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Jizyah

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{{QualityScore|Lead=1|Structure=4|Content=3|Language=3|References=3}}'''Jizyah''' or '''jizya''' (جزية) is the extra tax imposed on non-Muslims ([[Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars:Dhimmitude|Dhimmis]]) who live under Muslim rule according to the [[Qur'an]] and [[hadith]]:

Death to the kufaaaaaaaar!!!!!!!!!!!11222111!!!!!!!!
==Definition==

{{Quote|{{Quran|9|29}}|Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold forbidden that which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.}}

{{Quote|Khalid bin Al-Waheed (Muslim General, 632AD)|"I call you to God and to Islam. If you respond to the call, then you are Muslims: You obtain the benefits they enjoy and take up the responsibilities they bear. If you refuse, then you must pay the jizyah. If you refuse the jizyah, I will bring against you tribes of people who are more eager for death than you are for life. We will then fight you until God decides between us and you." (Al Tabari, Volume XI)}}

{{Quote|Umar ibn al-Khattab during the conquest of al-Basrah (636 CE)|Summon the people to God; those who respond to your call, accept it from them, but those who refuse must pay the poll tax out of humiliation and lowliness. If they refuse this, it is the sword without leniency. Fear God with regard to what you have been entrusted. (Al Tabari, Volume XII)}}

Additional quotes can be found at [[Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars:Jizyah]].

Once a land is conquered by Islamic armies the ruler can impose a taxation on those non-Muslims who will not convert to [[Islam]].

Jizyah is paid as a sign of submission and humiliation and gives Dhimmis some legal protection in return. Under dhimmitude (the status that [[Islamic law]], the Sharia, mandates for non-Muslims) Dhimmis usually are not allowed to carry arms to protect themselves, serve in the army or government, display symbols of their faith, build or repair places of worship etc. Further stipulations can include the requirement for dhimmis to dress differently, live in inferior houses, use inferior transport, and oblige themselves to the feeding and housing of Muslims as needed. If the conquered do not wish to pay or convert, their fate may very well be slavery (under which, [[rape]] is permitted) or (as evidenced in the quotes above) death.

The amount of the Jizyah tax and the way it was collected varied from time to time and from place to place, but when imposed, the forced payment of Jizyah greatly stimulated the conversion of non-Muslims into Islam.<ref>[http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article?tocId=9368576 Jizya] - Encyclopedia Britannica</ref> In some cases the taxation of the non-Muslims was so profitable that some Islamic rulers discouraged their subjects from converting to Islam, lest they should lose their income.<ref>Hawting, G.R. ''The First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate AD 661-750''. Routledge. p. 77. ISBN 0-415-24073-5.</ref>

==Context==

Jizyah was not entirely an Islamic initiative or the innovation of its prophet [[Muhammad]]. A certain form of Jizyah had existed among the tribes of Northern Arabia in pre-Islamic times. This fact is attested by the famous historian Philip. K. Hitti in his ''History of Arabs''. ''Ghazw'' (غزو) or raiding others for feeding mouths was an accepted norm among the Bedouin tribes of that time. As ''Hitti'' noted, "Ghazw was a manly occupation of Bedouins where fighting mood was a chronic mental condition". For people among the tribes, everything that belonged to the other tribes guaranteeing material gain made a legitimate target. The context made it necessary for a weaker tribe or a sedentary settlement on the borderland to buy protection from the stronger tribe by paying what it then called ''Khuwwah'' which later became Jizyah in Muhammad’s Islam. Along with the booty acquired through raids and wars, Jizyah turned out to be a good source of income for believers.

==A Sign of Kufr and Disgrace==

{{Quote|1=[http://www.tafsir.com/default.asp?sid=9&tid=20986 Paying Jizyah is a Sign of Kufr and Disgrace] Tafsir Ibn Kathir|2=Allah said, (until they pay the Jizyah), if they do not choose to embrace Islam, (with willing submission), in defeat and subservience, (and feel themselves subdued.), disgraced, humiliated and belittled. Therefore, Muslims are not allowed to honor the people of Dhimmah or elevate them above Muslims, for they are miserable, disgraced and humiliated. Muslim recorded from Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet said, "Do not initiate the Salam to the Jews and Christians, and if you meet any of them in a road, force them to its narrowest alley." This is why the Leader of the faithful `Umar bin Al-Khattab, may Allah be pleased with him, demanded his well-known conditions be met by the Christians, these conditions that ensured their continued humiliation, degradation and disgrace.}}

==Approval from Islamic Scholars==

{{Quote|Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid|The Muslims do not fight anyone until they have told them about the religion of Allaah and given them the choice between two things, either accepting Islam or, if they refuse Islam and keep their own religions, paying the Jizyah (tax) to the Muslims in return for protection. If they refuse both of these choices, then they are to be fought.|}}

{{Quote|Ahkaam al-Sijn wa’l-Sujana’ wa Mu’aamalat al-Sujana’ fi’l-Islam by Hasan Abi’l-Ghuddah, 256|If some people persist in rejecting the religion of Allaah and stand in the way of ruling by that which Allaah has revealed on earth, or they fight against the call to Allaah, then we give them the choice of three things: Either they become Muslim; or if they refuse they pay the jizyah (whereby they pay a specified amount to the Muslims in return for being allowed to remain their land, and the Muslims undertake to protect them); or, if they refuse that, there is nothing left but the way which they themselves have chosen, which is fighting and dealing violently with those who have persecuted the Muslims and put obstacles in the path of the Islamic da’wah. In this way the Muslims will gain the upper hand and the enemies will be humiliated; then when we have killed and wounded many of them and gained the upper hand over them, we may take prisoners and bind a bond firmly on them.|}}

Saudi Sheikh Muhammad bin Abd Al-Rahman Al-'Arifi, Imam of the mosque of King Fahd Defense Academy, imagines the coming Muslim conquest of the Vatican:
{{Quote|Saudi Sheikh Muhammad bin Abd Al-Rahman Al-'Arifi|"… We will control the land of the Vatican; we will control Rome and introduce Islam in it. Yes, the Christians, who carve crosses on the breasts of the Muslims … will yet pay us the Jiziya [poll tax paid by non-Muslims under Muslim rule], in humiliation, or they will convert to Islam…"<ref>[http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17710 The Next Pope and Islamic Prophecy] frontpagemag.com</ref>}}

{{Quote|[http://www.kalamullah.com/Books/MILESTONES.pdf Milestones (Ma'alim 'ala Al-Tariq) p.73] Sayyid Qutb|"It may happen that the enemies of Islam may consider it expedient not to take action against Islam, if Islam leaves them alone in their geographical boundaries to continue the lordship of some men over others and does not extend its message and its declaration of universal freedom within their domain. But Islam cannot agree to this unless they submit to its authority by Jizyah..."}}

{{Quote|1=[http://www.englishtafsir.com/Quran/9/index.html#sdfootnote29sym Commentary on Qur'an Chapter 9:29] Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, Tafhim al-Qur'an|2=This is the aim of Jihad with the Jews and the Christians and it is not to force them to become Muslims and adopt the `Islamic Way of Life.' They should be forced to pay Jizyah in order to put an end to their independence and supremacy so that they should not remain rulers and sovereigns in the land. These powers should be wrested from them by the followers of the true Faith, who should assume the sovereignty and lead others towards the Right Way, while they should become their subjects and pay jizyah...

[The Islamic State] cannot allow that they should remain supreme rulers in any place and establish wrong ways and impose them on others. As this state of things inevitably produces chaos and disorder, it is the duty of the true Muslims to exert their utmost to bring to an end their wicked rule and bring them under a righteous order.

As regards the question, "What do the non-Muslims get in return for Jizyah?" it may suffice to say that it is the price of the freedom which the Islamic State allows them in following their erroneous ways, while living in the jurisdiction of Islam and enjoying its protection. The money thus collected is spent in maintaining the righteous administration that gives them the freedom and protects their rights. This also serves as a yearly reminder to them that they have been deprived of the honor of paying Zakat in the Way of Allah, and forced to pay jizyah instead as a price of following the ways of error.}}

==Jizyah in History==

{{Quote|1=[http://web.archive.org/web/20050625084731/http://www.turkishweekly.net/articles.php?id=68 The Historical Roots of Islamic Militancy in Pakistan and current scenario: Amicus] Mohammed Yousuf, Journal of Turkish Weekly, May 19, 2005|2=Not only Alamgir compiled Fatawa-u-Alamgiri, he re-imposed jizya (a tax on non-Muslims for protection under Muslim rule) that had been suspended by Akbar, destroyed some unauthorized temples and checked proselytizing activities of the Hindus.}}

{{Quote|[http://www.himalmag.com/apr2001/commentary.html Idolatry and the Taliban]|Once Muhammad Bin Qasim had established himself in Sindh he sent a letter to the Muslim Caliph in Damascus, seeking instruction as to how he should deal with the Hindus and Buddhists of the conquered area. The reply came that they be treated in accordance with the Quranic commandments relating to the People of the Book (Ahl-i-Kitab), the Jews and the Christians. Accordingly, the Buddhists and the Hindus of Sindh were to be given full freedom to practise their faiths, and their lives and property, including temples, were to be protected. In return, they were to pay a tax, the jizya. The old, the sick, children and priests were to be exempted from the tax. The non-Muslims were not obliged to perform military service, unlike the Muslims. Following these dictates, Muhammad Bin Qasim thus set a precedent which several other Muslim rulers after him followed.}}

The Ottoman empire imposed jizya on its Jewish and Christian subjects. Jizya collected from these communities was one of the main sources of income of the Ottoman treasury.<ref>Oded Peri; Gilbar (Ed), Gad (1990). ''Ottoman Palestine, 1800-1914 : Studies in economic and social history''. Leiden: E.J. Brill. p. 287. ISBN 978-90-04-07785-0. "The jizya was one of the main sources of revenue accruing to the Ottoman state treasury as a whole."</ref> The empire abolished it in 1856, but this action was dubbed as "cosmetic" because they replaced it with ''bedel-i askeri'', a tax on non-Muslims in return for their exemption from military services.<ref>Stillman, Norman. The Jews of Arab lands: a history and source book. p. 97. ISBN 978-0-8276-0198-7.</ref><ref>Gribetz, Jonathan Marc. ''Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter''. Princeton University Press. 22-09-2014. ISBN 140085265X.</ref>

==Jizyah in the Modern World==

{{Quote|1=[http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=44202&eng=y The Mayor of Bethlehem is Christian, but It’s Hamas That’s in Charge] Sandro Magister, Chiesa News, December 29, 2005|2=The general plan of Hamas also includes the imposition of a special tax, called al-jeziya, upon all of the non-Muslim residents in the Palestinian territories. This tax revives the one applied through all of Islamic history to the dhimmi, the second-class Jewish and Christian citizens.}}

{{Quote|[http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,270377,00.html Christians Fleeing Violence in Iraq] The Associated Press, Fox News, May 07, 2007|In the recent violence, residents of the Baghdad neighborhood of Dora said gunmen knocked on the doors of Christian families, demanding they either pay jizya — a special tax traditionally levied on non-Muslims — or leave. The jizya has not been imposed in Muslim nations in about 100 years.}}

{{Quote|1=[http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=15903&size=A Hindus and Sikhs threatened by the Taliban and Sharia] Fareed Khan, Asia News, July 28, 2009|2= The Taliban in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) have issued an ultimatum against local Hindus and Sikhs: either you pay “jizya”, an Islamic poll tax for religious minorities that is akin to protection money, or you leave. Many (more than 400)Hindu and Sikh families have already left for Peshawar and neighbouring provinces.

