such as al-Raqqa, Harrān, and similar places. For this reason, some authors of works on determining the qibla, such as Abū al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Qāss and others, have said that these lands have the most straightforward qibla orientation: their inhabitants turn their backs to the northern pole without needing to turn eastward from that orientation, as the people of Syria do, or westward, as the people of Iraq do.

Thus, the directions relative to a person change with his movements, although the directions themselves have not changed at all: east has not become west, nor west east. Likewise, the direction aligned with his head is his upward direction, and that aligned with his feet is his downward direction.

If there are two men, one in the farthest east, at the edge of the land by the seashore there, and the other in the farthest west, at the edge of the land by the seashore there, the sky is above each of them because it is aligned with his head, and the earth is beneath him because it is aligned with