Ask AalaHazrat: Can two cities be North of one another at the same time?

If you're asked a Question, if city 'A' is due #North of the city 'B', what is city 'B' due of the city 'A'?

Wouldn't you say #South?

You should be surprised to know that #AalaHazrat [RadiAllaahu Anh] explained that both the cities #A and #B can be due #North of one another (even if you think based on their #latitudes that one city is more towards the North pole than the other).

Let's see a calculation by Aala Hazrat in the first attached image:


[Translated from Kashf Al-Illah, pg 88]

And then to visualise the concept, you can check the last two images from #Google_Earth namely, this:


and this,



To note is, that even if the places are located at different latitudes, i.e. the second place is located 4° North of the first place (i.e. Makkah Sharif), also, the first place is located below the Tropic of Cancer and the second place (in India) is located above the Tropic of Cancer.

Now, for a person to look at Makkah Sharif from the (second) place, he has to turn Northwards from #West and for a person located at the first place (Makkah sharif), he should also turn Northwards from the #East to face the second place, which is apparent by looking at the heading values marked in images from google earth and the values mentioned by AalaHazrat.

This proves that both these places are due North of one another. Moreover, the angles of turning are also not the same (heading 274.11 or W4.11°N and 75.4 or E14.6°N respectively) i.e. one needs to turn 4.11° from West towards North to face Makkah Sharif (from the second place) and one should also turn 14.6° from East towards North to face the second place from Makkah Sharif.
SubhaanAllaah!

This is what relates to #Qiblah and you should ponder at how it differs from plane trigonometry and more specifically, how deep our #Imaam ❤️ was into knowledge.