Threats against Sikhs and Hindus are but the latest in a series of warnings against religious minorities in the NWFP, including Christians who have had to pay jizya and submit to Sharia.

“We were living under fear: fear of the Taliban, fear of Lashkar-e-Islam and fear of other armed groups,” a Sikh man told the Daily Times}}

{{Quote|1=[http://www.ptinews.com/news/251505_Eight-Christians-kidnapped-in-Pakistan 2009 - Eight Christians kidnapped in Pakistan, Jizya May be Behind Abductions]|2= Eight members of the minority Christian community have been kidnapped in Pakistan's troubled Waziristan tribal region, reports said today.

Militants and criminals in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt have targeted minorities like Hindus, Sikhs and Christians. There have been several instances of members of minority communities being abducted for ransom or forced to pay 'jiziya', a tax levied on non-Muslims.}}

{{Quote|1=[http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2009/s09070148.htm Christian Shot Eight Times for Refusing to Pay Protection Money] Jeremy Reynalds, ASSIST News Service, July 22, 2009|2= A human rights organization has learned that a Christian businessman was shot eight times in the legs while driving through Lahore, Pakistan after refusing to pay protection money to a Muslim. 

Mobeena, [the Christians sister], told ICC, “Suqlain is still free and hanging around. The government has done nothing to help us, even though my brother is a prominent businessman. We feel insecure, our children are too scared to go out anymore - please help us, we need justice.”}}

{{Quote|1=[http://en.aswataliraq.info/?p=124202 1960 Christians killed in Iraq since 2003 – survey] Aswat al-Iraq, December 26, 2009|2=According to the [Chaldean Cultural Association for Peace in Iraq] association’s survey, property of at least 500,000 Christians were taken away and 200,000 Christians were forced to pay extortion money, while dozens others were kidnapped then released for ransom.

“Before 2003, there were around 2.1 million Christians in Iraq, but now there are not more than 500,000 of them,” Masho said.

He criticized the Iraqi government for being unable to protect Christians, and said that it did not even fulfill its promises to compensate them.}}

{{Quote|1=[{{Reference archive|1=http://www.uriasposten.net/archives/34912|2=2012-03-16}} On the other side of the fence] Nicolai Sennels (Translator), Weekendavisen (Danish daily, not online), March 1, 2012|2=This past year there have been several disturbing incidents in the neighborhood of outer Nørrebro. In October, a refugee from Africa had his door kicked in several times and was threatened by a group of youths who accused him of being both black and Christian. He was given a deadline of less than a week to pay them 10,000 kroner (1,800 USD) if he wanted to live in the area. Police told him that they could no longer guarantee his safety in Mjølnerparken [Muslim ghetto in Copenhagen, Denmark]. When Lejerbo (the company renting out apartments in the area) found him, he was crying and had slept on the street.}}

{{Quote|1=[{{Reference archive|1=http://www.onenewsnow.com/Missions/Default.aspx?id=1581314|2=2012-04-22}} Syrian Christian targeted in Syria] MNN, April 19, 2012|2=Refugees who have fled to Jordan from Syria are telling mission leaders supported by Christian Aid Mission about deliberate, new persecution from the "Arab Spring" insurgents who are seeking to overthrow the brutal Assad regime in Damascus. . . . 
"It is over; we can't get back what we lost," said one discouraged Christian refugee here in Jordan. "It will never be the same anymore for me or my family. We've lost hope." He said he had to flee with his family at night, because anti-Christian persecution in Syria is becoming a steadily growing reality.

"I had my own business. I ran a supermarket, and we were financially stable. Unfortunately, that's not the case anymore. Our dreams vanished when a group of terrorists threatened to kill my family, burn our house, and set fire to the supermarket if I didn't pay them $7,000.

"I paid the amount, hoping that they would leave us alone, but they did not. Instead, they kidnapped me for a whole week. They only let me go on one condition: that each month I would pay them the same amount.

"What do you think I could do? I fled. I packed our stuff, taking only the basics. I took my family and came to Jordan. My son, Omar, has one year left to finish his bachelor's degree, but now his dreams have vanished as well. I used to be a business owner...but now I am a laborer who can hardly provide the day-to-day basics for my family."}}

{{Quote|1=[http://www.fides.org/aree/news/newsdet.php?idnews=32122&lan=eng ASIA/PAKISTAN - Attack in the Christian area: one victim and two injured in Karachi] Agenzia Fides, August 31, 2012|2=In Essa Nagri Christians are harassed by criminal gangs and Islamic terrorist groups of ethnic Pashtuns: armed to the teeth, the militants enter the area to collect the "Jizya" (the tax imposed, according to the sharia, on the non-Muslim minorities), and extort money from the Christian merchants. MASS activists have been denouncing for a long time continuous robberies, violence and abuses committed under the cover of some Police officials. Militants raid houses, steal and abuse women and children for fun.}}

{{Quote|1=[{{Reference archive|1=http://tribune.com.pk/story/446972/militancy-when-hundreds-of-sikhs-lost-their-homes-in-orakzai/|2=2012-10-07}} Militancy: When hundreds of Sikhs lost their homes in Orakzai] Umer Farooq, The Express Tribune, October 5, 2012|2=Around 69 families, approximately 500 Sikhs, were residing in Feroz Khail area of the agency. Most of them earned their living from cultivating crops and a few others from small makeshifts at a market, which were barely sufficient to make both ends meet.

Kalyan himself was picked up by militants and offered three options: To embrace Islam, to become part of their jihad or to pay a sum of Rs500 million.

“I could not even consider the first two options. I was released when residents intervened and the Sikh community paid Rs6.5 million as Jizya (protection money for non-Muslims),” Kalyan said.

Residents left the area within half an hour of the warning, leaving most of their valuables behind.}}

===Disguised Jizyah===

{{Quote|1=[http://www.laqueur.net/print.php?r=2&rr=2&id=31 A Dire Continental Drift: While Europe Slept by Bruce Bave] Walter Laqueur, Wall Street Journal, February 18, 2006|2=In Denmark, Muslims make up 5% of the population but receive 40% of social-welfare outlays. Their preachers have told them, Mr. Bawer reports, that only a fool would not take maximum advantage of the bounty that Western Europe offers and that it is perfectly legitimate to cheat and lie. The benefits they receive are a kind of jizya, the tribute that infidels in Muslim-occupied countries have to pay to preserve their lives. (The subsidized-radical situation in Britain and Germany is not much different: The four suicide bombers in London last year had raked in close to a million dollars in social benefits before going on their murderous mission.)}}

{{Quote|1=[{{Reference archive|1=http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/3834.htm|2=2013-05-28}} Libyan Writer Mojahed Busify: Some European Muslims Collect Social Welfare, Claiming It Is Jizya] MEMRI, Clip No. 3834, April 19, 2013|2=Mojahed Bosify: Sixty percent of the Muslims in the Netherlands live off social security.

Interviewer: They are unemployed...

Mojahed Bosify: Many of them consider this to be the jizya poll tax, on the basis of official fatwas.

Interviewer: They consider social security to be the jizya?

Mojahed Bosify: When they go to the ATM or the bank teller, and say: "Convert to Islam or pay the jizya." . . . 

Interviewer: And the teller has no idea...

Mojahed Bosify: No, he just says: "Here is your money," and that's the end of it. Today, fewer people behave this way, but some still do.}}

{{Quote|[http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/016325.php Hugh Fitzgerald, Dhimmiwatch]|The Jizyah has "not been imposed" since European pressure and power has been brought to bear. But non-Muslims have been subject to a disguised Jizyah. Despite the supposed reforms that were to bring complete legal equality to non-Muslims in Turkey, in World War II the Varlik Vergesi was a large tax imposed by the government on non-Muslim citizens, who despite Kemalism, or perhaps because of it, have never been considered "Turks" equal to Muslim "Turks."

In Malaysia the non-Muslims have been subject to the disguised Jizyah of the Bumiputra system, which favors economically the Muslims, and essentially involves a transfer of wealth from the more industrious and entrepreneurial non-Muslims (Chinese and Hindus) to Muslims (Malays, but not the members of the indigenous tribes, which were christianized, or remained pagan -- and only now are being islamized through intense pressure and Da'wa campaigns).

