The Muslims of Maraille

[Pedant]

How do those following Islam on Maraille keep time? Given that Earth's moon is no longer present, there's been no mention of a moon in (easily accessible) supplementary material, and the year is calculated both in AD and AH, how is the calendar determined? Using Otsolé as a proxy is the only thing that comes to mind, but this may be somewhat difficult...
For that matter, is there a standardization for years across the rest of the Human Incatena? Are celebrations just popped down at their appropriate place in the year, or do they try to maintain a Terran standard?

[zompist]

It's complex. In general, a planet will use Earth standard time (the descendant of UTC), the local planetary standard, and local time, for different purposes.

For anything interstellar, such as trade or diplomacy, you'd use Earth time. That also includes pan-human culture— that is, people will need to talk about a holo or an invention from the 33rd century, all over the Incatena, and they'll use Earth time for that.

People living in a moon or a space habitat, including the massive Tir Habitat orbiting Sirius, will normally keep to Earth time, because why not? On a moon the local time is likely to be cumbersome, and in a habitat there is no local day.

Planets vary. On Mars, as an examples, days are numbered locally, but Earth months and years are used. So the actual date may be off from UTC. Outside the solar system, it's more common to redefine the month and use the local year.

Outside Maraille, Muslims have no problems— they use a neurimplant that keeps track of Earth time, and the relative direction of Earth (where Mecca is).

On Maraille, Muslims pray in the direction of Sol. If my calculations are right, Sol is a magnitude 4.3 star from Maraille, so this is not a very challenging problem, but it does require professional astronomers.

On the Maraille page I said there was no local time, but that was just for the convenience of DMs. The Maraillais have no way of keeping Earth time. The Muslims attempt to keep up with AH by sheer arithmetic. About 600 years ago, an offworld Muslim got to Jidrash, was distressed because local reckoning was 3 days off, and succeeded in convincing the clerics to use a slightly more accurate calculation. But he hasn't been back, and "local AH" was nearly a day off by AD 4901.

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

On Maraille, Muslims pray in the direction of Sol. If my calculations are right, Sol is a magnitude 4.3 star from Maraille, so this is not a very challenging problem, but it does require professional astronomers.

The challenge is probably not finding Sol; the problem would actually to be praying towards it.

On Earth, the position of Mecca relative to anywhere on Earth is mostly stable (tectonics aside). You find the great circle that gives you the most direct line towards the holy city and voila, you're pretty much done.

That is not the case on another Planet. Within the solar system, expect a huge amount of calculation as you need to consider both Earth's revolution around Sol, and your own revolution around it, and the time of day and where Earth is in the sky at that particular moment.

But, thank Allah, Maraille can forget about a third of the problem there, as Earth revolution around Sol is barely a blip not worth the calculations. Still, Sol's position will vary in the sky depending on the revolution of Maraille around Solé and its rotation, giving a 360° rotation every day, so Sol's position varies during the day. In some places at some point, you might have to pray downwards towards the center; the opposite towards the sky is a possibility as well. Sol's location in the sky itself is a trifle in this picture.

Then, outside Earth, I could imagine the ultraprogressive Muslims you describe as trying to pray towards the shortest light path to Mecca, the equivalent in spacetime of Earth's great circles. That would be totally out of reach of those from Maraille, but could be the new geometric challenge for our Muslims in space. Still, this would again vary according to the details I gave.

On the Maraille page I said there was no local time, but that was just for the convenience of DMs.

I would simply only use the idea Solé au Zénith ici, Heure à Midi, which is how it was before the advent of timezones.

[zompist]

Still, Sol's position will vary in the sky depending on the revolution of Maraille around Solé and its rotation, giving a 360° rotation every day, so Sol's position varies during the day. In some places at some point, you might have to pray downwards towards the center; the opposite towards the sky is a possibility as well. Sol's location in the sky itself is a trifle in this picture

I think you're making it sound harder than it is. Sol is just a star in the sky, always in the same part of the same map. A medieval-tech astronomer would have no trouble calculating the location.

