North African Mosque Qiblas weren't confused, Here's why!

One of our viewers, Aetius Secularus, had this question concerning the odd directions for the Qiblas in Northern African, writing, “The evidence of Mecca being first Petra is compelling. However, there is also a major problem with the claim that the Abbasids secondarily pointed their Qiblas to Mecca, after first pointing towards Petra under the Umayyads. The reason is that Abd al Rahman I (Abd al Malik’s grandson, and an Umayyad) moved to Al Andalus in Spain and also defeated the Abbasid attacks in North Africa. The Umayyad dynasty continued until the 11th Century. No Abbasid Army ever set foot in al Andalus. On top of that, Abd al Rahman I (d. 788 AD) and his famous successor Abd al Rahman III (d. 961 AD) made pilgrimages to Mecca and had their Qiblas pointed there. Why would the Umayyads still point their mosques to Mecca and do pilgrimage there if it was originally Petra? Why would Abd al Rahman I continue to promote Mecca as a holy place after the Abbasids murdered his family? This doesn’t make sense if the Umayyads revered Petra originally.” There are four areas I would like to consider in responding to these questions. 1) According to Gibson's work on the Qibla, the early Umayyad Qiblas in northern Africa and in Spain did not initially point towards Mecca at all. 2) In fact, the earliest Umayyad mosque in North Africa was the Jami’ al-Zaytuna mosque, built in Tunisia in 732 AD (exactly 100 years after Muhammad), and it is pointed parallel to a line between Petra and Mecca. 3) And what was the reason? They did this as a political statement, not wanting to side with either the Umayyads (headquartered in Damascus), or the up-and-coming Abbasids (headquartered in Ctesiphon...today Baghdad). They were waiting to see who would win out, and then direct their Qiblas to the sanctuary of the winner. That is why all of the subsequent mosques found in northern Africa and in Spain during the reign of the Umayyads were built with their Qiblas facing parallel. 4) Not one of the North African or Spanish Mosques were facing Mecca until well after 749 AD, when the Abbasids finally took over and redirected all the Qiblas towards Mecca. These would include the mosques by the later Umayyads such as Abd al Rahman I and III who died in 788 AD and 961 AD. By that time all the mosques were uniformly facing Mecca. © Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2021 (46,040) Music: 'happy child', by Aleksound, from Filmmusic-io