Dhul-Qarnayn and the Sun Setting in a Muddy Spring (Part One)

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

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

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

Translation (Yusuf Ali)

Transliteration (muslimnet)

The Dhu’l Qarnayn episode can be divided into three journeys, the first two of which are described in verses 18:86 and 18:90. In the first phrase of 18:86, Dhu’l Qarnayn travels until he reaches maghriba alshshamsi (مَغْرِبَ الشَّمْسِ), and in the first phrase of 18:90, he travels until he reaches matliAAa alshshamsi (مَطْلِعَ الشَّمْسِ).

Three possible interpretations of the Arabic words maghriba alshshamsi in 18:86 and matliAAa alshshamsi in 18:90 have been claimed:

1. The west and the east
2. The time when the sun sets and the time when the sun rises
3. The place where the sun sets and the place where the sun rises

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

Derivation of the words maghrib and matliAA

The word alshshamsi, which immediately follows the words maghriba and matliAAa in 18:86 and 18:90, means “of the sun”. Maghrib and matliAA are nouns derived from the roots of the verbs gharaba, to set, and talaAAa, to rise, respectively. They are special types of nouns meaning either the place where the action of the verb happens or the time when it happens (the place or time of the sun setting or rising). If it indicates a place, such a noun is called an ism makan. If it means a time, it is called an ism zaman. In either case, these nouns are formed by adding the ma- prefix and using a kasarh (transliterated as ‘i’) after the 2^nd letter to create the words maghrib and matliAA.^[1]

The fatha, or “-a” suffix is added to maghrib and matliAA in 18:86 and 18:90 for the accusative grammatical case to indicate that they are the objects of the verb balagha, "he reached" (there is also a different interpretation that these are not the things reached, which we will examine in section 5). The definite article, “al” as in al maghrib, is missing but implied in these verses. That’s because in the genitive construction called ’idāfa (indicating possession, as in the X of Y), the definite article is implied for the first word when it is used for the genitive word, which in this case is alshshamsi, meaning “of the sun”.^[2]

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

Supporting this claim is the fact that al maghrib is a common Arabic idiom for the west, used in this way elsewhere in the Qur’an and hadith (indeed, the Arabic name for Morocco is al-Mamlakah al-Magribiyya, commonly called al-Maghrib for short). Supporters of this interpretation also point out that it was the one given in some classical commentaries of the Qur’an.^[3]

Words used to mean the east and west in the Qur’an

Looking outside of 18:86 and 18:90, there are two ways in which the west and east are referred to in the Qur’an. Derived from the verb ashraqa (“to rise / shine”), we have al mashriq, which literally means the place or time of the sun’s rising / shining, and is used to mean the east in many verses in the Qur’an (this is not, however, the word used in 18:90, which is matliAAa). In the following verses in the Qur’an, al maghrib is usually translated as the west or western, and al mashriq as the east or eastern:

2:115; 2:142; 2:177; 2:258; 7:137; 26:28; 43:38; 55:17; 70:40; and 73:9.^[4]

In verses 19:16; 24:35 and 28:44, gharb (from the same root as maghrib) is used in an adjectival form to mean western or of the west and sharq (from the same root as mashriq) is used in an adjectival form to mean eastern or of the east.

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

Was alshshams ever used with al maghrib to mean the west?

alshshams means “the sun”, and the -i suffix (an Arabic kasarh) in 18:86 and 18:90 is for the genitive case, which indicates possession (“of the sun”). When we look at how maghrib is used elsewhere in the Qur’an to mean west (see list above), we see that it is always used as a stand-alone word without alshshams, in contrast to 18:86. Why is alshshamsi added in 18:86 when it is not in the other instances if not to emphasize a literal meaning? Indeed, alshshams is not even used with maghrib when it means the west anywhere in the hadith.^[5]

Lane’s Lexicon of classical Arabic, long regarded as authoritative and drawing on many classical Arabic dictionaries and sources, says that al maghrib can signify the west, and also the time of sunset, but originally signified the place (or point) of sunset, which it says is the meaning when alshshamsi is added.^[6] Indeed, this is what these words are used to mean elsewhere outside the Qur'an where it clearly means a place where the sun is physically located, as we shall see in section 6.2. As we shall also see in section 6.5, such was a common belief at that time in that region where we find other versions of the same story.

