Early Islamic Cosmology: Difference between revisions

[https://islamqa.info/en/118698 One Islamic fatwah website] (copied by others) quotes from scholars who lived hundreds of years after Muhammad in a failed attempt to show that there was always a Muslim consensus that the Earth is round. They are implying that the Qur'an does not reflect a very human lack of knowledge about the shape of the Earth.

{{Quote|1=al-Tabari and ibn Kathir Tafsirs for 36:40|2=فِي فَلْكَة كَفَلْكَةِ الْمِغْزَل

See the comments and footnotes about falak in the article [http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Geocentrism_and_the_Quran Geocentrism and the Quran] (a whirl was a small wheel or hemisphere that span around a spindle<ref>الفَلَكُ falak - [http://www.studyquran.org/LaneLexicon/Volume6/00000228.pdf Lane's Lexicon] Volume 1 page 2444. See also the [http://www.studyquran.org/LaneLexicon/Volume6/00000227.pdf previous page]. Lane says that the falak was generally imagined as a celestial hemisphere by the Arabs, but also that the Arab astronomers applied the term to seven spheres for the sun, moon, and the five visible planets, rotating about the celestial pole. This must reflect the post-Qur'anic influence of Ptolemy, whose astronomical work was translated for the Arabs from the 8th century onwards.</ref>). Now given that the sun and moon appear both to arc across the sky, even to those who imagined the Earth was flat and the heavens a dome (or a sphere), such people would also imagine some path for them continuing beneath the Earth after they have set so they can return whence they came (as also in the hadith from Abu Dharr discussed later in this article). Indeed, this is precisely what we read from ibn 'Abbas as noted by ibn Kathir in his Tafsir for {{Quran|31|29}}. The sun runs in its falak (فَلَكهَا) in the sky / heaven (السَّمَاء) during the day, and when it sets it runs at night in its falak beneath the Earth:

Ibn Taymiyyah then mentions the hadith in Sunan Abu Dawud (graded weak) ({{Abu Dawud|41|4708}}) in which Muhammad forms a dome with his fingers above his head when saying that Allah's throne is above the heavens. Ibn Taymiyyah's interpretation is that the throne is dome shaped.

On the other hand, Cosmas Indicopleustes wrote his contentious ''Christian Topography'' in the 540s and 550s to prove that the spherical, geocentric world-picture of the erroneous, pagan Hellenes contradicted that of the Hebrew prophets. Cosmas was an Alexandrian with sympathies towards the Church of the East, who had travelled through the Red Sea to east Africa, Iran, and India, and who received instruction from the East Syrian churchman Mār Abā on the latter's visit to Egypt. His ''Christian topography'' has been shown to be aimed directly at John Philoponus and the Hellenic, sperical world-model he supported. [...] However, it is clear that Cosmas was going against the opinions of his educated though, as he saw it, misguided contemporaries in Alexandria.

{{Quote|{{Bukhari|3|43|643}}|Narrated Salim's father (i.e. `Abdullah):

{{Quote|{{Al Tirmidhi|5|44|3298}}|...Then he said: ‘Do you know what is under you?’ They said: ‘Allah and His Messenger know better.’ He said: ‘Indeed it is the earth.’ Then he said: ‘Do you know what is under that?’ They said: ‘Allah and His Messenger know better.’ He said: ‘Verily, below it is another earth, between the two of which is a distance of five-hundred years.’ Until he enumerated seven earths: ‘Between every two earths is a distance of five-hundred years.’...}}

{{Quote|{{Muslim|41|6904}}|Thauban reported that Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) said: Allah drew the ends of the world near one another for my sake. And I have seen its eastern and western ends….}}

{{Quote|{{Ibn Majah|4|25|2921}}|It was narrated from Sahl bin Sa’d As-Sa’idi that the Messenger of Allah said:

“There is no (pilgrim) who recites the Talbiyah but that which is to his right and left also recites it, rocks and trees and hills, to the farthest ends of the earth in each direction, from here and from there.”}}

In his tafsir for {{Quran|2|22}}, al-Tabari includes narrations from some of the early Muslims about the sky being a dome or ceiling over the Earth:

Al-Tabari's tafsir contains other indications of a common flat Earth belief. For example, regarding {{Quran|68|1}}, which mysteriously starts with the Arabic letter nun, he (and many other tafsirs) records that one of the interpretations among sahabah such as ibn 'Abbas was that the 'nun' is a whale on whose back the Earth is carried (another interpretation were that it was an inkwell, or a name of Allah). The evidence is extensively documented including narrations with sahih chains from the sahabah, so the interested reader is refered to them.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVhsVjXJzKM Youtube.com] Islam & the whale that carries the Earth on its back - Video by TheMaskedArab</ref><ref>[https://answeringislamblog.wordpress.com/2016/10/19/muhammads-magical-mountain-one-whale-of-a-tale/ AnsweringIslamBlog.wordpress.com] - Muhammad's Magical Mountain: One Whale of a Tail!</ref><ref>[http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/whale_nun.htm Answering-Islam.com] - The Quran and The Shape of the Earth</ref>

Islamic apologists have failed to provide any evidence that Muhammad or the earliest Muslims knew that the Earth was round. In contrast, there is lots of evidence to show them believing the Earth to be flat.  

This evidence can be used as a foundation for other arguments concerning the flat Earth verses in the Qur'an, that they cause a justifiably suspicion that the author of the Qur'an was just as unaware as his nearby contemporaries about the shape of the Earth. It can also be used to make the point that it is another major weakness of the Qur'an to use such language when it will inevitably encourage 7th century Muslims to maintain their false notion that the Earth is flat (and indeed for many centuries later for some Muslims, such as al-Suyuti in his Tafsir al-Jalalyn).