It varies by time of day, yeah, so you can't carve a qiblah in the stone of the mosque. I think the easiest thing would be to make tables and list the direction for each day in a book.

Or even list the direction at dawn for each week or month, and have a rule of thumb like "for each hour past dawn, rotate 30 degrees."

(So far as I know Muslims don't try for a 3-dimensional direction anyway. If you're on the point of the earth's surface directly opposite Mecca, you don't pray downward!)

(Historically, having to know the qiblah was a spur to doing astronomy. So the problems on Maraille, though different, would have historical precedent.)

[Pedant]

It varies by time of day, yeah, so you can't carve a qiblah in the stone of the mosque. I think the easiest thing would be to make tables and list the direction for each day in a book.
...
Or even list the direction at dawn for each week or month, and have a rule of thumb like "for each hour past dawn, rotate 30 degrees."
...
(Historically, having to know the qiblah was a spur to doing astronomy. So the problems on Maraille, though different, would have historical precedent.)

Ooh! Perhaps a variation on mosques for the most devout and astronomically-inclined of the faith? Mosques across the country with different angles, shaped like stars and coordinating the prayers both within their structures (having multiple qubal) and between mosques? Say, for the big cities, different mosques starting the calls for prayer, and people in the cities knowing which way to face based on the calls? Or how about a situation a bit like the Roman Senate but inversed, with multiple (secular/religious/both) buildings/open areas being used and equipped with calling towers and imams holding services in different locations depending on the calculations?
...hang on, how likely is it that the Maraillais Muslims will end up conflating Mecca with some form of Heaven?
I know this is probably getting into the blasphemous realms, but hey, it's nearly three thousand years in the future; is it by necessity wrong?

[zompist]

As I mentioned, the qiblah spurred a great interest in astronomy, so we don't have to speculate too much on these things. Individual believers don't have to worry about it— they just follow the authorities. A new month requires sighting of the full moon; some Muslims trust astronomical calculations, but some (the Saudis, I believe) still require a human to spot it.

(Here's a short run-through of historical attempts to find the qibla.)

I assume that for any one Maraillais city, the apparent movement of the stars would be uniform, so you could (say) mark on the wall where Sol is at sunset for each day of the year. (The day begins at sunset.) Then you adjust for the time of day. You only need the charts I mentioned if you're traveling outside Muslim areas. It's still more of a hassle for the individual believer than it is on Earth, but it doesn't seem that hard.

(The qiblah is really easy for citizens of Luna... well, at least for those on the hemisphere facing Earth. Kind of annoying for Martians: the Earth would always be toward the sun, but in a fairly wide arc.)

Muslims don't think that Mecca is Heaven, but it's interesting to wonder how religions will conceptualize Heaven in an interstellar civilization. As late as Dante, Christians could believe that Heaven was a physical location, though theologians at least didn't put it simply up in the clouds. It seems to me that people would fall back on the concept of Heaven (and Hell) being separate from the physical universe... like the planes in D&D.

[Pedant]

Perhaps I was being a bit unclear with my questions...

1. If Muslims find the beginning of the month by the sighting of the full moon, how does that work on Maraille? Sure, they work it out by calendrical features, but wouldn’t that lead to dates being far more regimented—or random, with closer celestial bodies coming into play? Just Maraille, mind; I realize other planets would be able to link to Earth in one way or another.
2. How is it that after 1,400 years the Muslims of Maraille are still virtually unchanged in terms of beliefs and practices from their more advanced counterparts? How is it that they in turn seem practically unchanged from the Muslims of the current era?

[zompist]

1. I think I answered this already:

The Maraillais have no way of keeping Earth time. The Muslims attempt to keep up with AH by sheer arithmetic. About 600 years ago, an offworld Muslim got to Jidrash, was distressed because local reckoning was 3 days off, and succeeded in convincing the clerics to use a slightly more accurate calculation. But he hasn't been back, and "local AH" was nearly a day off by AD 4901.

2. I'd add more details if, say, I was setting a story on Maraille. FWIW there are probably more differences in practice than in belief, because that's how Islam has rolled. Islamic theology isn't very complex, so it tends not to be what people argue about or innovate.