Elsewhere, as in Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Hindus and Christians live in a state of permanet physical danger, and that danger also is one of losing their property to Muslim looters and marauders who cannot be sued or brought to justice on the say-so of a non-Muslim. The Jews of the Arab world fled -- nearly one million of them -- leaving their property, which was the last transfer of wealth. In Egypt, under Nasser, the property of most Jews and the Levantine Christains -- Greeks, Italians, and others -- were "nationalized" as Nasser put it. But this was nothing more than the seizure of Infidel property by Muslim governments. Copts in Egypt do not pay a direct Jizyah. But there are other ways to force local Christians, constantly fearful for their own well-being, to have them pay off, or take as local partners, Muslims who may protect them. There is no security for the property of non-Muslims in Muslim lands, and there are various ways in which the "protection money" that is the Jizyah is paid, often in indirect, informal, and disguised ways, when the more direct imposition would attract too much unwanted Western attention and, presumably, outrage.}}

==Other Islamic Taxes==

===Zakat===

Muslims also had to pay a tax called Zakat. However, this zakat is a 2.5% tax, while the jizyah (which can vary) is about a 10% income tax (although it has been known to be as high as 50%). Muslims are obligated to pay this so-called "charity tax" even today, as its one of the five pillars of Islam. But, instead of paying it to the state, they now pay zakat to charities of their choice. It must however be noted that the majority of Islamic scholars are of the view that non-Muslims should not benefit from this alms giving,<ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.islamicawakening.com/viewarticle.php?articleID=984|title= The way of giving Zakat al-Fitr in non-Islamic Lands|publisher= IslamicAwakening|author= Haytham bin Jawwad al-Haddad|series= Article ID: 984|date= November 20, 2002|archiveurl= http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.islamicawakening.com/viewarticle.php?articleID=984&date=2011-05-09|deadurl=no}}</ref> which is why mainstream Islamic charities, like Islamic Relief, almost exclusively<ref>[http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Articles/Islamic-Relief.htm Islamic Relief and the Myth of Non-Discriminating Muslim Charity] - TROP</ref> focusing their humanitarian work in Muslim majority nations or areas in non-Muslim countries which are heavily populated by Muslim minorities. In the aftermath of the 2010 Pakistan floods, many Christian survivors were denied aid supplied by Muslim charities as a result.<ref>[http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=7460 Pakistan: some Christians denied aid unless they convert to Islam] - Catholic Culture, September 6, 2010</ref>

===Devshirme===

{{Quote||Devshirme (derived from , "collection, gathering"; called "collection of boys" or "blood tax" in Balkan countries in their native languages) was the systematic abduction of young boys from conquered Christian lands by the Ottoman sultans as a form of regular taxation in order to build a loyal slave army (formerly largely composed of war captives) and the class of (military) administrators called the "Janissaries", or other servants such as tellak in hamams. . Boys delivered to the Ottomans in this way were called ghilmán or acemi oglanlar ("novice boys").}}

===Kharaj===

{{Quote|[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/316354/kharaj kharaj] The Encyclopædia Britannica|Tax imposed on recent Islamic converts in the 7th–8th century.

In Islamic territories, Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians who did not convert to Islam were required to pay a tax called the jizya. Many people converted to Islam to avoid this tax or to escape the ban on non-Muslims owning land. As financial problems mounted for the Umayyad rulers, authorities imposed the kharaj as a property tax for recent converts. Popular opposition to the tax led to a revolt in 747 and precipitated the downfall of the Umayyad dynasty.}}

The Umayyad caliph Umar II made non-Arab converts to Islam pay kharaj as a compensation for the diminished jizya tax base.<ref>Kennedy, Hugh. ''The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates''. Pearson. p. 107. ISBN 0-582-40525-4.</ref>

Some have said that jizya and kharaj were not significantly higher than the taxes collected in the pre-Islamic [[w:Byzantine Empire|Byzantine]] and [[w:Sassanid Empire|Sassanid]] empires. However:

{{Quote|N. V. Pigulevskaya, A. Yu. Yakubovski, I. P. Petrushevski, L. V. Stroeva, A. M. Belenitski. ''The History of Iran from Ancient Times to the End of Eighteenth Century'' (in Persian), Tehran, 1967, p. 161.|A comparison between pre-Islamic documents and those of the Islamic period reveals that conquering Arabs increased the land taxation without exception. Thus, raising taxes of each acre of wheat field to 4 dirhams and each acre of barley field to 2 dirhams, whereas during reign of Khosro Anushiravan it used to be a single dirham for each acre of a wheat or barley field. During the later stage of Umayyad Caliphate, conquered and subjugated Persians were paying from one fourth to one third of their land produce to the Arab Empire as kharaj.}}

Kharaj was also imposed on Hindu peasants of India during the rule of the [[w:Delhi Sultanate|Delhi Sultanate]] and the Mughals. Its value varied from 20 percent to 50 percent of the produce.<ref>K. S. Lal. ''Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India''. Chapter IV: "Income of the State". Archived at [http://www.webcitation.org/6l5ThExd8]. Aditya Prakashan. 1999. ISBN 8186471723 </ref>

===Miscellaneous===

*The Hedaya, a 12th-century legal manual considered one of the most influential books of Hanafi Islamic law, states that a [[w:tithe|tithe]] on wine and pork should be collected from [[dhimmi|dhimmis]] and polytheists whenever they pass by any collector's office in an Islamic state.<ref>Marghinani. ''The Hedaya'' (Arabic) Translated by Charles Hamilton. Book I Chapter IV. p. 13.</ref>

*''Rav akçesi'', also called "rabbi tax," was imposed on Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire.<ref>{{cite web|title=Turcica: revue d'études turques, Volumes 24-25|year=1992|publisher=Éditions Klincksieck|pages=106|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O3lpAAAAMAAJ&q=Rav+ak%C3%A7esi&dq=Rav+ak%C3%A7esi&hl=en&ei=ENqtTc77LZCp8APbtrSVAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CEEQ6AEwBA}}</ref><ref>Veinstein, Gilles. ''Sur la draperie juive de Salonique (XVIe-XVIIe s.)'' "Revue du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée" 1992. v.66</ref>

*Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (1618-1707), known for persecuting non-Muslims under his rule, used to collect a customs duty called ''sair-jihat''. It was applicable on the sale of sundry objects, including cloth, oil, grains, food, horses, camels, and animal skins.<ref>Abul Fazl. ''Ain-i-Akbari''. Translated by Col. Henry Sullivan Jarrett (1891). Vol. II, p. 63.</ref> The rate was fixed according to the religion of the payer. Hindu merchants paid 5 per cent, Christians 4 per cent and Muslims 2.5 per cent. Later, he exempted Muslims completely from this tax.<ref>Manucci, Niccolao. ''Storia do Mogor'' also known as ''Mogul India 1603-1708'', Vol. 2. pp. 415-417. Translated by William Irvine. London, J. Murray (1907).</ref>

{{Core POTB}}

==See Also==

{{Hub4|Jizyah|Jizyah}}

{{Translation-links-english|[[Джизя - Данък|Bulgarian]]}}

==External Links==

*[http://debate.org.uk/debate-topics/historical/the-jizyah-tax The Jizyah Tax: Equality And Dignity Under Islamic Law?]
*[http://www.bharatvani.org/books/jihad/app2.htm Jizyah and the Zimmî]
*[http://www.dhimmitude.org/archive/by_lecture_10oct2002.htm Dhimmitude Past and Present: An Invented or Real History?]'', by Bat Ye'or''
*[http://www.outsidethewire.com/blog/media/payments-to-hamas-as-jizyah.html Payments to Hamas as Jizyah] ([http://web.archive.org/web/20080105075225/http://www.outsidethewire.com/blog/media/payments-to-hamas-as-jizyah.html Archived])
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizya Jizyah]'' - Wikipedia (Additional information and contains some more Hadith references)''
*[http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/004-jizya.htm Islam: Requiring Other Faiths to Pay Up] ''- TheReligionofPeace.com''

;Muslim websites

*[http://www.understanding-islam.com/related/text.asp?type=question&qid=166 Regarding Jizyah on non-Muslim Citizens]'' - Understanding-Islam.com'' ([http://web.archive.org/web/20080409001311/http://www.understanding-islam.com/related/text.asp?type=question&qid=166 Archived])
*[http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar/FatwaE/FatwaE&cid=1119503544994 Jizyah and non-Muslim Minorities] ''- Fatwa Bank at IslamOnline.net''

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Dhimmitude]]
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Early Islamic Cosmology

2018-11-25T01:20:41Z

Testexmoose:

[[File:Blue-Marble-1972.jpg|right|thumb|200px|The 'Blue Marble' photograph of the Earth taken by the crew of Apollo 17 on their way to the moon in December 1972]]

==Introduction==

When critics point out that the [https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Flat_Earth_and_the_Quran Qur'anic Earth is flat], or that the author of the Qur'an believed that [https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Dhul-Qarnayn_and_the_Sun_Setting_in_a_Muddy_Spring_-_Part_One the sun sets in a muddy spring], and furthermore, that such verses encouraged the early Muslims to maintain false beliefs about the world, sometimes people claim in response that everyone knew that the Earth was round by the time of Muhammad. This article will dispel that assertion, and as such is complementary to discussions about Islamic cosmography.

It seems that despite the best efforts of apologetics websites, there is no known evidence for a round Earth belief among the earliest Muslims, which would surely be abundant if Muhammad had such knowledge, and plenty of evidence for belief in a flat Earth.

==False claims that there was always a Muslim consensus for a round Earth==

While many people in some regions had [[w:Spherical_Earth|known for centuries]] that the Earth was round and not flat, the question is whether Muhammad and his nearby contemporaries in Arabia had this knowledge.

[https://islamqa.info/en/118698 One Islamic fatwah website]<ref>[https://islamqa.info/en/118698 IslamQA.info - 118698: Consensus that the Earth is round]</ref> (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.

'''ibn Taymiyyah'''

To do so, they first quote from a book by ibn Taymiyyah (d. 728 AH/1328 CE), who in turn cites Abu’l-Husayn Ahmad ibn Ja‘far ibn al Munadi as saying that the scholars from the second level of the companions of Imam Ahmad (d. 241 AH / 855 CE) – i.e. the early Hanbalis – said there was consensus among the scholars that both heaven and Earth are balls, the latter based on astronomical reasoning. This evidence is worthless, because from the 8th century CE the Muslims had access to Greek and Indian astronomical knowledge (see below), so of course Muslim scholars had this view. The term 'consensus' (ijma) was used in different ways by different scholars, but essentially meant the agreement of Muslim scholars, or ideally, also of the salaf (the first three generations of Muslims)<ref>[http://www.sunnah.org/fiqh/ijma.htm http://www.sunnah.org/fiqh/ijma.htm]</ref>. In this case it is explicitly the scholars. As we read on, however, it is apparent that even this "consensus" for a round Earth was rather nebulous, and as already mentioned and will see again, those who did endorse a round Earth did so because they were educated people aware of the astronomical arguments.

They then quote ibn Taymiyyah again, who is answering a question about the shape of the heavens and Earth, this time citing Abu’l-Husayn Ahmad ibn Ja‘far ibn al Munadi (again), Abu’l-Faraj ibn al-Jawzi (d. 597 AH / 1201 CE), and ibn Hazm (d. 456 AH / 1064 CE) as saying that there is a consensus that the heavens are round. Notice that despite the topic, he says the heavens, but nothing about the Earth. He says they provided evidence from the Qur'an, sunnah, and narrations from the companions (sahabah) and second generation.

