Thomas Alexander

Here's a little update which has very little to do with this channel. But I wanted to share a small side project I have been working on for several months now, a reproduction of a book from around 1500 AD. As you can see on the pictures, I'm getting close to completing it, though there is still a lot to do.

I didn't just want to make a facsimile of a surviving copy of the original book, rather I wanted to recreate how it would have looked like back in the day. So I had to go to extreme lengths in order to typeset the complete book myself, creating my own font in the process.

I want to keep it short here, but if you're interested in the specific book I'm recreating, or in the materials I used, or in how I did it without any experience or tools, then you can read my post on the issue. I have put it up on my public Patreon page, meaning you don't need to be a supporter to read it. You don't even need to sign up to Patreon. Just follow the link:
www.patreon.com/posts/unwinding-73369527

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3 years ago | [YT] | 102

Thomas Alexander

As of today, YouTube allows channels to use handles. My new handle is @TAlexander, meaning my cannel can now be easily reached via: youtube.com/@TAlexander

The old channel URL is also still working: youtube.com/c/ThomasAlexanderTV

3 years ago | [YT] | 94

Thomas Alexander

Unfortunately, my new job really prevented me from spending the time needed on new videos until now. But I am now working on the next batch of videos which I'm planning to release starting about two weeks from now. Until then, let me tease it a little bit.

It is often said that the Dome of the Rock was a singular building without any precedence. It's clearly not a mosque, it wasn't designed to hold a large, praying congregation. It's an odd building centred around a big rock.

But of course, there is precedence. Plenty of it in fact. Only, it's not Muslim but Christian. There was a number of very similar buildings which existed at the time the Dome of the Rock was being built, buildings that were clearly used as templates. I will go over many of these buildings in the upcoming videos, one of which you can see on the pictures here.

Since I don't want to spoil anything, I won't go into much more detail here, only that this particular building is dated to around 435 AD and it was still in use by the time the Dome of the Rock was being built. The peculiar thing about this dome is that we know that it was Christian, but that we also know that it was used by the Arabs as well, people that are believed to have been Muslim at the time.

And most notably: In the center of the dome is a rock...

...we will have a look at what this means and why the rock was deemed important enough to build a dome around it.

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3 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 125

Thomas Alexander

Sorry for being silent for more than a week. Since I started this channel, I managed to upload two videos per week, but to be honest, it was always untenable to sustain that pace. It basically took up all of my free time. Last month, I started in a new job which means that I have to spend a lot of additional time getting into the ins and outs there, which is why I simply couldn't work on a lot of new stuff for this channel.

It is of course not just filming and editing the video. That already takes quite a lot of time (e.g. at least 6 hours for a "3 Minute Quran Study" Episode). But the vast majority goes into research. With my AJ Deus videos, you probably could get a glimpse into how much work there's behind every single video, because there I sort of took you along the ride. First I had to find all of the sources and then I had to parse them. It was multiple books worth of content which I had to go through (you only see the tip of the iceberg in the videos). Not to mention the difficult and time consuming effort of things like parsing the Elzearius Horn book. Not only was it written in Latin, it was barely legible in many places too, given the age of the document and the many discolourations, plus many letters were ambiguous in that degraded old font.

On the positive side, I will use all of that work for my upcoming videos as well which will have nothing to do with AJ Deus. I will present the actual history of the Dome of the Rock for which I will heavily rely on Oleg Grabar's work (something that I didn't present in the AJ Deus videos but which made up large parts of my research) but I will also go beyond that and present the actual context of the Dome of the Rock. Grabar was still mostly trapped inside the SIN (Standard Islamic Narrative) paradigm, even though he did point out many issues with it. He was extremely close to breaking through though and in some places he openly questioned the historicity of the SIN, for example when he argues that the Miraj (i.e. Muhammad's night journey to Jerusalem) wasn't a widely held belief until very late and likely didn't have anything to do with the original construction of the Dome of the Rock. He even pointed out all the similarities to previous Christian buildings, but he couldn't (or didn't dare to) draw the obvious conclusion. You will be amazed.

Those videos will be in the classic "Origins of Islam" format.

But soon I will also be on a two week holiday trip. My plan is to prepare the slides and record the next set of videos this week, so that I can release them starting next week and then also throughout my holiday. Maybe it won't be two videos per week as before, but I'll try.

I hope you can hold out a little bit longer, I'm certainly trying my best.

PS: In case you want to support my work, I would certainly appreciate it, even if there is currently no new content. But your support makes it possible for me to go on. This year alone I probably spend more than 1K on books alone, specifically for this channel. So I'm currently operating under a hefty loss, not just in terms of time, but also money. Now with my new Job, I'll be sitting in trains quite a bit and I'd love to be able to use that time to edit videos on the go. That would require a powerful new laptop though. A proper MacBook Pro currently sits at around 5K, an expense which I can't justify making privately. But if everybody chipped in, it would be less than a Dollar per subscriber. Of course we all know that this will never happen, 99% of people just like to watch and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Nobody should feel pressured into supporting me by the previous few lines. I value all viewers just the same and all of my videos will always be freely available. But I will leave the links to my Patreon page and my PayPal below anyway, just in case.

