Monday, July 26, 2010

Sundial Experiments in Abha, Saudi Arabia: Biblical Jerusalem was in that Vicinity






Pictures in descending order: 7.30 am shadow is over yellow stick (pic 1)
and next moves clockwise. At 9.25 am (pic 2)and 10.30 am
(pic 3),and last 11.20 am(pic 4)the shadow is small and back over the yellow stick to cross counter-clockwise and reduces to null at noon and grow opposite at noon and again grow and move back clockwise 10 degrees and on counterclockwise.

Dr. Nurdin al-Mustaqim has conducted an experiment twice on 21 &23 June 2010, which is the summer solstice, in the city of Abha in Asir, Saudi Arabia (18° 12' 59" N / 42° 30' 19" E ), to demonstrate the point made by Mr. Anthony Lias in the postscript to the second edition of my book The Historicity of Biblical Israel…, and has kindly reported to me the following supplemented by pictures above , which are from 23 June which happen to be the clearest:

Dr. al-Mustaqim:

I CAN SWEAR AND GUARANTEE THAT SINCE 10:30AM WHEN I STARTED TO MAKE REGULAR OBSERVATION (21 JUNE) THE SUN WAS GOING COUNTER-COCKWISE FOR A FULL 180 DEGREES UNTIL 2:00 PM AND AFTER THAT IT HAD GONE BACK IN THE OPPOSITE WAY CLOCKWISE FOR 20 DEGREES AT MY LAST READING OF 3:30pm. SOME PERIOD WAS UNREADABLE DUE TO CLOUDY WEATHER. I GUESS THIS WILL PROVE THE POINT ANYWAY AND I KEEP LOOKING TO SUNSET AND MAY REPEAT IT IN FOLLOWING DAYS.

WELL, I WANT TO SAY FOR THE RECORD THAT I PERFORMED THE SUNDIAL EXPERIMENT ON 21 TO 23 JUNE 2010 HERE IN ABHA,THE HEARTLAND OF ASIR, AND MY EYES AND THE PICTURES TAKEN CONFIRM THE REVERSE MOTION TWICE IN THE DAY BY WHAT I THOUGHT 20 DEGREES WITHOUT EVER SEEING THESE COMMENTS BEFORE. IF IT IS 10 DEGREES THEN LET IT BE 10, AS IT CAN BE MEASURED OR POSTED FOR ALL BY DR.SALIBI. TO ME IT IS A GREAT STEP FORWARD FOR MANKIND AND HISTORY THAT HIS DISCOVERY ABOUT BIBLICAL GEOGRAPHY MUST BE TAKEN AS WORKING BASIS WITH ALL THAT GOES WITH IT.

MAY I THEN ADD THAT THIS SHOWS THE HIGH LEVEL OF ASTRONOMICAL KNOWLEDGE AT THE TIME OF KING AHAZ/EZEKIAH AND THIS IS THE TESTIMONY OF THEIR SCIENCE WHICH THEY HAVE WANTED TO PASS ON TO US OVER TIME BY THEIR RECORDING THE THORAT FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS SO TRUTH WOULD REMAIN UNTIL US.WE MUST THANK KING AHAZ FOREMOST AS HE IS WITH US NOW.IT IS LIKE A GPS SATELLITE POSITIONING WHICH WILL ENABLE ONE TO FIND A POSITION ANYWHERE,ANYTIME . FOR THOSE WHO COMPLAIN ABOUT LACK OF ARCHEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE AND ARE ASKING US TO PRODUCE KING DAVID/DAUD'S DRIVER'S LICENSE FROM THE GROUND BEFORE THEY WOULD BELIEVE AND NOT REMAIN IN THEIR OWN FAIRY TALES,I SAY THIS IS ASTRONOMICAL ARCHEOLOGY IN FULL SWING,WHAT CAN THEY PRODUCE?

KS: I owe a great debt of gratitude to Dr. Nur who spent three days in Abha observing the movement of the shadow of what stood for the gnomon of a sundial. By means of this experiment, he demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that the astronomical event occurring in Old Testament Jerusalem, as reported in Isaiah 38:7,8 and 2 Kings 20:18-12 and explained by Mr. Anthony Lias in terms of a 'Jerusalem' located in Asir rather in Palestine, is the sort of astronomical event that occurs regularly in the tropical land of Asir, twice a day, during the period of the summer solstice. The same event cannot possibly occur at any time of year in a Jerusalem located in Palestine, well within the temperate zone.

22 comments:

  1. very interesting. how come these discoveries haven't changed the face of history yet??

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  2. Dr. Salibi,

    With this experiment, you are now on solid grounds, and your hypothesis is finally validated. You will now need to explain the experiment in more simple terms, understandable to lay reader, with reference to the original text in the Bible, and perhaps repeat the experiment with better pictures to display.

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  3. This is very exciting. Dr. Salibi do reply to my emails when you have time.