Ibn Taymiyyah continues the passage<ref>For the full chapter in Arabic see [https://ar.wikisource.org/wiki/مجموع_الفتاوى/المجلد_السادس/سئل_عن_رجلين_تنازعا_في_كيفية_السماء_والأرض Wikisource.org], and for someone's English translation for most of the relevant parts see [http://www.salafitalk.net/st/viewmessages.cfm?Forum=6&Topic=1859 Salafitalk forum]</ref> giving the supposed evidence for round heavens in the Qur'an, sunnah, and narrations from the early Muslims (not included by the Islamic fatwah website). In between, he argues that a round heavens and Earth is supported by what specialists on tafsir and language have said about certain words in the Qur'an.

It is the hadiths and companions that we are interested in for the purposes of this article (the Qur'an verses cited by ibn Taymiyyah are {{Quran|21|33}}, {{Quran|36|40}}, {{Quran|39|5}}, and {{Quran|67|5}}).

'''Narrations of the companions'''

The solitary piece of evidence that Ibn Taymiyyah can bring from the companions about round heavens is that ibn 'Abbas and others said regarding {{Quran|36|40}} and the heavenly bodies swimming in a falak (rounded course):

{{Quote|1=al-Tabari and ibn Kathir Tafsirs for 36:40<ref name="TafsirArabic">For the Arabic, see [http://quran.al-islam.com/Loader.aspx?pageid=215 quran.al-islam.com]</ref>|2=فِي فَلْكَة كَفَلْكَةِ الْمِغْزَل

fee falka, ka-falkati almighzal

in a whirl (whorl), like the whirl of a spindle}}

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 during the night (بِاللَّيْلِ - omitted from the translation) in its falak beneath the Earth:<ref name="TafsirArabic"></ref>

{{Quote|1=[http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1784 Tafsir ibn Kathir for 31:29]|2=Ibn Abi Hatim recorded that Ibn ’Abbas said, “The sun is like flowing water, running in its course in the sky during the day. When it sets, it travels in its course beneath the earth until it rises in the east.” He said, “The same is true in the case of the moon.” Its chain of narration is Sahih.}}

So the evidence from the companions presented by ibn Taymiyyah is not exactly much to go on regarding the shape of the heavens, and says nothing about the shape of the Earth.

'''Hadiths'''

Ibn Taymiyyah then mentions the hadith in Sunan Abu Dawud (graded weak) {{Abu Dawud||4726|darussalam}} 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.

The other hadith he mentions is in Sahih Bukhari, which says:

{{Quote|{{Bukhari|9|93|519}}|if you ask Allah for anything, ask Him for the Firdaus, for it is the last part of Paradise and the highest part of Paradise, and at its top there is the Throne of Beneficent, and from it gush forth the rivers of Paradise." [the word translated 'last' means middle].}}

Ibn Taymiyyah then says that a middle only exists in a round thing. How any of this helps demonstrate that the heavens are spherical is a mystery.

'''Ibn Hazm'''

The Islamic fatwah website then quotes one of the three that ibn Taymiyyah cited, ibn Hazm, who said that there is sound evidence that the Earth is round, but the common people and some non-leading Muslim scholars thought otherwise, though none of the leading scholars denied that the Earth is round.

So firstly, uneducated people (as were Muhammad and the sahabah) thought the Earth to be flat even in ibn Hazm's day. Secondly, his statement provides no evidence that the earliest scholars actually said the Earth is round (just that leading scholars didn't say it was flat). It is clear that Ibn Hazm and the other followers of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal mentioned above believed in a round Earth for astronomical reasons, even if some of them attempted to find further backup from the Qur'an and sunnah.

Given that Ibn Taymiyyah cites these scholars, the narrations he then uses to support spherical heavens (when asked about the shape of both the heavens and Earth), were presumably the best they could come up with. If a consensus for a round Earth went back to Muhammad and the companions, surely the scholars could come up with better than this feeble evidence.

Even the already dubious claims of just a ''scholarly'' consensus are further undermined when we read Tafsir al-Jalalayn, which was written centuries later by two people who were not trying to massage the Qur'an to fit a round Earth reality. For {{Quran|88|20}} we read the following:

{{Quote|1=[http://main.altafsir.com/Tafasir.asp?tMadhNo=0&tTafsirNo=74&tSoraNo=88&tAyahNo=20&tDisplay=yes&UserProfile=0&LanguageId=2 Tafsir al-Jalalayn for Qur'an 88:20]|2=As for His words sutihat ‘laid out flat’ this on a literal reading suggests that the earth is flat which is the opinion of most of the scholars of the revealed Law and not a sphere as astronomers (ahl al-hay’a) have it even if this latter does not contradict any of the pillars of the Law.}}

For details on this word, sutihat, in verse 88:20, see [[Flat Earth and the Quran#Qur.27an 88:20 - sutihat .28spread out flat.29|this section]] of the flat Earth article.

The website goes on to quote from a 20th century book of fatwas, which claims that the Earth is egg shaped and also makes an argument using verse 39:5, both of which are debunked in the article [https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Flat_Earth_and_the_Quran Flat Earth and the Quran].

So to summarise, there seems to be no evidence available that the earliest Muslims believed the Earth is round. Instead, there is lots of evidence that they thought the Earth to be flat, as explained further below. But before we come to that, let's see what historians have to say about Arab astronomical knowledge.

==Acquisition of Greek and Indian astronomical knowledge==

Ptolemy’s Almagest was translated into Arabic in the 8th century CE after the Qur’an was completed. Ptolemy recorded in book five of his AlMagest in the mid-2nd century CE the discovery of Hipparchus, and of Aristarchus before him, that the sun is much larger than the earth and much more distant than the moon, and the Aristotelian view that Earth was spherical and the heavens were celestial spheres.<ref>Toomer, G. J., Ptolemy and his Greek predecessors, In Astronomy Before the Telescope, Ed. Christopher Walker, p.86, London: British Museum Press, 1996</ref>

Professor Kevin Van Bladel says:

{{Quote||When the worldview of educated Muslims after the establishment of the Arab Empire came to incorporate principles of astrology including the geocentric, spherical, Aristotelian-Ptolemaic world picture – particularly after the advent of the ‘Abbāsid dynasty in 750 – the meaning of these passages came to be interpreted in later Islamic tradition not according to the biblical-quranic cosmology, which became obsolete, but according to the Ptolemaic model, according to which the Quran itself came to be interpreted.<ref>Van Bladel, Kevin, “Heavenly cords and prophetic authority in the Qur’an and its Late Antique context”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 70:223-246, p.241, Cambridge University Press, 2007</ref>}}

Earlier in the same paper, Van Bladel describes how Christian theologians in the region of Syria in the sixth century CE shared the view that the Earth was flat and the heaven, or series of heavens was like a dome or tent above the Earth, based on their reading of the Hebrew and New Testament scriptures. This was a rival view to that of the churchmen of Alexandria who supported the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic view of a spherical Earth surrounded by spinning celestial spheres. See the footnote below<ref name="KVB">ibid. pp.224-226. Here are some more excerpts:
 
{{Quote||Entering into the debate was John Philoponus, a Christian philosopher of sixth-century Alexandria, who wrote his commentary on Genesis to prove, against earlier, Antiochene, theologians like Theodore of Mopsuestia, that the scriptural account of creation described a spherical geocentric world in accord with the Ptolemaic cosmology. [...]

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, spherical 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.

A number of Syrian churchmen, notably but not only the Easterners working in the tradition of Theodore of Mopsuestia, took the view of the sky as an edifice for granted. Narsai d. ''c''. 503), the first head of the school of Nisibis, in his homilies on creation, described God's fashioning of the firmament of heaven in these terms: "Like a roof upon the top of the house he stretched out the firmament / that the house below, the domain of earth, might be complete". ''ayk taṭlîlâ l-baytâ da-l-tḥēt mtaḥ la-rqî῾â I d-nehwê mamlâ dûkkat ar῾â l-baytâ da-l῾el''. Also "He finished building the heaven and earth as a spacious house" ''šaklel wa-bnâ šmayyâ w-ar῾â baytâ rwîḥâ''. Jacob of Serugh (d. 521) wrote similarly on the shape of the world in his Hexaemeron homilies. A further witness to the discussion is a Syriac hymn, composed ''c.'' 543-554, describing a domed church in Edessa as a microcosm of the world, its dome being the counterpart of the sky. This is the earliest known text to make a church edifice to be a microcosm, and it shows that the debates over cosmology were meaningful to more than a small number of theologians.}}
</ref> for excerpts of that chapter, which he summarises by saying:

{{Quote||Clearly the Ptolemaic cosmology was not taken for granted in the Aramaean part of Asia in the sixth century. It was, rather, controversial.<ref name="KVB"></ref>}}

David A. King writes:

{{Quote||The Arabs of the Arabian peninsula before Islam possessed a simple yet developed astronomical folklore of a practical nature. This involved a knowledge of the risings and settings of stars, associated in particular with the cosmical setting of groups of stars and simultaneous heliacal risings of others, which marked the beginning of periods called naw’, plural anwā’. […] Ptolemy’s Almagest was translated at least five times in the late eighth and ninth centuries. The first was a translation into Syriac and the others into Arabic, the first two under Caliph al-Ma’mūn in the middle of the first half of the ninth century, and the other two (the second an improvement of the first) towards the end of that century […] In this way Greek planetary models, uranometry and mathematical methods came to the attention of the Muslims.<ref>King, David A., “Islamic Astronomy”, In Astronomy Before the Telescope, Ed. Christopher Walker, p.86, London: British Museum Press, 1996</ref>}}

Hoskin and Gingerich say:

{{Quote||In 762 [Muhammad’s] successors in the Middle East founded a new capital, Baghdad, by the river Tigris at the point of nearest approach of the Euphrates, and within reach of the Christian physicians of Jundishapur. Members of the Baghdad court called on them for advice, and these encounters opened the eyes of prominent Muslims to the existence of a legacy of intellectual treasures from Antiquity - most of which were preserved in manuscripts lying in distant libraries and written in a foreign tongue. Harun al-Rashid (caliph from 786) and his successors sent agents to the Byzantine empire to buy Greek manuscripts, and early in the ninth century a translation centre, the House of Wisdom, was established in Baghdad by the Caliph al-Ma’mun. […] Long before translations began, a rich tradition of folk astronomy already existed in the Arabian peninsula. This merged with the view of the heavens in Islamic commentaries and treatises, to create a simple cosmology based on the actual appearances of the sky and unsupported by any underlying theory.''"
<ref>Hoskin, Michael and Gingerich, Owen, “Islamic Astronomy” in The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy, Ed. M. Hoskin, p.50-52, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999</ref>}}

==Flat Earth(s) in hadith collections==

The next few sections are about evidence of a commonplace flat Earth belief among the earliest Muslims (it omits evidence from the Qur'an itself, as per the purpose of this article stated in the introduction).

