Dhul-Qarnayn and the Sun Setting in a Muddy Spring - Part One: Difference between revisions

The meaning of verses 18:86 and 18:90 in the Qur’an is a matter of considerable controversy. These verses occur within the [[Category:Dhul-Qarnayn|Dhu’l Qarnayn]] episode in [[The Holy Qur'an: Al-Kahf (The Cave)|Surah al-Kahf]], or “The Cave”, verses 18:83-101. This passage says that Allah empowered a person called Dhu’l Qarnayn, “Possessor of the two horns”, and gave him means or ways to all things. It says he used these to go on three journeys to unusual places where people live, and finishes with him making a prophecy about the end-times. Verses 86 and 90 are so controversial due to Muslim sensitivity to claims that they have Allah saying that the sun sets and rises in physical locations, and in particular that the sun sets in a muddy spring.  

While many people have written about these verses to promote various interpretations, we have found that there are many new, important arguments, and much more evidence that can be used to shed light on this matter. This is particularly true concerning 18:90, which is relatively neglected in such writings.

We have done our best to present the strongest case for each of the many different interpretations of the controversial phrases, even giving new arguments that support them, before critically examining them and reaching conclusions.

{{Quote|[[The Holy Qur'an: Al-Kahf (The Cave)#18:83|Qur'an 18:83-101]]|83. They ask thee concerning Zul-qarnain. Say, “I will rehearse to you something of his story.”<BR>84. Verily We established his power on earth, and We gave him the ways and the means to all ends.<BR>85. One (such) way he followed,<BR>86. '''Until, when he reached the setting of the sun, he found it set in a spring of murky water: Near it he found a People: We said: “O Zul-qarnain! (thou hast authority,) either to punish them, or to treat them with kindness.”'''<BR>87. He said: “Whoever doth wrong, him shall we punish; then shall he be sent back to his Lord; and He will punish him with a punishment unheard-of (before).<BR>88. “But whoever believes, and works righteousness,- he shall have a goodly reward, and easy will be his task as We order it by our Command.”<BR>89. Then followed he (another) way,<BR>90. '''Until, when he came to the rising of the sun, he found it rising on a people for whom We had provided no covering protection against the sun.'''<BR>91. (He left them) as they were: We completely understood what was before him.<BR>92. Then followed he (another) way,<BR>93. Until, when he reached (a tract) between two mountains, he found, beneath them, a people who scarcely understood a word.<BR>94. They said: “O Zul-qarnain! the Gog and Magog (People) do great mischief on earth: shall we then render thee tribute in order that thou mightest erect a barrier between us and them?<BR>95. He said: “(The power) in which my Lord has established me is better (than tribute): Help me therefore with strength (and labour): I will erect a strong barrier between you and them:<BR>96. “Bring me blocks of iron.” At length, when he had filled up the space between the two steep mountain-sides, He said, “Blow (with your bellows)” Then, when he had made it (red) as fire, he said: “Bring me, that I may pour over it, molten lead.”<BR>97. Thus were they made powerless to scale it or to dig through it.<BR>98. He said: “This is a mercy from my Lord: But when the promise of my Lord comes to pass, He will make it into dust; and the promise of my Lord is true.”<BR>99. On that day We shall leave them to surge like waves on one another: the trumpet will be blown, and We shall collect them all together.<BR>100. And We shall present Hell that day for Unbelievers to see, all spread out,-<BR>101. (Unbelievers) whose eyes had been under a veil from remembrance of Me, and who had been unable even to hear.}}

First we will examine each of these interpretations in context to identify the true meaning of those words. Then in Part 2 we will look at what these two verses say happened when Dhu’l Qarnayn arrived and at broader questions concerning how this passage of the Qur’an was meant to be understood.