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  4. Hello Mr Salibi. I have found your theory of the Bible coming from Arabia in a book of Erich von Daniken and only now i can re-discovered it. It's really revolutionary. Well constructed and better argumented. I have only a doubt about the real nature of the "jordan". I think that, correct me if i am wrong, you state that in fact the jordan mentioned in the bible refers to the mountains in west arabia and not to the river in Palestine.
    But in the book of Joshua 3:8 to 17 I find that the text refers specifically to "waters" and other things that unconfoundly relates to a river. Could it be a mistranslation or and adittion made later by the scribes?
    Thank you vey much in advance,
    Marcelo from Argentina

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  5. Dear Mr. Salibi,

    I had the opportunity of reading your books about the biblical land since quite a time now, and I have been a staunch believer in you theories about the subject, including what you suggested about Jesus. Your works and writings shall go in history as some of the greatest of its time.
    I do not want to comment on this subject. I have a different thing to ask you. It is about Zion (Sion). I do not know if you have tackled this subject before, but could the biblical Zion (Sion) had been the city or the area of (Say'oon - سيئون)in Hadramout, which in the translation of the Bible to Greek and then to other languages became (Sion) then (Zion).

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  6. To Marcelo Graham Neill:
    The passage you refer to, in translation from the Biblical Hebrew, does seem to indicate that it refers to the waters of a river. What it does speak of, however, is waters (BH mayim). Suffice it to say, here, that the "mayim" (waters) of the yarden would, to my mind refer to the innumerable gullies that interrupt the course of the West-Arabian Esacarpment (ha-yyarden)between the Taif Highlands and the northern borders of the Yemen, which appear virtually as waterfalls. For details, see my book, The Historicity of Biblical Israel 1998, second edition 2010; the Jordan Question, pp.220-230.

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  7. To Mr. Aziz :
    Linguistically, the Si'un in Hadramut can readily be Zion, had it not been that the coordinates given to Zion in the Hebrew Bible are different. the Zion which was the City of David, and subsequently the capital of Solomon and the kings of Judah who succeeded him, was located in mountain heights of Qa`wat Siyan, in the immediate neighbourhood of "Jerusalem": the heights of Rijal Alma`, immediately south of the heights surrounding the present city of Abha. "Jerusalem" was adjacent to this Zion in the direction of the north. At least, so I contend. Check the Google world maps, if you are good as this kind of exercise.

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  8. To Mr. Aziz:
    For more about Zion/the City of David and Jerusalem, see the third (geographical) part of the second edition of my book "The Historicity of Biblical Israel: Studies in 1&2 Samuel," Beirut, Dar Nelson, 2010.

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  9. Please note that my blog has migrated to the present one: http://kamal-salibi.blogspot.com

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  10. Dear Dr. kamal Salibi

    check this Article in today Saudi news paper about finding and Egyptian hieroglyphs drawing in Saudi Arabia it might help your research

    http://www.alriyadh.com/2010/11/08/article575381.html

    and finally I want to say that even thou I'm not a believer in your theory ikeep an open mind to it and I still I like your work and I think that your theory is interesting and important for us to understand and know the real truth.

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  11. Hi Dr. Salibi,

    I would like to know how can I email you?

    you can email me at mouwatenlb@gmail.com.

    Regards,

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  12. Having just read 'The Bible Came From Arabia' with much facination, would like to learn more. Would Solomon have constructed anything in Yemen or Saudi Arabia? Did he move before building the Temple in Jerusalem, or was his Jerusalem where you noted in your book? How do you explain the history of the Temple in the Holy City?

    Where did the Q of Sheba visit Solomon?

    Can you refer me to maps that provide greater detail of the locations of Jerusalem and the 12 tribal areas?

    Well done and thank you.

    Grace and peace,

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  13. Where was King Ahaz located? Abha?

    Grace and Peace

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  14. Once he had come to be accepted as King of All Israel, David, reportedly, had the Ark of the Covenant installed in Zion which he established as his capital, renaming it the City of David. One would assume that his son Solomon succeeded him there. I propose that Zion was present-day Qa`wat al-Siyyan (the "settlement" of Zion), a village on the dizzy slopes of Rijal Alma`, to the west of Abha. David died and was buried in this Zion, which was separated from the "territory" of Jerusalem by the fearsome gorge of Wadi Tayyah to the northwest. There, today, runs the perilous mountain road connecting the heights of Asir to the coastal hill country to the west. The Abha heights are connected to the "territory" of Jerusalem to the northwest by the mountain col called Al-Sha`ar, where Wadi Tayyah begins to run its course. Following the death of David, Solomon deemed it more convenient to move his capital from Zion, across the col of Al-Sha`ar, to the "territory of Jerusalem, where he had a new capital built for himself, with a temple in whose "holy of holies" the Ark of the Covenant was installed. The territory of Sheba was in present-day Yemen, so that the Queen of Sheba would have been Solomon's next-door neighbour. To reach Solomon's capital in the neighbourhood of what is today the town of Tanumah,to the north of the col of Al-Sha'ar,the Qheen of Sheba, more likely than note, would have chosen the roue that connects the Yemen to the highest parts of Asir by way of Wadi Najran: today within the territory of Saudi Arabia, in the extreme south.
    My explanation, done from memory, may be off a bit in giving directions. I suggest you use google earth to search for Abha and Tanumah on the Arabian map. I have still not found the exact location of Qa`wat al-Siyan, though I know roughly where it should stand. For a full discussion of the "Jerusalem" question, see the geographical chapters of my book THE HISTORICITY OF BIBLICAL ISRAEL (second edition) available on Amazon.

