From Robert Hadden
Reston, Virginia
Moslems all over the world pray facing toward Mecca in their mosques. So why
does the mosque in New York city point toward Greenland rather than Saudi Arabia
(16 February, p 55)?
The reason is that the “great circle line” on the face of a sphere—a
circle which lies in a plane passing through the sphere’s centre—is the
direct path, rather than a straight line on an arbitrary map. Thus the prayerful
in New York offer their prayers to the north-east to be received in the
south-east. For more information, see “Which way is Jerusalem? Which way is
Mecca? The direction-facing problems in religion and geography”, by Daniel Levin
(Journal of Geography, volume 101, p 27).
