> Dan Gibson claims that early mosques face Petra rather than Mecca. But he compares the mosque orientations with MODERN directions of Petra and Mecca. He does not realise that historical qibla directions cannot be the same as modern qibla directions. In fact, the easiest mosque orientations were not calculated at all, but relied on astronomical horizon phenomena, not least because the Kaaba itself is astronomically aligned.

A paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330221815