The ''fatha'', or “-a” suffix is added to maghrib and matliAA in 18:86 and 18:90 for the accusative grammatical case to indicate that they are the objects of the verb balagha, "he reached" (there is also a different interpretation that these are not the things reached, which we will examine in section 5). The definite article, “al” as in al maghrib, is missing but implied in these verses. That’s because in the genitive construction called ''’idāfa'' (indicating possession, as in the X of Y), the definite article is implied for the first word when it is used for the genitive word, which in this case is a'''l'''shshamsi, meaning “of the sun”.<ref>Mohtanick Jamil - [http://www.learnarabiconline.com/arabic-phrases.shtml Arabic Phrases] - LearnArabicOnline</ref>

First we shall present the case that maghriba a'''l'''shshamsi in 18:86 and matliAAa alshshamsi in 18:90 could be referring to the west and east such that Dhu’l Qarnayn reached the westernmost and easternmost parts of his travels in the direction of sunset and sunrise, but not literal setting and rising places of the sun.

Now we shall see that there are at least 5 serious problems with the claim that maghriba a'''l'''shshamsi in 18:86 means the west and matliAAa a'''l'''shshamsi in 18:90 means the east.

It gets even worse when we look at 18:90. Al matliAA means “the rising place” or “the rising time” (of the sun) and is the first word in the phrase matliAAa alshshamsi in 18:90. MatliAA, with or without a'''l'''shshams, is not used to mean east anywhere else in the Qur’an, nor anywhere in the hadith.<ref name="hadith"></ref> The verb talaAAa (“it rises”), from which it is derived, is not used in this connection either.

If verse 18:90 was about the east, then al mashriq or al sharq would likely have been used, as is always the case elsewhere when the Qur’an mentions the east. Outside 18:86, every verse in the Qur’an that uses maghrib to mean west also uses mashriq to mean east. For aesthetic reasons, we would then also probably replace tatluAAu with tashruqu in 18:90 (both mean “it rising” and are forms of the verbs from which matliAA and mashriq are derived, respectively).  

Finally, we turn to the commentators of the Qur’an. There were certainly classical commentators who claimed that the verses just mean that Dhu’l Qarnayn reached the west and east. However, as pointed out by S. Shamoun and J. Katz at Answering Islam,<ref name="Answering Islam">Sam Shamoun & Jochen Katz - [http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Science/sun_set.html Islam and the Setting of the Sun: Examining the traditional Muslim View of the Sun’s Orbit] - Answering Islam</ref> when we look at their reasoning, it is based not on narrated traditions or linguistic or contextual analysis, but rather on their knowledge that the obvious interpretation describes something that is impossible. We can look at the reasoning (which is highlighted in bold) of the commentators, who are frequently cited on this topic to deny the obvious interpretation and support the west / east idiom interpretation:

We shall also see when we look at the 3^rd interpretation that contemporary Muslim and non-Muslim sources demonstrate that in the early Islamic era before the translation and study of Indian and Greek astronomy under the Abbasid Caliphate, there was a widespread popular belief in the region that the world is flat and that the sun had literal rising and setting places. So, the above commentators were forced by their beliefs to say what they said since they knew certain things about the world, even though their interpretations cannot be correct (this will become even more apparent in part II when we examine the wajada phrases). These are attempts to make the verses fit scientific knowledge acquired later, not evidence that the verses have those intended meanings or were originally understood in that way.

We should briefly discuss the passage relating to Dhu’l Qarnayn in [[Sirat Rasul Allah]] (''Life of the Messenger of God'') by Ibn Ishaq (died mid 8^th century CE and was the first biographer of Muhammad), which survives in a copied and edited version by Ibn Hisham (died 833 CE). It describes the story of Dhu’l Qarnayn in a passage about the occasion Sura al kahf was revealed. We are told that Muhammad’s enemies challenged him to tell them about “the mighty traveler who reached the confines of both East and West. ” literally, “the easts of the Earth and the wests of it”<ref>For an English translation read: Guillaume, A., The Life of Muhammad, p. 137 & p.139 London: Oxford University Press, 1955</ref> (…mashariqa alardi wamagharibaha…).<ref> For the Arabic, see s302: [https://web.archive.org/web/20160409080731/http://sirah.al-islam.com/Page.aspx?pageid=204&TOCID=242&BookID=160&PID=331 here]</ref>

Incidentally, at the beginning of the same work in a section about pre-Islamic traditions<ref>Guillaume op. cit. p.12</ref>, Ibn Ishaq quotes some lines of verse by a Yemeni king called Tubba’ who says that Dhu’l Qarnayn witnessed the sun setting in its resting place into a muddy pool. See section 6.5.1 below for a quote by al-Tabari of these same lines.