Two easy ways to demonstrate that at least a large number of the earliest Muslims imagined the Earth to be flat are to look at hadiths and tafsirs. For the purposes of this article, it matters little whether the hadiths are authentic or not; either way they demonstrate beliefs of early Muslims.

{{Quote|{{Bukhari|3|43|634}}|Narrated Salim's father (i.e. `Abdullah):

The Prophet said, "Whoever takes a piece of the land of others unjustly, he will sink down the seven earths on the Day of Resurrection."}}

This next hadith is on the same topic. It is graded daif (weak), but shows what some early Muslims (if not actually Muhammad) thought about the world:

{{Quote|{{Al Tirmidhi|47|6|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.’...}}

The following hadith is graded Sahih by Dar-us-Salam (Hafiz Zubair 'Ali Za'i) and has a chain of narration graded as Sahih (authentic) by al-Albani. It is from Sunan Abu Dawud, book XXV - Kitab Al-Ahruf Wa Al-Qira’at (Book of Dialects and Readings Of The Qur’an):

{{Quote|{{Abudawud||4002|darussalam}}|Narrated Abu Dharr:

I was sitting behind the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) who was riding a donkey while the sun was setting. He asked: Do you know where this sets ? I replied: Allah and his Apostle know best. He said: It sets in a spring of warm water (Hamiyah).}}

{{Quote|{{Muslim|1|297}}|It is narrated on the authority of Abu Dharr that the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) one day said:

'''Do you know where the sun goes?''' They replied: Allah and His Apostle know best. He (the Holy Prophet) observed: Verily it (the sun) glides till it reaches its resting place under the Throne. Then it falls prostrate and remains there until it is asked: '''Rise up and go to the place whence you came, and it goes back and continues emerging out from its rising place''' and then glides till it reaches its place of rest under the Throne and falls prostrate and remains in that state until it is asked: Rise up and return to the place whence you came, and it returns and emerges out from it rising place and the it glides (in such a normal way) that the people do not discern anything ( unusual in it) till it reaches its resting place under the Throne. Then it would be said to it: '''Rise up and emerge out from the place of your setting, and it will rise from the place of its setting.''' The Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said. Do you know when it would happen? It would happen at the time when faith will not benefit one who has not previously believed or has derived no good from the faith.<ref>For the Arabic, see [http://sunnah.com/muslim/1/306 sunnah.com] or #159: [http://hadith.al-islam.com/Page.aspx?pageid=192&TOCID=81&BookID=25&PID=299 hadith.al-islam.com]</ref>}}

Notice that it says, "from its rising place" (min matli'iha مَطْلِعِهَا ), and "from the place of your setting" (min maghribiki مِنْ مَغْرِبِكِ). The sun is commanded to go somewhere – it cannot be claimed that this is an idiomatic way of commanding the Earth to rotate, nor that the words mean the east and west here (despite mistranslations of similar hadiths), not least because the words al mashriq and al maghrib would have been used for that purpose and without the possessive suffixes. The words used in this hadith must refer to the sun’s rising and setting places - it is pure nonsense to claim otherwise.

The following hadith, unless it is allegorised to death, clearly indicates a flat earth belief where night occurs at the same time for everyone on Earth:
{{Quote|{{Muslim|4|1657}}|Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) as saying:

Allah descends every night to the lowest heaven '''when one-third of the first part of the night is over''' and says: I am the Lord; I am the Lord: who is there to supplicate Me so that I answer him? Who is there to beg of Me so that I grant him? Who is there to beg forgiveness from Me so that I forgive him? '''He continues like this till the day breaks.'''}}

{{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|25|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.”}}

==Flat Earth in Tafsirs==
===The spring where the sun sets===
In the tafsir of al-Tabari (b. 224 AH / 839 CE) for {{Quran|18|86}}, we see the following remarks about the nature of the spring into which the sun sets. The similar sounding words hami'ah (muddy) and hamiyah (hot) seem to have become confused at some point:

{{Quote|1=[http://quran.al-islam.com/Page.aspx?pageid=221&BookID=13&Page=1 Tafsir al-Tabari for verse 18:86]|2=
الْقَوْل فِي تَأْوِيل قَوْله تَعَالَى : { حَتَّى إِذَا بَلَغَ مَغْرِب الشَّمْس وَجَدَهَا تَغْرُب فِي عَيْن حَمِئَة }

يَقُول تَعَالَى ذِكْره : { حَتَّى إِذَا بَلَغَ } ذُو الْقَرْنَيْنِ { مَغْرِب الشَّمْس وَجَدَهَا تَغْرُب فِي عَيْن حَمِئَة } , فَاخْتَلَفَتْ الْقُرَّاء فِي قِرَاءَة ذَلِكَ , فَقَرَأَهُ بَعْض قُرَّاء الْمَدِينَة وَالْبَصْرَة : { فِي عَيْن حَمِئَة } بِمَعْنَى : أَنَّهَا تَغْرُب فِي عَيْن مَاء ذَات حَمْأَة , وَقَرَأَتْهُ جَمَاعَة مِنْ قُرَّاء الْمَدِينَة , وَعَامَّة قُرَّاء الْكُوفَة : " فِي عَيْن حَامِيَة " يَعْنِي أَنَّهَا تَغْرُب فِي عَيْن مَاء حَارَّة . وَاخْتَلَفَ أَهْل التَّأْوِيل فِي تَأْوِيلهمْ ذَلِكَ عَلَى نَحْو اِخْتِلَاف الْقُرَّاء فِي قِرَاءَته

The meaning of the Almighty’s saying, ‘Until he reached the place of the setting of the sun he found it set in a spring of murky water,’ is as follows:

When the Almighty says, ‘Until he reached,’ He is addressing Zul-Qarnain. Concerning the verse, ‘the place of the setting of the sun he found it set in a spring of murky water,’ the people differed on how to pronounce that verse. Some of the people of Madina and Basra read it as ‘Hami’a spring,’ meaning that the sun sets in a spring that contains mud. While a group of the people of Medina and the majority of the people of Kufa read it as, ‘Hamiya spring’ meaning that the sun sets in a spring of warm water. The people of commentary have differed on the meaning of this depending on the way they read the verse.}}

So he says of the Basra version:

"بـمعنى: أنها تغرب فـي عين ماء ذات حمأة"

"Meaning: that it sets in a spring of muddy water."

And of the people of Kufa reading hot spring:

"يعنـي أنها تغرب فـي عين ماء حارّة"

"It means that it sets in a spring of hot water"

He goes on to quote various opinions such as Ibn 'Abbas, that the sun sets in black mud:

{{Quote|1=[http://quran.al-islam.com/Page.aspx?pageid=221&BookID=13&Page=1 Tafsir al-Tabari for verse 18:86]|2=
حَدَّثَنَا مُحَمَّد بْن عَبْد الْأَعْلَى , قَالَ : ثنا مَرْوَان بْن مُعَاوِيَة , عَنْ وَرْقَاء , قَالَ : سَمِعْت سَعِيد بْن جُبَيْر ,
قَالَ : كَانَ اِبْن عَبَّاس يَقْرَأ هَذَا الْحَرْف { فِي عَيْن حَمِئَة }

Muhammad bin 'Abd al-A'laa narrated and said: Marwan ibn Mu'awiya narrated from Warqa, he said: I heard Sa'id ibn Jubayr say: ibn 'Abbas read this letter "in a muddy spring"

وَيَقُول : حَمْأَة سَوْدَاء تَغْرُب فِيهَا الشَّمْس

and he said: the sun sets in black mud.

وَقَالَ آخَرُونَ : بَلْ هِيَ تَغِيب فِي عَيْن حَارَّة

Others said: it disappears (تَغِيب) in a hot spring.}}

From these comments and narrations in al-Tabari's tafsir, we can reasonably conclude that many, and perhaps all, of the earliest Muslims took verse 18:86 to mean that the sun actually sets in a spring and thus that the Earth is flat.

If the reader wishes to explore this sub-topic further, they can see how al-Tabari in his ''History of the Prophets and Kings'', and al-Baydawi in his tafsir mention the opinion that the sun has 360 springs into which it can set, and the pre-Islamic Arab poems on the same topic in the article [http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Dhul-Qarnayn_and_the_Sun_Setting_in_a_Muddy_Spring_-_Part_One#Compatibility_with_contemporary_beliefs Dhu'l Qarnayn and the Sun Setting in a Muddy Spring].

===The sky is a dome above the Earth===

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

{{Quote|1=[http://quran.al-islam.com/Page.aspx?pageid=221&BookID=13&Page=1 Tafsir al-Tabari for 2:22] See also the English translation from [https://islaambooks.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/the-commentary-on-the-quran-volume-i-tafsir-al-tabari.pdf J. Cooper's abridged translation of Tafsir al-Tabari]<ref>The commentary on the Qur'an, by Abu Ja'far Muhammad b. Jarir al- Tabari ; being an abridged translation of Jami' al-bayan 'an ta'wil ay al-Qur'an, with an introduction and notes by J. Cooper, general editors, W.F. Madelung, A. Jones. Oxford University Press, 1987. p.164</ref>|2=
حَدَّثَنِي مُوسَى بْن هَارُونَ , قَالَ : حَدَّثَنَا عَمْرو بْن حَمَّاد , قَالَ : حَدَّثَنَا أَسْبَاط , عَنْ السُّدِّيّ فِي خَبَر ذَكَرَهُ , عَنْ أَبِي مَالِك , وَعَنْ أَبِي صَالِح , عَنْ ابْن عَبَّاس , وَعَنْ مُرَّة , عَنْ ابْن مَسْعُود وَعَنْ نَاس مِنْ أَصْحَاب النَّبِيّ صَلَّى اللَّه عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ : { وَالسَّمَاء بِنَاء } , فَبِنَاء السَّمَاء عَلَى الْأَرْض كَهَيْئَةِ الْقُبَّة , وَهِيَ سَقْف عَلَى الْأَرْض .وَحَدَّثَنَا بِشْر بْن مُعَاذ , قَالَ : حَدَّثَنَا يَزِيد , عَنْ سَعِيد , عَنْ قَتَادَةَ فِي قَوْل اللَّه { وَالسَّمَاء بِنَاء } قَالَ : جَعَلَ السَّمَاء سَقْفًا لَك .

