The Qibla in Early Islam: Ritual, Metaphor and Identity Marker

Sacred Orientation in Late Antiquity and Early Islam: The Qibla as Ritual, Metaphor, and Identity Marker offers a groundbreaking study of how the qibla - Islam’s ritual direction of prayer - served not only as a sacred practice but also as a powerful marker of communal identity in Islam’s forma-tive centuries.

Ari Gordon is Director, U.S. Muslim-Jewish Relations, American Jewish Committee (AJC)