eilat-Aila. It is opposite the southern entrance to the Ramon International Airport.

The location of the open air mosque is about half a km north of the town and half a kilometer west of the highway. At this location there are three larger ancient slag heaps (and a few smaller ones). The heaps consist mainly of broken slag plates .5-.8 m in diameter, most with a cast in-hole in the center. Around these heaps are several structures (built of large slag plates) which were used to store goods or as habitation, including a communal kitchen. There are also some other slag sites in the general area.

In the center of the smelting area is a rectangular arrangement of slag plates standing on edge. This appears to be an open-air mosque with an old mihrab facing east and another, more clearly defined mihrab facing south. Because neither Qibla direction is clear, Gibson classified this mosque Qibla as unknown.

This rectangular prayer area measures 6.4 X 5.7 meters, consisting of no more than markings on the ground with lines of slag. The enclosure has two niches, one facing south and the other east (Rothenberg 1972:221-22). Further excavations at this site led to the conclusion that this is a unique form of an Early Islamic open-air mosque (Sahron, Avner, and Nahlieli 1996), in which the direction of the mihrab was later converted from the eastern side to the southern side of the structure, providing rare evidence for the changing of direction of prayer in Early Islamic religious practices (Sharon 1988:230-33; Sharon, Avner, and Nahlieli 1996:108-9). As far as dating goes, all of these mosques have a mihrab niche, placing the date of their creation after 89 AH. To learn more about the creation of the mihrab, click here.

The above drawing was taken from the Archaeological Survey of Israel. http://www.antiquities.org.il/survey/new/default_en.aspx?pid=16169

As far a the qibla direction goes, this is a very roughly laihttps://cocky-lumiere-5ba9d1.netlify.app/admin/explore/#/collections/explore_cities_and_sitesd out mosque. Unlike large congregational mosques constructed in major cities and named after important people, open-air mosques were usually laid out by shepherds or in this case miners. As a result, open air mosques usually do not have a clear Qibla wall, and often mihrab niches are not consistent or clearly defined. Besides this, the Be’er Ora site has deteriorated over the years, making measurements even more difficult to obtain.

The excavators at Be’er Ora measured the two Qiblas and found that the east facing Qibla was at 81 degrees and the south facing Qibla was at 158 degrees, or 6 degrees too far south. If the error to Mecca is corrected, but also applied to the Eastern Qibla, then the Eastern Qibla would become 75 degrees. While this is still short of facing Petra, it does illustrate that two Qiblas existed on this spot, and that one faced Mecca and the other faced north of east.

Bibliography

Avner, Uzi, and Magness, Jodi, 1998. “Early Islamic Settlement in the Southern Negev”, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 310: 39-55. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.2307/1357577

Avner, Uzi, 2018. “Nabataeans in the Eilat Region, the Hinterland of Aila”, ARAM 30: 597-644.

Avni, Gideon, Early Mosques in the Negev Highlands: New Archaeological Evidence on Islamic Penetration of Southern Palestine, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 294 (May, 1994), pp. 83-100

Avni, Gideon, From Standing Stones to Open Mosques in the Negev Desert The Archaeology of Religious Transformation on the Fringes, Near Eastern Archaeology, Vol. 70, No. 3 (Sep., 2007), pp. 124-138

Israel, Yigal, 2009. “Be’er Ora (B)”, Hadashot Arkheologiyot – Excavations and Surveys in Israel 121, http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/Report_Detail_Eng.aspx?id=1137&mag_id=115. (For Beer Ora North)

Rothenberg, B., Timna: Valley of Copper Mines, London: Thames & Hudson, 1972

Rothenberg, Beno, 1999. “Archaeo-Metallurgical Researches in the Southern Arabah 1959-1990, Part 2: Egyptian New Kingdom (Ramesside) to Early Islam”, Palestine Exploration Quarterly 131: 149-175. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/peq.1999.131.2.149

Sharon, M, The Birth of Islam in the Holy Land. Pp. 225-35 in The Holy Land in History and Thought, ed. M Sharon, Leiden, Brill, 1988

Sharon, M.; Avner, U.; and Nahlieli, D. An Early Islamic Mosque near Be’er Ora in the Southern Negev: Possible Evidence from an Early Eastern Qiblah? Atiqot 30: 107-14.1996