Musa ibn Harun narrated and said that Amru ibn Hammad narrated and said that Asbath narrated from al-Suddi in the report mentioned, from Abu Malik, and from Abu Salih, from ibn 'Abbas and from Murrah, from ibn Masud and from people of the companions of the prophet (peace and blessings be upon him):

"...and the sky a canopy..." The canopy of the sky over the earth '''is in the form of a dome''', and it is a roof over the earth. And Bishr bin Mu'az narrated and said from Yazid from Sa'id from Qatada in the words of Allah "...and the sky a canopy..." He says he makes the sky your roof.}}

Ibn Kathir in his tafsir for {{Quran|13|2}} has yet more narrations of the sahabah and tabi'un (2nd generation) on this topic:

{{Quote|1=[http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2321 Tafsir ibn Kathir for Qur'an 13:2]|2=Allah said next, (..without any pillars that you can see.) meaning, `there are pillars, but you cannot see them,' according to Ibn `Abbas, Mujahid, Al-Hasan, Qatadah, and several other scholars. Iyas bin Mu`awiyah said, "The heaven is like a dome over the earth," meaning, without pillars. Similar was reported from Qatadah, and this meaning is better for this part of the Ayah, especially since Allah said in another Ayah, (He withholds the heaven from falling on the earth except by His permission.) 22:65 Therefore, Allah's statement, (..that you can see), affirms that there are no pillars. Rather, the heaven is elevated (above the earth) without pillars, as you see. This meaning best affirms Allah's ability and power.}}

===The Earth on the back of a whale===
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 [[The Islamic Whale|whale on whose back the Earth is carried]] (other interpretations were that it was an inkwell, or a name of Allah). The evidence is extensively documented on other websites including narrations with sahih chains from the sahabah, so the interested reader is referred 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>

==Conclusion==

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 the early Muslims believing the Earth to be flat. The cited hadiths and tafsirs demonstrate early Muslim views, whether or not the chains of narration are accurate.

This evidence can be used as a foundation for other arguments concerning the flat Earth verses in the Qur'an: that they cause a justifiable suspicion that the author of the Qur'an was just as unaware as his nearby contemporaries about the shape of the Earth. It also supports the point that even if we supposed that its author was aware of a round Earth, it is a secondary major weakness for 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 even some Muslims living many centuries later, such as al-Suyuti in his Tafsir al-Jalalyn, and ibn Kathir in his Tafsir<ref>See also ibn Kathir's tafsir for verses [http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=410 2:229], [http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2645&Itemid=76 21:32], [http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1487 36:38], and [http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2128&Itemid=97 41:9-12], in all of which he says the heavens are a dome or roof or like the floors of a building over the Earth</ref>).

==External links==
* [http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Science/seven_earths.html Answering Islam] - The Seven Earths
* [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!
* [http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/whale_nun.htm Answering-Islam.com] - The Quran and The Shape of the Earth
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVhsVjXJzKM Youtube.com] Islam & the whale that carries the Earth on its back - Video by TheMaskedArab

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

[[Category:Islam and Science]]
[[Category:Martin Taverille]]
{{page_title|Did Muhammad and the Earliest Muslims know the Earth is Round?}}

Early Islamic Cosmology

2018-11-25T01:20:04Z

Testexmoose:

[[File:Blue-Marble-1972.jpg|right|thumb|200px|The 'Blue Marble' photograph of the Earth taken by the crew of Apollo 17 on their way to the moon in December 1972]]

==Introduction==

When did critics point out that the [https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Flat_Earth_and_the_Quran Qur'anic Earth is flat], or that the author of the Qur'an believed that [https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Dhul-Qarnayn_and_the_Sun_Setting_in_a_Muddy_Spring_-_Part_One the sun sets in a muddy spring], and furthermore, that such verses encouraged the early Muslims to maintain false beliefs about the world, sometimes people claim in response that everyone knew that the Earth was round by the time of Muhammad. This article will dispel that assertion, and as such is complementary to discussions about Islamic cosmography.

It seems that despite the best efforts of apologetics websites, there is no known evidence for a round Earth belief among the earliest Muslims, which would surely be abundant if Muhammad had such knowledge, and plenty of evidence for belief in a flat Earth.

==False claims that there was always a Muslim consensus for a round Earth==

While many people in some regions had [[w:Spherical_Earth|known for centuries]] that the Earth was round and not flat, the question is whether Muhammad and his nearby contemporaries in Arabia had this knowledge.

[https://islamqa.info/en/118698 One Islamic fatwah website]<ref>[https://islamqa.info/en/118698 IslamQA.info - 118698: Consensus that the Earth is round]</ref> (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.

'''ibn Taymiyyah'''

To do so, they first quote from a book by ibn Taymiyyah (d. 728 AH/1328 CE), who in turn cites Abu’l-Husayn Ahmad ibn Ja‘far ibn al Munadi as saying that the scholars from the second level of the companions of Imam Ahmad (d. 241 AH / 855 CE) – i.e. the early Hanbalis – said there was consensus among the scholars that both heaven and Earth are balls, the latter based on astronomical reasoning. This evidence is worthless, because from the 8th century CE the Muslims had access to Greek and Indian astronomical knowledge (see below), so of course Muslim scholars had this view. The term 'consensus' (ijma) was used in different ways by different scholars, but essentially meant the agreement of Muslim scholars, or ideally, also of the salaf (the first three generations of Muslims)<ref>[http://www.sunnah.org/fiqh/ijma.htm http://www.sunnah.org/fiqh/ijma.htm]</ref>. In this case it is explicitly the scholars. As we read on, however, it is apparent that even this "consensus" for a round Earth was rather nebulous, and as already mentioned and will see again, those who did endorse a round Earth did so because they were educated people aware of the astronomical arguments.

They then quote ibn Taymiyyah again, who is answering a question about the shape of the heavens and Earth, this time citing Abu’l-Husayn Ahmad ibn Ja‘far ibn al Munadi (again), Abu’l-Faraj ibn al-Jawzi (d. 597 AH / 1201 CE), and ibn Hazm (d. 456 AH / 1064 CE) as saying that there is a consensus that the heavens are round. Notice that despite the topic, he says the heavens, but nothing about the Earth. He says they provided evidence from the Qur'an, sunnah, and narrations from the companions (sahabah) and second generation.

Ibn Taymiyyah continues the passage<ref>For the full chapter in Arabic see [https://ar.wikisource.org/wiki/مجموع_الفتاوى/المجلد_السادس/سئل_عن_رجلين_تنازعا_في_كيفية_السماء_والأرض Wikisource.org], and for someone's English translation for most of the relevant parts see [http://www.salafitalk.net/st/viewmessages.cfm?Forum=6&Topic=1859 Salafitalk forum]</ref> giving the supposed evidence for round heavens in the Qur'an, sunnah, and narrations from the early Muslims (not included by the Islamic fatwah website). In between, he argues that a round heavens and Earth is supported by what specialists on tafsir and language have said about certain words in the Qur'an.

It is the hadiths and companions that we are interested in for the purposes of this article (the Qur'an verses cited by ibn Taymiyyah are {{Quran|21|33}}, {{Quran|36|40}}, {{Quran|39|5}}, and {{Quran|67|5}}).

'''Narrations of the companions'''

The solitary piece of evidence that Ibn Taymiyyah can bring from the companions about round heavens is that ibn 'Abbas and others said regarding {{Quran|36|40}} and the heavenly bodies swimming in a falak (rounded course):

{{Quote|1=al-Tabari and ibn Kathir Tafsirs for 36:40<ref name="TafsirArabic">For the Arabic, see [http://quran.al-islam.com/Loader.aspx?pageid=215 quran.al-islam.com]</ref>|2=فِي فَلْكَة كَفَلْكَةِ الْمِغْزَل

fee falka, ka-falkati almighzal

in a whirl (whorl), like the whirl of a spindle}}

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 during the night (بِاللَّيْلِ - omitted from the translation) in its falak beneath the Earth:<ref name="TafsirArabic"></ref>

{{Quote|1=[http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1784 Tafsir ibn Kathir for 31:29]|2=Ibn Abi Hatim recorded that Ibn ’Abbas said, “The sun is like flowing water, running in its course in the sky during the day. When it sets, it travels in its course beneath the earth until it rises in the east.” He said, “The same is true in the case of the moon.” Its chain of narration is Sahih.}}

So the evidence from the companions presented by ibn Taymiyyah is not exactly much to go on regarding the shape of the heavens, and says nothing about the shape of the Earth.

'''Hadiths'''

Ibn Taymiyyah then mentions the hadith in Sunan Abu Dawud (graded weak) {{Abu Dawud||4726|darussalam}} 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.

The other hadith he mentions is in Sahih Bukhari, which says:

{{Quote|{{Bukhari|9|93|519}}|if you ask Allah for anything, ask Him for the Firdaus, for it is the last part of Paradise and the highest part of Paradise, and at its top there is the Throne of Beneficent, and from it gush forth the rivers of Paradise." [the word translated 'last' means middle].}}

Ibn Taymiyyah then says that a middle only exists in a round thing. How any of this helps demonstrate that the heavens are spherical is a mystery.

'''Ibn Hazm'''

The Islamic fatwah website then quotes one of the three that ibn Taymiyyah cited, ibn Hazm, who said that there is sound evidence that the Earth is round, but the common people and some non-leading Muslim scholars thought otherwise, though none of the leading scholars denied that the Earth is round.

So firstly, uneducated people (as were Muhammad and the sahabah) thought the Earth to be flat even in ibn Hazm's day. Secondly, his statement provides no evidence that the earliest scholars actually said the Earth is round (just that leading scholars didn't say it was flat). It is clear that Ibn Hazm and the other followers of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal mentioned above believed in a round Earth for astronomical reasons, even if some of them attempted to find further backup from the Qur'an and sunnah.