Was al matliAA ever used to mean the east?

It gets even worse when we look at 18:90. Al matliAA means “the rising place” or “the rising time” (of the sun) and is the first word in the phrase matliAAa alshshamsi in 18:90. MatliAA, with or without alshshams, is not used to mean east anywhere else in the Qur’an, nor anywhere in the hadith.^[5] The verb talaAAa (“it rises”), from which it is derived, is not used in this connection either.

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

Furthermore, Lane’s Lexicon does not give the slightest indication that matliAA, with or without alshshamsi,^[7] nor related words like talaAAa^[8] can be used in an idiom meaning the east. The Lexicon is freely available online and links to cited pages are in the References below.

The only place in the hadith^[5] where matliAA might seem to be used in an idiom meaning the east is in Sahih Muslim:

Here, qibala means direction and matliAAi alshshamsi is translated as “of sunrise”, literally meaning the direction of the rising-place of the sun. The very next hadith is another version of the same hadith:

This version of the hadith ends with “qibala almashriqi”, translated, “towards the East”. As mentioned above, al mashriq usually appears as an idiom to mean the east. It seems easy at first to argue that just as almashriq means the east in one version of this hadith, matliAAi alshshamsi just means the east rather than the rising-place of the sun in the other version. However, even if almashriq means the east in Sahih Muslim Book 1, Number 92 (rather than literally, “the rising point”, as in Qur’an 37:5 and 70:40), both the east and the imagined setting-place of the sun would be in the same direction. These hadith only show that the directions (“qibala”) of these two things (“matliAAi alshshamsi” and “almashriq”) are interchangeable. Conclusive evidence that matliAAi alshshamsi in the above quoted hadith means literally the rising-place of the sun and not merely the east comes a little earlier in the first version of it in Book 1, Number 83, which has “where emerge the two horns of Satan”, which many other hadith tell us is where the sun rises.^[11]

Wajadaha refers back to the sun as a literal object

The next words after maghriba alshshamsi in 18:86 are wajadaha taghrubu, meaning “he found it setting”. Right after matliAAa alshshamsi in 18:90 we have the words wajadaha tatluAAu, meaning “he found it rising”.

In both cases, wajadaha (وَجَدَهَا) means “he found it”. That “it”, the feminine “-ha” suffix to wajada, refers to the previous word, the sun, as the object of the verb.^[12] Thus, the words mean “he found the sun setting” and “he found the sun rising”. However, in the west and east interpretation the sun has only been mentioned as one part of an idiom for the west or the east, yet wajadaha clearly refers back to it as a literal object. The west and east interpretation would only make sense if the sun had also been mentioned explicitly as a literal entity. It would probably omit alshshamsi in both verses, and then say, “wajada alshshamsa taghrubu…” (“he found the sun setting…”), and “wajada alshshamsa tatluAAu…” (“he found the sun rising…”).

For the same reason, neither can maghriba alshshamsi nor matliAAa alshshamsi mean nations or places that have those names in these verses (for example, the Japanese characters for Nippon (the Japanese name for Japan) means “sun origin”, and it is sometimes called The Land of the Rising Sun).

Better still, these verses would be worded completely differently. Even if one argues that there is some poetic reason to describe the west and east using the words we have in 18:86 and 18:90, it would be an extraordinarily poor choice of words since people reasonably understood them to be about the literal setting and rising places of the sun, as we shall see. How would we know what anything in the Qur’an means if it uses words that commonly (and when the context suggests) mean a particular thing when it really means a different concept, for which it uses a different word everywhere else?

An extraordinary coincidence

The simplest and perhaps greatest problem for the west-east interpretation is the striking combination of the two key elements in each of verses 18:86 and 18:90. Not only did Dhu’l Qarnayn reach “the setting place of the sun”, but there also he found the sun setting in a certain place. Not only did he reach “the rising place of the sun”, but there he found the sun rising in a certain way.