____________________
If you like my content and would like me to be able to continue producing more, you can support me in the following ways:

Become a Patron and get access to some exclusive content: www.patreon.com/thomasalexander
Donate via PayPal: www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=YSYV837J48J…
Donate Bitcoin: 36AcDS46SGX23xSDQWJQi9C4xtGaqevGba
Donate ETH or ERC20 Tokens: 0x466b19D59D0Ad527a27871001e18283fA6F3D2fd

3 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 224

Thomas Alexander

Yesterday, I filmed my (hopefully) final video on the AJ Deus paper. It's really mostly a wrap up. At this point, his conjecture is so thoroughly discredited that it feels like beating a dead horse. But I wanted to bring in some new findings which I made since filming the original videos. The wooden dome-structure on the posted image will play a surprising role - does anybody know what/where it is and can you guess why it may be important and how it may relate to AJ Deus' paper? Let me know in the comments.

But I also want to correct myself in some places. I was maybe a little too dismissive in parts which I will address.

Lastly, I have decided that I want my "positive case" for what I think the true origins of the Dome of the Rock are to stand on its own. Originally, I planned to do it in the context of the AJ Deus paper and use it to provide a counter argument. However, now I will not refer to AJ Deus at all in the upcoming videos. His theory will rightfully be forgotten in a few weeks time, which is why my videos are supposed to stand on their own. If somebody finds my videos two years from now, they should not be required to look up the failed hypothesis of AJ Deus in order to understand them and I do not want to give AJ Deus' embarrassing ideas any more air than they already got.

Unfortunately, the video quality of my wrap-up will not be too great. I did play around with the settings of my recording software in order to get a file which will then be faster to edit (it took me ages to edit the previous videos because of all the loading time alone). I also did do a short test recording which looked fine. However, when I looked at the final output of my recording session, I realised that the quality got successively worse over time, leading to giant artefacts eventually. To be honest, I already did two takes and I can't be bothered to record this video a third time. I feel like I have already wasted way too much time on this one bad paper.
I think I will need new hardware at some point in order to be able to edit my videos more quickly and efficiently. Which is as good a reason as any to shamelessly plug my Patreon and PayPal one more time (links at the bottom of the post).

Also, in the meantime, if you've missed the previous videos, here they are one more time:
Part 1: https://youtu.be/Tw1upEBArBU (17 minutes)
Part 2: https://youtu.be/Dcwehs06p2k (60 minutes)
Part 3: https://youtu.be/XKI-Yx3B7_0 (97 minutes)

In case you don't have the time for them, I have also created snippets with highlights of Part 2 & Part 3 which basically cover the core mistakes AJ Deus made, however they will obviously lack some context:

#1: https://youtu.be/5hA1M9tM31Q (2:41 minutes)
#2: https://youtu.be/JSxoQh7gG60 (4:44 minutes)
#3: https://youtu.be/IVxx_bKs7DA (2:43 minutes)
#4: https://youtu.be/UhhYVlSV6AU (2:30 minutes)
#5: https://youtu.be/zK2z5jtrbeY (3:34 minutes)

____________________
If you like my content and would like me to be able to continue producing more, you can support me in the following ways:

Become a Patron and get access to some exclusive content: www.patreon.com/thomasalexander
Donate via PayPal: www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=YSYV837J48J…
Donate Bitcoin: 36AcDS46SGX23xSDQWJQi9C4xtGaqevGba
Donate ETH or ERC20 Tokens: 0x466b19D59D0Ad527a27871001e18283fA6F3D2fd
____________________

Here you can find A.J. Deus' paper:
www.academia.edu/69970087/THE...

3 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 143

Thomas Alexander

One last image analysis before tomorrow's video wherein I will tackle this topic, albeit not in as much detail as here. That would have been too much.

One key piece of evidence in A.J. Deus' argument for an octagonal drum on top of the Dome of the Rock is the picture by Erhard Reuwich. He is the only artist to have produced a picture of the Dome of the Rock in AJ's paper who actually saw it.
A lot of the later artists simply copied Reuwich.

Picture #1: This is a cutout of the map of Jerusalem which Reuwich produced. I have desaturated the image to make it easier later on. Keep in mind that in reality, the Dome here is less than 2 inches tall.
And indeed, at first glance, it really looks as if the drum was octagonal. However, the line which defines the shape of the drum is the one where it meets the roof of the ambulatory, so let's have a look at that.

Picture #2: All I've done in this picture is to highlight the lines which Reuwich drew. As we can see, the line at the foot of the drum is almost straight and then bends up slightly. So we are looking at an ambiguous depiction. It's neither round nor octagonal. It's an impossible shape.
Also note the label "TEMPLŪ SALOMŌIS". First of all, the horizontal dashes above the letters U and O stand for a letter "M" or "N" which follows. That was a common writing convention of the 15th century, so you'd read it out as "TEMPLUM SALOMONIS".
However, with that text added, there was not enough room to shape the foot of the drum into either a circle or an octagon which explains the ambiguous design.
Also note that on the very left of the drum, to the left of the last support pillar, there is still a bit of wall visible. In an octagon, that would be impossible. There the lines have to go in a straight fashion from pillar to pillar, meaning that at the edge of the structure, there always has to be a pillar.
EDIT: I have removed a false statement on my part wherein I claimed that in an octagon, one can at most see 4 edges. That is untrue, one can indeed see five.

