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identified twelve year old Muhammad as the expected
Mustapha when Prophet Muhammad was part of his
uncle Abu Talib’s trade caravan. In written
correspondence, the past director of Syria's
Department of Antiquities, Dr. Afif Bahnassi, invited
our team CEO in writing to investigate what then, in
1985, was exclusively subject to an archaeology
project but what now can be detected by RS there at
Bostra’s ancient hermitage where the monk Sergius
Bahaira, a.k.a. Buhaira and Nestorius, identified the
indicators of Muhammad’s calling, according to
available early Byzantine records and universally
accepted Islamic traditions. This hermitage at Jabal
Harun is now a tourist attraction.
4.0 CONCLUSION
The examples given in this presentation of nexus and
plexus patterns of sacred writ geography and
cartography are but a few of the many we will be
exploring and incorporating in our final RS atlas. If
you are interested in joining this project either as a
sponsor, investor or with technical assistance, please
arrange with us a meeting during this ISPRS 20°
Congress. Regional support garnered to date will be
discussed at that time, but suffice it to state and
conclude that a project such as this, while preferred to
be generated in the private sector, also requires a
consultative Grand Council of Abraham.
4.1 Grand Council of Abraham
This council would consist of appropriate
representatives of those relevant sacred writs with
which the geography identified in this paper can be
discerned by RS. While the atlas itself will be non-
sectarian, the Grand Council of Abraham would be
composed of the three sectors of Abrahamic
monotheism and the sub-sectors within those three.
Judaism would have representation from the reform,
conservative and orthodox sub-sectors, Christianity
would likewise have representatives from the catholic,
protestant, and orthodox sub-sectors, and Islam would
have Sunni, Shiite and reform-to-orthodox
representation. This task has already begun with
Ayatollah Ghaemagani, the Shi’ite figh
(Jurisprudence) specialist of Tehran, agreeing to
participate, as have Sunni and Shi’ite Muslim
representatives of the Islamic Campus Ministry
affiliated with the University of Alberta Chaplain’s
Association. This listing of those who support our
effort is substantially longer as the conclusion of this
paper will demonstrate. It is important to have
appropriate and competent Hebrew and Arabic
translators combined with relevant religious
representatives put to task in a combined effort so as
not to breech any protocols in this the most sensitive
aspect of our undertaking.
4.2 The Tent
Such a Grand Council of Abraham has indeed
happened in recent history. The famous TENT OF
MEETING, created by Michele Zackheim in the
1980s was introduced in the Ottawa Citizen
newspaper by Mohammad Azhar Ali Khan in a feature
article with the heading “Tent of Meeting: Prophet
Abraham would have approved” as follows: “The
Tent of Meeting is a Canadian milestone. The
$400,000 collaborative project portrays Jewish,
Christian and Islamic images and is based on the fact
that the followers of the three great faiths have a
common father, the patriarch Abraham, and so
historically at least constitute one family” (page A9,
The Citizen, Ottawa, June 26, 1986). The same can be
said of our atlas project. Mohammad Azhar Ali Khan
went on to state that “Honorary sponsors of the tent
are the Canadian Council for Christians and Jews, the
Christian Council of the Capital Area, the Ottawa
Jewish Community Council and the Ottawa Muslim
Association....Rabbi Arnold Fine, Agudath Israel
Congregation....and Dr. Tawfiq Shahin, Imam of the
Ottawa Mosque”. Another sponsor is a group titled
Abraham and Friends, Inc. In personal
correspondence, Michele Zackheim asked the author
of this paper to “Please be so kind as to keep me
informed of your findings and we will keep you
informed about where THE TENT is going and when”
(letter written to this project CEO, L.D.B. Parry, July
19, 1986). By way of another example to go in our
sacred writ atlas by remote sensing, that is, the
location of what Jews call Ha Mishkin, what
Christians call the Tabernacle of the Wilderness, and
Muslims call Buyut al-Sha’ar, we will indeed keep
Michele informed of our findings. If good will
prevails, insha’Allah (Allah willing), our exhibit will
in fact be THE TENT OF MEETING!
5.0 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
5.1 Natural Resource Extraction Industry
For our Team’s RS Panel Presentations, we wish to
acknowledge coal, oil, gas and power companies
including Suncor Energy, Cardinal River Coals and
Epcor, for their sponsorship and/or financing of the
costs of our RS panel presentations in recent years.
These expert panels consisted of Dr. Gloria Fedirchuk,
our Calgary-based archaeologist, Dr. Richard Nielsen,
our Houston-based RS expert, his assistant and current
project CAO Jeff Budinski, the Rocky Mountain Cree
Smallboy Camp Chief and Council, and me, Project
CEO and President/CEO of the MCCSI Institute in
whose name our panel presentations were endorsed
and funded.
5.2 Earlier Sources of Acknowledgement
From the active interest the Syrian Director of
Antiquities, Dr. Afif Bahnassi, took in Parry’s Bostra
Jabal Harun project of the middle 1980s to recent