There is nowhere in the Qur’an where matliAAa alshshamsi is used to mean the time of sunrise. It is not used with this meaning in the hadith.<ref name="hadith"></ref> There are many other weaknesses with this interpretation. We shall look at those that apply to it in general and then those specific to Dr Naik’s and Osama Abdallah’s interpretations.

Notice that in the above examples that hatta, “until”, is used without itha, “when”, and without balagha, “he/it reached”. There is no need for itha or balagha in verses 18:86 or 18:90 either if they mean that Dhu’l Qarnayn followed a way until the time of sunset/sunrise.

{{Quote|[[The Holy Qur'an: Al-Kahf (The Cave)#18:92|Qur'an 18:92-93]]|Thumma atbaAAa sababa'''n''' hatta itha balagha…<BR><BR>Then followed he (another) way, until when he reached…}}

In the Qur’an, there are three verses that mention the times when the sun rises and sets (and three more that just mention the time of sunrise – we shall look at those in a moment). The verbs gharaba, used in 18:86 in the form “taghrubu”, “it set”, and talaAAa, used in 18:90 in the form “tatluAAu”, “it rise” are used for this purpose in those three verses (in a noun form of the verbs in the latter two cases) along with a time adverb, “when”, or “before”.

We can also look at two other types of example that someone might attempt to use (although we have not seen them used by anyone) to support the time interpretation.

So far as we have seen, supporters of the time interpretation cannot point to a classical commentator who took this interpretation for 18:86 or 18:90. We are asked to believe that nobody understood for centuries that these phrases, against strong evidence to the contrary, just meant that Dhu’l Qarnayn traveled until the times of sunset and sunrise or to unstated places at those times. It should come as no surprise by now that of the most popular Muslim translators of the Qur’an into English (A.Y. Ali, M. al-Hilali and M. Khan, M. Ali, M.H. Shakir, M. Asad, M. Pickthall and many others), none of them use the time interpretation.<ref name="IslamAwakened">[http://www.islamawakened.com/quran/ Master Ayat (Verse) Index] - IslamAwakened</ref> At most they use the non-committal phrase, “he reached the setting of the sun”.

It describes how Bilal volunteered to stay up to make sure the dawn prayer was not missed. He faced the rising place of the sun, but it only awakened them when it hit their ears and is similar to {{Muslim|4|1448}}.

{{Quote|[[The Holy Qur'an: Al-Kahf (The Cave)#18:60|Qur'an 18:60-61]]|…la abrahu hatta ablugha majmaAAa albahrayni […] Falamma balagha majmaAAa baynihima…<BR><BR>…I will not give up until I reach the junction of the two seas […] But when they reached the Junction…}}

We now look at explicit statements in the hadith about the sun (regardless of whether or not these hadith authentically reflect Muhammad utterances, they do at least show some of the contemporary beliefs of the early Muslims, which help us judge the likelihood that Muhammad could have believed and intended a literal interpretation of 18:86 and 18:90). Afterwards we shall look at some early commentaries, pre-Islamic poetry and a highly significant contemporary legend.

As S. Shamoun and J. Katz point out,<ref name="Answering Islam"></ref> Al-Tabari (839-923 CE) gives a lengthy hadith in the first volume of his History of the Prophets and Kings, which claims that Ibn ’Abbas gave an account of what Muhammad said about the sun and moon and the setting and rising places. We have also read a library copy of Franz Rozenthal’s translation of this hadith, which they quote. Whether or not Muhammad said the things attributed to him here (or said anything similar), this hadith certainly demonstrates a belief in literal rising and setting places among the early Muslims.