Given that Ibn Taymiyyah cites these scholars, the narrations he then uses to support spherical heavens (when asked about the shape of both the heavens and Earth), were presumably the best they could come up with. If a consensus for a round Earth went back to Muhammad and the companions, surely the scholars could come up with better than this feeble evidence.

Even the already dubious claims of just a ''scholarly'' consensus are further undermined when we read Tafsir al-Jalalayn, which was written centuries later by two people who were not trying to massage the Qur'an to fit a round Earth reality. For {{Quran|88|20}} we read the following:

{{Quote|1=[http://main.altafsir.com/Tafasir.asp?tMadhNo=0&tTafsirNo=74&tSoraNo=88&tAyahNo=20&tDisplay=yes&UserProfile=0&LanguageId=2 Tafsir al-Jalalayn for Qur'an 88:20]|2=As for His words sutihat ‘laid out flat’ this on a literal reading suggests that the earth is flat which is the opinion of most of the scholars of the revealed Law and not a sphere as astronomers (ahl al-hay’a) have it even if this latter does not contradict any of the pillars of the Law.}}

For details on this word, sutihat, in verse 88:20, see [[Flat Earth and the Quran#Qur.27an 88:20 - sutihat .28spread out flat.29|this section]] of the flat Earth article.

The website goes on to quote from a 20th century book of fatwas, which claims that the Earth is egg shaped and also makes an argument using verse 39:5, both of which are debunked in the article [https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Flat_Earth_and_the_Quran Flat Earth and the Quran].

So to summarise, there seems to be no evidence available that the earliest Muslims believed the Earth is round. Instead, there is lots of evidence that they thought the Earth to be flat, as explained further below. But before we come to that, let's see what historians have to say about Arab astronomical knowledge.

==Acquisition of Greek and Indian astronomical knowledge==

Ptolemy’s Almagest was translated into Arabic in the 8th century CE after the Qur’an was completed. Ptolemy recorded in book five of his AlMagest in the mid-2nd century CE the discovery of Hipparchus, and of Aristarchus before him, that the sun is much larger than the earth and much more distant than the moon, and the Aristotelian view that Earth was spherical and the heavens were celestial spheres.<ref>Toomer, G. J., Ptolemy and his Greek predecessors, In Astronomy Before the Telescope, Ed. Christopher Walker, p.86, London: British Museum Press, 1996</ref>

Professor Kevin Van Bladel says:

{{Quote||When the worldview of educated Muslims after the establishment of the Arab Empire came to incorporate principles of astrology including the geocentric, spherical, Aristotelian-Ptolemaic world picture – particularly after the advent of the ‘Abbāsid dynasty in 750 – the meaning of these passages came to be interpreted in later Islamic tradition not according to the biblical-quranic cosmology, which became obsolete, but according to the Ptolemaic model, according to which the Quran itself came to be interpreted.<ref>Van Bladel, Kevin, “Heavenly cords and prophetic authority in the Qur’an and its Late Antique context”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 70:223-246, p.241, Cambridge University Press, 2007</ref>}}

Earlier in the same paper, Van Bladel describes how Christian theologians in the region of Syria in the sixth century CE shared the view that the Earth was flat and the heaven, or series of heavens was like a dome or tent above the Earth, based on their reading of the Hebrew and New Testament scriptures. This was a rival view to that of the churchmen of Alexandria who supported the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic view of a spherical Earth surrounded by spinning celestial spheres. See the footnote below<ref name="KVB">ibid. pp.224-226. Here are some more excerpts:
 
{{Quote||Entering into the debate was John Philoponus, a Christian philosopher of sixth-century Alexandria, who wrote his commentary on Genesis to prove, against earlier, Antiochene, theologians like Theodore of Mopsuestia, that the scriptural account of creation described a spherical geocentric world in accord with the Ptolemaic cosmology. [...]

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, spherical 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.

A number of Syrian churchmen, notably but not only the Easterners working in the tradition of Theodore of Mopsuestia, took the view of the sky as an edifice for granted. Narsai d. ''c''. 503), the first head of the school of Nisibis, in his homilies on creation, described God's fashioning of the firmament of heaven in these terms: "Like a roof upon the top of the house he stretched out the firmament / that the house below, the domain of earth, might be complete". ''ayk taṭlîlâ l-baytâ da-l-tḥēt mtaḥ la-rqî῾â I d-nehwê mamlâ dûkkat ar῾â l-baytâ da-l῾el''. Also "He finished building the heaven and earth as a spacious house" ''šaklel wa-bnâ šmayyâ w-ar῾â baytâ rwîḥâ''. Jacob of Serugh (d. 521) wrote similarly on the shape of the world in his Hexaemeron homilies. A further witness to the discussion is a Syriac hymn, composed ''c.'' 543-554, describing a domed church in Edessa as a microcosm of the world, its dome being the counterpart of the sky. This is the earliest known text to make a church edifice to be a microcosm, and it shows that the debates over cosmology were meaningful to more than a small number of theologians.}}
</ref> for excerpts of that chapter, which he summarises by saying:

{{Quote||Clearly the Ptolemaic cosmology was not taken for granted in the Aramaean part of Asia in the sixth century. It was, rather, controversial.<ref name="KVB"></ref>}}

David A. King writes:

{{Quote||The Arabs of the Arabian peninsula before Islam possessed a simple yet developed astronomical folklore of a practical nature. This involved a knowledge of the risings and settings of stars, associated in particular with the cosmical setting of groups of stars and simultaneous heliacal risings of others, which marked the beginning of periods called naw’, plural anwā’. […] Ptolemy’s Almagest was translated at least five times in the late eighth and ninth centuries. The first was a translation into Syriac and the others into Arabic, the first two under Caliph al-Ma’mūn in the middle of the first half of the ninth century, and the other two (the second an improvement of the first) towards the end of that century […] In this way Greek planetary models, uranometry and mathematical methods came to the attention of the Muslims.<ref>King, David A., “Islamic Astronomy”, In Astronomy Before the Telescope, Ed. Christopher Walker, p.86, London: British Museum Press, 1996</ref>}}

Hoskin and Gingerich say:

{{Quote||In 762 [Muhammad’s] successors in the Middle East founded a new capital, Baghdad, by the river Tigris at the point of nearest approach of the Euphrates, and within reach of the Christian physicians of Jundishapur. Members of the Baghdad court called on them for advice, and these encounters opened the eyes of prominent Muslims to the existence of a legacy of intellectual treasures from Antiquity - most of which were preserved in manuscripts lying in distant libraries and written in a foreign tongue. Harun al-Rashid (caliph from 786) and his successors sent agents to the Byzantine empire to buy Greek manuscripts, and early in the ninth century a translation centre, the House of Wisdom, was established in Baghdad by the Caliph al-Ma’mun. […] Long before translations began, a rich tradition of folk astronomy already existed in the Arabian peninsula. This merged with the view of the heavens in Islamic commentaries and treatises, to create a simple cosmology based on the actual appearances of the sky and unsupported by any underlying theory.''"
<ref>Hoskin, Michael and Gingerich, Owen, “Islamic Astronomy” in The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy, Ed. M. Hoskin, p.50-52, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999</ref>}}

==Flat Earth(s) in hadith collections==

The next few sections are about evidence of a commonplace flat Earth belief among the earliest Muslims (it omits evidence from the Qur'an itself, as per the purpose of this article stated in the introduction).

Two easy ways to demonstrate that at least a large number of the earliest Muslims imagined the Earth to be flat are to look at hadiths and tafsirs. For the purposes of this article, it matters little whether the hadiths are authentic or not; either way they demonstrate beliefs of early Muslims.

{{Quote|{{Bukhari|3|43|634}}|Narrated Salim's father (i.e. `Abdullah):

The Prophet said, "Whoever takes a piece of the land of others unjustly, he will sink down the seven earths on the Day of Resurrection."}}

This next hadith is on the same topic. It is graded daif (weak), but shows what some early Muslims (if not actually Muhammad) thought about the world:

{{Quote|{{Al Tirmidhi|47|6|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.’...}}

The following hadith is graded Sahih by Dar-us-Salam (Hafiz Zubair 'Ali Za'i) and has a chain of narration graded as Sahih (authentic) by al-Albani. It is from Sunan Abu Dawud, book XXV - Kitab Al-Ahruf Wa Al-Qira’at (Book of Dialects and Readings Of The Qur’an):

{{Quote|{{Abudawud||4002|darussalam}}|Narrated Abu Dharr:

I was sitting behind the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) who was riding a donkey while the sun was setting. He asked: Do you know where this sets ? I replied: Allah and his Apostle know best. He said: It sets in a spring of warm water (Hamiyah).}}

{{Quote|{{Muslim|1|297}}|It is narrated on the authority of Abu Dharr that the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) one day said:

'''Do you know where the sun goes?''' They replied: Allah and His Apostle know best. He (the Holy Prophet) observed: Verily it (the sun) glides till it reaches its resting place under the Throne. Then it falls prostrate and remains there until it is asked: '''Rise up and go to the place whence you came, and it goes back and continues emerging out from its rising place''' and then glides till it reaches its place of rest under the Throne and falls prostrate and remains in that state until it is asked: Rise up and return to the place whence you came, and it returns and emerges out from it rising place and the it glides (in such a normal way) that the people do not discern anything ( unusual in it) till it reaches its resting place under the Throne. Then it would be said to it: '''Rise up and emerge out from the place of your setting, and it will rise from the place of its setting.''' The Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said. Do you know when it would happen? It would happen at the time when faith will not benefit one who has not previously believed or has derived no good from the faith.<ref>For the Arabic, see [http://sunnah.com/muslim/1/306 sunnah.com] or #159: [http://hadith.al-islam.com/Page.aspx?pageid=192&TOCID=81&BookID=25&PID=299 hadith.al-islam.com]</ref>}}

Notice that it says, "from its rising place" (min matli'iha مَطْلِعِهَا ), and "from the place of your setting" (min maghribiki مِنْ مَغْرِبِكِ). The sun is commanded to go somewhere – it cannot be claimed that this is an idiomatic way of commanding the Earth to rotate, nor that the words mean the east and west here (despite mistranslations of similar hadiths), not least because the words al mashriq and al maghrib would have been used for that purpose and without the possessive suffixes. The words used in this hadith must refer to the sun’s rising and setting places - it is pure nonsense to claim otherwise.

