Mel suggests the Muslims have the wrong Mecca!!

Once again Mel comes up with some new evidence from the 7th and 8th centuries which suggests that the later Islamic Traditions have the wrong Mecca; not a city situated in the Hejaz, where it is today, but a city much further north, way up in Syria, near the city of Sanlurfa, which is the ancient Edessa.  In fact Mecca could be a whole lot of places, but not the one chosen in the 8th century by the Abbasids, because that Mecca is not referred to until 741 AD, and it is located much too far north, close to Edessa today. It finally is located at the present location on the map in 900 AD, but that is the 10th century! Much too late and much too far away! Mel uses references from Jacob of Edessa (684-688 AD) who points to a place East of Egypt and West of Iraq, but doesn't call it Mecca, but refers to it as the place where the Ka'aba is situated. Jacob seems to suggest this is located between the cities of Edessa and Carrhae, which is in Syria. The Abbasids, who come to power after 749 AD, and are dominated by the Mandaics (Sabians) at this time, used to pray to the south. They decided to choose their own sanctuary, and so chose a location directly south of Edessa, which would locate it where Mecca is today. Another theory forwarded by Dan Gibson is that the first Mecca was further north as well, but not in Syria, but in Jordan, at the city of Petra. That theory will be the subject of our next video on the subject. As you can see, we are slowly putting together a sort of jigsaw puzzle, trying to piece where Islam is, and how it was created, not using the much later 9th-10th century Islamic Traditions, but the evidence we can find in the 7th and 8th centuries when these events all took place. © Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2020 (39,310) (Music: "small adventure", by Rafael Krux, from filmmusic-io - License CC BY)