Thus, an extraordinary coincidence is required. Under this interpretation, it just so happens that straight after the verses inform us that Dhu’l Qarnayn reached places that merely mean the west and east, but are distinctively and literally worded as the setting and rising places of the sun, we are told of the sun’s behaviour.

Commentators use knowledge unknown to 7th century Arabs

Finally, we turn to the commentators of the Qur’an. There were certainly classical commentators who claimed that the verses just mean that Dhu’l Qarnayn reached the west and east. However, as pointed out by S. Shamoun and J. Katz at Answering Islam,^[13] when we look at their reasoning, it is based not on narrated traditions or linguistic or contextual analysis, but rather on their knowledge that the obvious interpretation describes something that is impossible. We can look at the reasoning (which is highlighted in bold) of the commentators, who are frequently cited on this topic to deny the obvious interpretation and support the west / east idiom interpretation:

The knowledge of these commentators that the obvious interpretation is impossible would not, however, be likely to have been known to Muhammad and the earliest Muslim community. This knowledge came to the Arabs after Ptolemy’s Almagest was translated into Arabic in the 8^th century CE after the Qur’an was completed. Ptolemy recorded in book five of his AlMagest in the mid-2^nd 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.^[15] In reference to the Dhu’l Qarnayn episode and other tales in the Qur’an, Professor Kevin Van Bladel says:

David A. King writes:

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

Furthermore, the commentators not only give the invented interpretation, but they also have to deny the literal setting and rising places interpretation (or for al-Qurtubi and Ibn Kathir, a caricature of it), thus confirming that the place where the sun sets on Earth was the interpretation that had been understood by Muslims before scientific knowledge was acquired later.

We should briefly discuss the passage relating to Dhu’l Qarnayn in Sirat Rasul Allah (Life of the Messenger of God) by Ibn Ishaq (died mid 8^th century CE and was the first biographer of Muhammad), which survives in a copied and edited version by Ibn Hisham (died 833 CE). It describes the story of Dhu’l Qarnayn in a passage about the occasion Sura al kahf was revealed. We are told that Muhammad’s enemies challenged him to tell them about “the mighty traveler who reached the confines of both East and West. ” literally, “the easts of the Earth and the wests of it”^[18] (…mashariqa alardi wamagharibaha…).^[19]

The same Arabic phrase occurs again shortly afterwards in this passage:

The square brackets show a 3^rd instance of almashriq and almaghrib (this time singular), which is omitted in the quoted translation.

This does not mean that Ibn Ishaq (or his source) did not believe that Dhu’l Qarnayn reached the setting and rising places of the sun. Unlike the commentators quoted above, Ibn Ishaq is not denying that Dhu’l Qarnayn did so. In the Arabic it literally says that there was nothing from creation behind these places, so it must mean the edges of a flat Earth, and the setting-place would be at the western edge and the rising place at the eastern edge. He even uses a different word order: mashriq then maghrib rather than maghrib then matliAA as in the Qur’an. This suggests he was simply quoting a common phrase to summarize Dhu’l Qarnayn’s adventure.

Incidentally, at the beginning of the same work in a section about pre-Islamic traditions^[21], Ibn Ishaq quotes some lines of verse by a Yemeni king called Tubba’ who says that Dhu’l Qarnayn witnessed the sun setting in its resting place into a muddy pool. See section 6.5.1 below for a quote by al-Tabari of these same lines.

Given all of the problems detailed above (especially the extraordinary coincidence required by the two elements in each verse; that alshshamsi is never used when the meaning is merely east or west; that matliAA is never used in a phrase that means the east; and the problem of what wajadaha refers to in the next phrases), it is clear that the west/east idiom interpretation of 18:86 and 18:90 cannot be correct.

