The Third al-Biruni’s Method for The Determination of Qibla Direction from Kitab Tahdid Nihayat al-Amakin with The Implementation Based on Arduino Board MCU, GPS Module, and Digital Compass

Abstract

One of the mandatory requirements of performing Sholat or other various worship for Muslim’s is faces to Qibla direction (the direction toward Kaaba in Mecca). Muslims around the world who far away from Kabaa motivate the beginning Muslims scientist (one of them is al-Biruni (973 - 1050 CE)) to develop various method to determine the Qibla direction. This study describes al-Biruni’s Third method from the manuscript Kitab Tahdid Nihayat al-Amakin for determining the Qibla direction of a Location computed in Python 2.7. The computation result presents that al-Biruni’s Third method equivalent to the modern spherical trigonometry method. Hence, al-Biruni’s method can still be used to determine the Qibla direction of a location in the present. Then, the algorithm of al-Biruni’s Third has been implemented to construct Q-Bot Ver. 3 based on Arduino board MCU, GPS module, and digital compass so that can determine the Qibla direction in a Location automatically and in real-time.