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  15. To Mr. Tom Balderston: I just noticed there is a second part to your question with respect to King Ahaz of Judah. His capital was the same as that of his ancestor King Solomon of All Israel, i.e., the Tanumah neighbourhood of the Asir heights. Our sundial experiment of last year, which was performed at Abha, will be performed a second time in this Tanumah neighbourhood, and the results will hopefully be published soon in this blog.

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  16. With respect to MK and Mouwatin Lubnani, I regret that I cannot communicate with persons who do not identify themselves by name.

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  17. To Mr. Abdulaziz Fagih: thank you for your intervention. I checked the reference you kindly gave me in ALRIYADH, only to find the following: الصفحة المطلوبة غير موجودة أو لم تعد موجودة
    Would it be at all possible to somehow e-mail it to me (salibi.kamal@gmail.com) should you happen to have kept the article or material? I would be most grateful.

    From my point of view, the important thing is not to agree or disagree with a proposition but to keep an open mind with respect to whatever is proposed. We are, it seems to me, in agreement on this point.

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  18. To Delphine: Sorry to be late in responding to your comment.

    The astronomical validation of my proposal that Israelite history, as narrated in the Hebrew Bible, ran its main course in the territory of Asir, in Western Arabia, came as a total surprise to me. Mr. Anthony Lias, who came forth with this validation, had chanced to read in a book written by an English astronomer in the first decades of the nineteenth century an account on the odd behaviour of sundials in tropical climes, i.e. in such parts of the earth as fall between the Tropic of Cancer and the Equator in the northern hemisphere, and the Tropic of Capricorn and the Equator in the Southern hemisphere. In both cases, at certain times of the year, and most notably in the span of time preceding and following the summer solstice which falls annually on 21 June, The shadow of the "gnomon", or pointer, on the sundial goes into forward and retrograde motions once in the forenoon, and once in the afternoon -- something that never happens in other climes.

    Now it says, in the Hebrew Bible, that when young King Hezekiah of Judah was very sick, and on the point of dying, He asked for the intercession of the prophet Isaiah to get God to get him well and prolong his life. WhereuponIsaiah came back to the young king with the news that God had granted him fifteen more years to live. And to assure him of the validity of his promise, God gave him a sign: that the shadow of the gnomon on the court sundial (the first mention of a sundial in recorded history) having moved forward ten degrees, will go into retrograde motion for he same ten degrees before continuing in its course. Now, this would have been nothing less than a MIRACLE if the Jerusalem where King Hezekiah reigned was the Palestinian Jerusalem, which is located far away to the north of the tropic zone. For those who believe that miracles can happen, and are part of the para-natural order, this presents no problem. But I have consistently proposed, in published form since 1986, that the Jerusalem of the Hebrew Bible was located in Asir, which is well within the tropic zone. There, it does not take a miracle for the shadow of the gnomon of a sundial to go into retrograde rmotion regularly at certain times of the year. Ergo, my proposal for the location of the Biblical Jerusalem in Asir is no longer mere theory, but an established fact.

    I wish we had professional astronomers and the proper equipment to repeat our experiment in Asir and produce better pictures. So far, this is not possible. So we have to do with the jerrybuilt arrangements under the remote control guidance of professional astronomers. Once we can do better, we will certainly let whoever cares in the world know.

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  19. Addendum: Considering that there is no earlier mention of what we now call sundials than the mention of the one at the court of the Biblical Judah, why should we keep on insisting that the sundial was a Babylonian invention? Judging by the Biblical record for which there is no contemporary non-Biblical parallel, chances are that it was an Israelite invention which was later adopted by the Babylonians and others.

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  20. The territory of Asir/Abbah is a unique, high elevation, high rainfall, area, with substantial vegetation, in what is now Saudi Arabia, with, even, areas of coniferous forests. Climatically as temperate as Israel of today, if not more so.

    How you can not take into account the climatic conditions described in the ancient books that now comprise the Torah, or Bible, as desert, compared to climatic conditions and elevation of Asir/Abbah: suggests to me your hypothesis is a fantasia completely without foundation ... unless you have archaeological evidence: which it seems you do not.

    At a minimum, sites in Abbah/Asir should have yielded clay shards which could have been dated.

    Further, the idea that the sundial is an ancient Israelite invention is preposterous: sundials in the ancient middle-eastern world in the form of gnomons, or obelisks, were known long before Judaic "biblical" times, in Sumer, Egypt, Babylon.

    That sundials may not be mentioned elsewhere in your sources may just reflect the astronomical/calendrical ignorance of the proto-Hebrew peoples, or the fact that they borrowed what little they had from ancient sources, like the Babylonians, where there is proof of systematic astronomical knowledge.

    Just as Freud postulated Moses was a former priest of Aten, in Egypt, you might as well hypothesize that Isaiah was a refugee trained in Babylonian science.

    What you are writing is esoteric fiction worthy of a book from Dan Brown.

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