In volume 5 of the same work, al-Tabari quotes some lines of verse by a Yemeni king, Tubba’:  

====Tafsir (Commentaries)====

''Tanwir al-Miqbas Tafsir Ibn ‘Abbas'' by unknown author(s) and unknown date has for 18:86:

Whatever the historical relationship between these texts<ref>Van Bladel’s thesis is that the Syriac Alexander Legend is the source for the Qur’anic account, rather than the other way around (which is indeed highly unlikely due to strongly evidenced dating of the former to 629-630 CE), or them having a common source. However, we wonder if he dismisses a common source too easily. The key point of his argument appears on page 189-190:<BR><BR>"''If Alexander’s prophecy was composed just for this purpose at this time [i.e. as propaganda for the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius – the prophecy in the Alexander Legend evidently serves this purpose], then the correspondence between the Syriac and the Arabic, which contains the same prophecy reworded, cannot be due to an earlier, shared source. Put differently, the only way to posit a common source is to assume that everything held in common between the Qur’anic account and the Syraic Alexander Legend could have been written for and would have made sense in an earlier context.''"<BR><BR>However, it seems Dhu’l Qarnayn’s prophecy in the Qur’an would have been meaningful before Heraclius and before Muhammad. As we saw, the story of Alexander’s gate enclosing Gog and Magog goes back at least as far as Josephus (or, at least enclosing the Scythians, who Josephus says are what the Greeks call the people of Magog in Antiquities of the Jews 1:6:1). We also know that the Christians believed that Gog and Magog would wage war across the world in the end times (see Revelation 20:7-10). Thus the simple, Qur’anic version of the prophecy about Gog and Magog would have made sense in a pre-Islamic Christian story about Alexander without needing a contempory invasion to motivate it ex eventu. Very significantly, it appears again briefly in 21:96 in a way that makes clear it has not been fulfilled yet. Van Bladel believes that the omission of the Alexander Legend’s pro Roman element in the Qur’anic account reflects some attitude of Muhammad’s community (p.196). Instead that element and others could just be adaptations to the common source to turn it into an ex eventu prophecy for the specific purposes behind the Alexander Legend. A common source also better explains the fact that in the Qur’anic version, “…not a single Syriac word is found, but rather there are true Arabic equivalents of Syriac words…” (Van Bladel 2007b, op. cit. p.194). This seems surprising if the Qur’anic account is directly related to the Syriac version, but not if there is a common source in Arabic or a 3rd language.</ref> and whether or not Dhu’l Qarnayn is meant to be Alexander the Great, it is clear from the legend that the setting and rising places interpretation of 18:86 and 18:90 was entirely compatible with contemporary beliefs in the region. Indeed, verse 18:83 tells us that what follows was supposed to relate to an already known story (“They ask thee concerning Zul-qarnain”).

====Pre-Islamic and contemporary poets====

Stories influenced by the Alexander legends appear in Arabic poetry shortly before and during the time of Muhammad. As Richard Stoneman says, “the poet Imru’ l-Qays (Diwan 158) referred to a Yemeni hero who undertook a similar campaign against Gog and Magog. … In addition, the pre-Islamic poet al-’Asha and the contemporary of Muhammad Hassan ibn Thabit both composed verses referring to the conquest of Gog and Magog and the furthest east by Dhu ’l-Qarnayn.”<ref>Stoneman, R., “Alexander the Great in the Arabic Tradition”, In [http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=P1S1_ogqoqkC&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false The Ancient Novel and Beyond], Eds. S. Panayotakis et al., pp. 7-8, Boston, USA: Brill Academic Publishers 2003</ref>

Those lines by Imru’ l-Qays (died c. 540 CE) clearly mention the literal rising of the sun:

The lines composed by Hāssan b. Thābit, a poet who for a time was employed by Muhammad himself, appropriate elements of the Alexander Legend to a king in the line of Himyar (called Tubba‘ by the Muslims):

As we can see, a literal setting in a spring is mentioned (in the Arabic those lines are literally, “he followed the sun nearby its sunset to observe it in its spring while lowly”).<ref>The Arabic text which Nicholson translates is from: Von Kremer, Alfred, [http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TsAoAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false Altarabische Gedichte uber die Volkssage von Jemen, als Textbelege zur Abhandlung] “Ueber die sudarabische Sage.”, pp.15-16, VIII, lines 6-11, 1867<BR/>See also [https://web.archive.org/web/20170713044809/http://www.ye1.org/forum/threads/34164 here] for the arabic text of the poem</ref> See also the poem at the end of section 6.5.1 above for another example. We only have these poems from Islamic sources, so it is possible that they were composed or edited after Muhammad’s death. Even if that is so, they still demonstrate how the story was understood in the early Islamic era.  