Picture #3: Here I tried to visualise how the picture would have to look like, if we were to draw an octagonal drum, assuming we wouldn't have to bother about the labelling. Note that on the left, the piece of wall has to be removed - which then messes up the alignment with the cupola.
Other than that, the two central support pillars have to be elongated and straight lines have to be drawn between them.

Picture #4: Here I did the same as in #3, only this time I tried to turn it into a round drum. The wall to the left can stay, the alignment with the cupola remains fine, the two central pillars have to be elongated and a rounded line has to be drawn connecting the pillars. The differences to the original picture are a lot less pronounced than in #3. So going with Occam's Razor, the interpretation which makes less assumptions should be the likely one. I think it is therefore likely that Reuwich intended to draw a circular drum, but he had to squeeze it in a little bit due to the label.

And by the way, did I mention that the associated text within the same book wherein Reuwich's woodcut was published describes the drum as being round...? That was written by the man who took Reuwich to Jerusalem to illustrate his forthcoming book, i.e. they both saw the same Dome at the same time.

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3 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 126

Thomas Alexander

Mel and myself had a bit of a disagreement the other day whether or not Friar Antonio de Angelis drew a round drum on the Dome of the Rock. Since I was apparently not able to verbally explain why it is clearly round, I went ahead and did some image editing to visualise what I meant.

Image #1 is the way Antonio de Angelis drew the dome. The line separating the drum from the roof of the ambulatory is rounded, meaning that the drum is round. Also, the shading on the left is rounded, indicating a round wall.

Image #2 is a minimal edit on my part. I kept everything as it was except that I replaced the rounded line below the drum and the rounded shading with straight lines. Here we would be looking at a polygonal drum instead of a round one. This is the least one would expect.

Image #3 is how I would actually expect it to look, had Friar Antonio intended to draw an octagonal drum. Since we'd be looking at an octagonal drum on an octagonal roof, the connection inbetween wouldn't be round but also octagonal.

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3 years ago | [YT] | 96

Thomas Alexander

Once again I'm happy to announce that Joshua and Kelly have done an amazing job regarding the subtitles. As of now, the first 5 episodes of my "3 Minute Quran Study" series have Thai subtitles and the first 16 episodes do now have Indonesian subtitles.

Thanks for the wonderful work in translating these subtitles. Here's the link to the playlist where you can experience the subtitles first hand:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqUTM...

#3mqs #indonesian #thai #subtitles #quran #islam

3 years ago | [YT] | 144

Thomas Alexander

Here's another example of A.J. Deus not digging deep enough.

AJ argues that the book of Bernardino Amico about sacred architecture from 1620 AD is proof that the Dome of the Rock had an octagonal drum at that time. In the book, we find a map of Jerusalem (picture #1). Of course, Bernardino Amico was not an eye witness. Instead, he copied somebody else.

In comes Friar Antonino de Angelis, an eye witness who published a map of Jerusalem in 1578 AD. (picture #2). It is clearly the template which Bernardino Amico used for his map.

If we zoom in, we can see that the Dome of the Rock by the eye witness does indeed have a round drum (picture #3).

Once again, it was the eye witness who drew a round drum.

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3 years ago | [YT] | 77

Thomas Alexander

Here are some more images of the Dome of the Rock which haven't made it into my response to AJ Deus, but which are interesting nonetheless.

Image #1: An anonymous drawing of Jerusalem from the South, made around 1540 AD. I didn't include that picture because I could only find a very low-res version. It is part of a private collection and hence not many images exist. The perspective from the South is unique, most depictions from that time are usually made from the Mount of Olives. For that reason, it is believed to be independent of other depictions of Jerusalem. As you can see, the Dome of the Rock looks pretty much exactly like it does today, round drum and all. Only the ambulatory appears to be a bit too narrow.

Images #2 & #3: This is a page from the Psalter of Melisende, the Queen of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. It was created in Jerusalem itself around 1135 AD. On the page depicted here, we see the presentation of Jesus. In the background, there is an interior depiction of the Dome of the Rock.
We can see a typical arch as it exists in the ambulatory, the floral decorations are indicated by the squiggly lines on the green background. Above, there are purple dots on a dark background which is in the position where the inscription would be. Given that this inscription is typically always in the shade, the dark appearance would be explained. The artist didn't read Arabic and approximated the script via the dots.
The golden dots on red above the inscription mark the edge between the arches and the roof. It should be green dots with golden outlines on red ground, but the general lack of detail on this picture explains that minor discrepancy.
A round drum is indicated between the arches and the cupola.

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3 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 99