The following hadith, unless it is allegorised to death, clearly indicates a flat earth belief where night occurs at the same time for everyone on Earth:
{{Quote|{{Muslim|4|1657}}|Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) as saying:

Allah descends every night to the lowest heaven '''when one-third of the first part of the night is over''' and says: I am the Lord; I am the Lord: who is there to supplicate Me so that I answer him? Who is there to beg of Me so that I grant him? Who is there to beg forgiveness from Me so that I forgive him? '''He continues like this till the day breaks.'''}}

{{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|25|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.”}}

==Flat Earth in Tafsirs==
===The spring where the sun sets===
In the tafsir of al-Tabari (b. 224 AH / 839 CE) for {{Quran|18|86}}, we see the following remarks about the nature of the spring into which the sun sets. The similar sounding words hami'ah (muddy) and hamiyah (hot) seem to have become confused at some point:

{{Quote|1=[http://quran.al-islam.com/Page.aspx?pageid=221&BookID=13&Page=1 Tafsir al-Tabari for verse 18:86]|2=
الْقَوْل فِي تَأْوِيل قَوْله تَعَالَى : { حَتَّى إِذَا بَلَغَ مَغْرِب الشَّمْس وَجَدَهَا تَغْرُب فِي عَيْن حَمِئَة }

يَقُول تَعَالَى ذِكْره : { حَتَّى إِذَا بَلَغَ } ذُو الْقَرْنَيْنِ { مَغْرِب الشَّمْس وَجَدَهَا تَغْرُب فِي عَيْن حَمِئَة } , فَاخْتَلَفَتْ الْقُرَّاء فِي قِرَاءَة ذَلِكَ , فَقَرَأَهُ بَعْض قُرَّاء الْمَدِينَة وَالْبَصْرَة : { فِي عَيْن حَمِئَة } بِمَعْنَى : أَنَّهَا تَغْرُب فِي عَيْن مَاء ذَات حَمْأَة , وَقَرَأَتْهُ جَمَاعَة مِنْ قُرَّاء الْمَدِينَة , وَعَامَّة قُرَّاء الْكُوفَة : " فِي عَيْن حَامِيَة " يَعْنِي أَنَّهَا تَغْرُب فِي عَيْن مَاء حَارَّة . وَاخْتَلَفَ أَهْل التَّأْوِيل فِي تَأْوِيلهمْ ذَلِكَ عَلَى نَحْو اِخْتِلَاف الْقُرَّاء فِي قِرَاءَته

The meaning of the Almighty’s saying, ‘Until he reached the place of the setting of the sun he found it set in a spring of murky water,’ is as follows:

When the Almighty says, ‘Until he reached,’ He is addressing Zul-Qarnain. Concerning the verse, ‘the place of the setting of the sun he found it set in a spring of murky water,’ the people differed on how to pronounce that verse. Some of the people of Madina and Basra read it as ‘Hami’a spring,’ meaning that the sun sets in a spring that contains mud. While a group of the people of Medina and the majority of the people of Kufa read it as, ‘Hamiya spring’ meaning that the sun sets in a spring of warm water. The people of commentary have differed on the meaning of this depending on the way they read the verse.}}

So he says of the Basra version:

"بـمعنى: أنها تغرب فـي عين ماء ذات حمأة"

"Meaning: that it sets in a spring of muddy water."

And of the people of Kufa reading hot spring:

"يعنـي أنها تغرب فـي عين ماء حارّة"

"It means that it sets in a spring of hot water"

He goes on to quote various opinions such as Ibn 'Abbas, that the sun sets in black mud:

{{Quote|1=[http://quran.al-islam.com/Page.aspx?pageid=221&BookID=13&Page=1 Tafsir al-Tabari for verse 18:86]|2=
حَدَّثَنَا مُحَمَّد بْن عَبْد الْأَعْلَى , قَالَ : ثنا مَرْوَان بْن مُعَاوِيَة , عَنْ وَرْقَاء , قَالَ : سَمِعْت سَعِيد بْن جُبَيْر ,
قَالَ : كَانَ اِبْن عَبَّاس يَقْرَأ هَذَا الْحَرْف { فِي عَيْن حَمِئَة }

Muhammad bin 'Abd al-A'laa narrated and said: Marwan ibn Mu'awiya narrated from Warqa, he said: I heard Sa'id ibn Jubayr say: ibn 'Abbas read this letter "in a muddy spring"

وَيَقُول : حَمْأَة سَوْدَاء تَغْرُب فِيهَا الشَّمْس

and he said: the sun sets in black mud.

وَقَالَ آخَرُونَ : بَلْ هِيَ تَغِيب فِي عَيْن حَارَّة

Others said: it disappears (تَغِيب) in a hot spring.}}

From these comments and narrations in al-Tabari's tafsir, we can reasonably conclude that many, and perhaps all, of the earliest Muslims took verse 18:86 to mean that the sun actually sets in a spring and thus that the Earth is flat.

If the reader wishes to explore this sub-topic further, they can see how al-Tabari in his ''History of the Prophets and Kings'', and al-Baydawi in his tafsir mention the opinion that the sun has 360 springs into which it can set, and the pre-Islamic Arab poems on the same topic in the article [http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Dhul-Qarnayn_and_the_Sun_Setting_in_a_Muddy_Spring_-_Part_One#Compatibility_with_contemporary_beliefs Dhu'l Qarnayn and the Sun Setting in a Muddy Spring].

===The sky is a dome above the Earth===

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

{{Quote|1=[http://quran.al-islam.com/Page.aspx?pageid=221&BookID=13&Page=1 Tafsir al-Tabari for 2:22] See also the English translation from [https://islaambooks.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/the-commentary-on-the-quran-volume-i-tafsir-al-tabari.pdf J. Cooper's abridged translation of Tafsir al-Tabari]<ref>The commentary on the Qur'an, by Abu Ja'far Muhammad b. Jarir al- Tabari ; being an abridged translation of Jami' al-bayan 'an ta'wil ay al-Qur'an, with an introduction and notes by J. Cooper, general editors, W.F. Madelung, A. Jones. Oxford University Press, 1987. p.164</ref>|2=
حَدَّثَنِي مُوسَى بْن هَارُونَ , قَالَ : حَدَّثَنَا عَمْرو بْن حَمَّاد , قَالَ : حَدَّثَنَا أَسْبَاط , عَنْ السُّدِّيّ فِي خَبَر ذَكَرَهُ , عَنْ أَبِي مَالِك , وَعَنْ أَبِي صَالِح , عَنْ ابْن عَبَّاس , وَعَنْ مُرَّة , عَنْ ابْن مَسْعُود وَعَنْ نَاس مِنْ أَصْحَاب النَّبِيّ صَلَّى اللَّه عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ : { وَالسَّمَاء بِنَاء } , فَبِنَاء السَّمَاء عَلَى الْأَرْض كَهَيْئَةِ الْقُبَّة , وَهِيَ سَقْف عَلَى الْأَرْض .وَحَدَّثَنَا بِشْر بْن مُعَاذ , قَالَ : حَدَّثَنَا يَزِيد , عَنْ سَعِيد , عَنْ قَتَادَةَ فِي قَوْل اللَّه { وَالسَّمَاء بِنَاء } قَالَ : جَعَلَ السَّمَاء سَقْفًا لَك .

Musa ibn Harun narrated and said that Amru ibn Hammad narrated and said that Asbath narrated from al-Suddi in the report mentioned, from Abu Malik, and from Abu Salih, from ibn 'Abbas and from Murrah, from ibn Masud and from people of the companions of the prophet (peace and blessings be upon him):

"...and the sky a canopy..." The canopy of the sky over the earth '''is in the form of a dome''', and it is a roof over the earth. And Bishr bin Mu'az narrated and said from Yazid from Sa'id from Qatada in the words of Allah "...and the sky a canopy..." He says he makes the sky your roof.}}

Ibn Kathir in his tafsir for {{Quran|13|2}} has yet more narrations of the sahabah and tabi'un (2nd generation) on this topic:

{{Quote|1=[http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2321 Tafsir ibn Kathir for Qur'an 13:2]|2=Allah said next, (..without any pillars that you can see.) meaning, `there are pillars, but you cannot see them,' according to Ibn `Abbas, Mujahid, Al-Hasan, Qatadah, and several other scholars. Iyas bin Mu`awiyah said, "The heaven is like a dome over the earth," meaning, without pillars. Similar was reported from Qatadah, and this meaning is better for this part of the Ayah, especially since Allah said in another Ayah, (He withholds the heaven from falling on the earth except by His permission.) 22:65 Therefore, Allah's statement, (..that you can see), affirms that there are no pillars. Rather, the heaven is elevated (above the earth) without pillars, as you see. This meaning best affirms Allah's ability and power.}}

===The Earth on the back of a whale===
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 [[The Islamic Whale|whale on whose back the Earth is carried]] (other interpretations were that it was an inkwell, or a name of Allah). The evidence is extensively documented on other websites including narrations with sahih chains from the sahabah, so the interested reader is referred 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>

==Conclusion==

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 the early Muslims believing the Earth to be flat. The cited hadiths and tafsirs demonstrate early Muslim views, whether or not the chains of narration are accurate.

This evidence can be used as a foundation for other arguments concerning the flat Earth verses in the Qur'an: that they cause a justifiable suspicion that the author of the Qur'an was just as unaware as his nearby contemporaries about the shape of the Earth. It also supports the point that even if we supposed that its author was aware of a round Earth, it is a secondary major weakness for 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 even some Muslims living many centuries later, such as al-Suyuti in his Tafsir al-Jalalyn, and ibn Kathir in his Tafsir<ref>See also ibn Kathir's tafsir for verses [http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=410 2:229], [http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2645&Itemid=76 21:32], [http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1487 36:38], and [http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2128&Itemid=97 41:9-12], in all of which he says the heavens are a dome or roof or like the floors of a building over the Earth</ref>).

==External links==
* [http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Science/seven_earths.html Answering Islam] - The Seven Earths
* [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!
* [http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/whale_nun.htm Answering-Islam.com] - The Quran and The Shape of the Earth
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVhsVjXJzKM Youtube.com] Islam & the whale that carries the Earth on its back - Video by TheMaskedArab

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

[[Category:Islam and Science]]
[[Category:Martin Taverille]]
{{page_title|Did Muhammad and the Earliest Muslims know the Earth is Round?}}