Before getting into specific arguments that people have raised against the ism makan interpretation, we will briefly address a subtly different way of interpreting the phrases maghriba alshshamsi and matliAAa a'''l'''shshamsi, which might occur to some people.

It would be too lengthy to discuss here the controversy over whether or not the Qur’an says or implies that the [[Flat Earth and the Quran|Earth is flat / egg-shaped / some other shape]], that it is stationary or rotates on its axis and that it supports a [[Geocentrism and the Quran|geocentric or heliocentric solar system]]. However, we shall look at a phrase that occurs in the Qur’an twice and is of direct relevance here. It may at first seem to suggest that 18:86 and 18:90 cannot mean literal setting and rising places of the sun.

We must also look at another argument from Mahir Karaosmanovic.<ref>Mahir Karaosmanovic - [http://www.answering-christianity.com/mahir/scientific_errors_rebuttal.htm Rebuttal to Answering-Islams: "Scientific Errors of the Qur’an"] - Answering Christianity</ref> He quotes the following hadith in Tasfir Ibn Kathir when it comments on verse 36:38 to claim that the verse conflicts with a daily setting and rising event.

Perhaps Muhammad imagined there were many springs in the sky-ocean like al-Tabari’s hadith (in one early narration of the legend, Alexander sees the sun set in one of 360 immense, black, boiling springs like those in Tabari’s hadith <ref>A certain ‘Omara narrates this in a manuscript studied by Friedländer (who on p.130 says it notes that he was a contemporary of Muqatil ibn Sulayman, who died 150AH). Israel Friedländer, Die Chadhirlegende and der Alexanderroma, p.139, Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1913 cited in A. J. Wensinck, The Ocean in the Literature of the Western Semites in Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam. Afdeeling Letterkunde. Nieuwe reeks. dl. 19. no. 2. pp.36-37, 1918</ref>). It was clearly not seen as a problem in the Alexander Legend, which has the sun set and rise through windows of heaven over the sea encircling the world. The rising place also has people living there, like the Quran (perhaps people were imagined to live all along the range where it rises, or maybe just in the place Alexander went to on that day). As for the muddy spring, it is probably based on the pre-Islamic poems quoted above or derived from the fetid sea of the Alexander Legend, or their common source for the story. Muhammad would have felt bound to follow its outline (insofar as he correctly remembered or was informed about it) to meet the challenge of the questioners in 18:83. Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat tells us that the question about Dhu’l Qarnayn and others in Surah al Kahf were provided by Jews to test Muhammad’s claim of prophetic knowledge.

The article on this topic by Osama Abdallah<ref name="Answering Christianity"></ref> puts forth various arguments that the words discussed above are being used as metaphorical or figurative words. These arguments are nonsensical and very easily dismissed. We shall look at arguments that the passage as a whole is metaphorical or figurative later in [[Dhul-Qarnayn and the Sun Setting in a Muddy Spring - Part Two|part two]].

*[{{Reference archive|1=https://web.archive.org/web/20130828002043/http://www.shiachat.com/forum/index.php?/topic/235012104-apostates-why-did-you-leave-islam/page-3#entry2566325|2=2013-11-29}} Forum discussion showing Shi'ite hadith also confirm a literal meaning to the sun "setting in a muddy spring"]

All transliterations of the Arabic Qur’an into Latin characters are from the free, widely used Muslimnet transliteration used by many popular websites such as [http://www.muslimaccess.com MuslimAccess], which has a transliteration table,<ref>[http://www.muslimaccess.com/quraan/transliterations/index.htm Transliteration of the Qur'an] - MuslimAccess.Com</ref><ref>[http://www.muslimaccess.com/quraan/transliterations/table.html Transliteration Table] - MuslimAccess.Com</ref> and [http://www.islamicity.com IslamiCity]. We have not found a source for transliterations of the commentaries and hadith, so we have done those ourself from the Arabic using the same transliteration rules. Hadith and tafsir (commentaries) are not used here as authoritative sources on the meaning of the Qur’an, but rather for near contemporary examples of language usage and beliefs.