Dr Zakir Naik, a prominent Muslim public speaker, claims that “balagha maghriba alshshamsi” means “he reached at the time of sunset”,^[22] and another interpretation appears on Osama Abdallah’s website, that it means “he reached the time of sunset”.^[23] In support of the time interpretation is the fact that both maghrib and matliAA can be used as an ism zaman (a noun to indicate the time that a verb happens). Maghrib is not used as an ism zaman anywhere in the Qur’an, but outside the Qur’an, al maghrib is the name given to the prayer that takes place at the time of sunset (one of the 5 daily prayers for Muslims). The phrase maghriba alshshamsi is also used to mean the time of sunset in two hadith, each with two versions (maghrib has an “-i” suffix here as it follows a preposition):

The other version of this hadith is Sahih Bukhari 6:61:539.^[25] Sahih Muslim has the following:

It also appears in a version of the same hadith in Sunan Abu Dawud.^[27]

There is one example in the Qur’an where matliAA is used as an ism zaman. Verse 97:5 has, “…hatta matlaAAi alfajri” (“…until the rise of morn”).

There is nowhere in the Qur’an where matliAAa alshshamsi is used to mean the time of sunrise. It is not used with this meaning in the hadith.^[5] There are many other weaknesses with this interpretation. We shall look at those that apply to it in general and then those specific to Dr Naik’s and Osama Abdallah’s interpretations.

Why say itha and balagha?

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

Contextual problems

There are also various contextual problems with this interpretation. Verse 18:84 has Allah giving Dhu’l Qarnayn “min kulli shayin sababan”, which in the word-for-word translation says, “of everything a means”. The word sababan is used again in the next verse, “FaatbaAAa sababan”, word-for-word translation, “So he followed a course”. The word fa (prefixed to atbaAAa) means “And so” or “thus”, clearly in reference to the preceding phrase.

Why say that Allah gave Dhu’l Qarnayn a course/way/road to everything without telling us what it was about the physical locations of the peoples he visited that made this a remarkable achievement?

The next problem is that verses 18:86 and 18:90 seem to be explaining the reason why Dhu’l Qarnayn followed the ways mentioned in the previous verses. It could be argued that the purpose of each journey was to find a people, but the beginnings of each verse seem to suggest that the intention related to the sun and that this unexpectedly resulted in the discovery of some people. He would be traveling distances in order to reach the times of sunset and sunrise, which seems rather pointless. Similar points are made by P. Newton^[28] and Cornelius^[29] at Answering Islam.

A related problem is that if he just followed a way until the time when the sun sets rather than until he reached the place where the sun sets, there is no reason to then describe what he found the sun to be doing.

Verses 92-93 use the exact same wording as 85-86 and 89-90 to mean reaching a location

A highly significant contextual problem is that verses 18:92 – 93 use exactly the same introductory phrase:

The next two words are “bayna alssaddayni” (“between two mountains”), clearly describing the location reached, and each of the three journeys of Dhu’l Qarnayn begins with the same phrase. Surely the exact same phrase would not be used to say that he reached a time or an unstated location at a time in the first two instances, but explicitly a location in the third.

Different wording is used elsewhere when the time of sunset is meant

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

Verses 18:86 and 18:90 could have simply followed this pattern if they were meant to express the time of sunset and sunrise, saying that he followed a way “until when the sun set” (hatta itha gharabat alshshamsu) and “until when the sun rose” (hatta itha talaAAat alshshamsu), similar to 18:17. They could have even said that he followed a way “til the setting of the sun” (ila ghuroobi alshshamsi) and “til the rising of the sun” (ila tulooAAi alshshamsi), similar to 50:39 and 20:130. Similar phrases are used many times in the hadith. For example:

The other way that the time of sunrise is referred to in the Qur’an uses the verb ashraqa, “to (sun)rise” in the form of an active participle or verbal noun as in the following verses:

If the Qur’an in 18:90 meant the time of sunrise, it would likely have used a formulation similar to these using a derivative of ashraqa or used talaAAat / tulooAAi as in the other 3 verses.

Could it mean he reached [a place at] the setting and rising time of the sun?

As well as the problems above, there are problems specific to Dr. Naik’s claim that the relevant words mean “until when he reached at the time of sunset, he found it…”. The verb balagha is always transitive when it means to reach, and always has an explicit object elsewhere in the Qur’an, but in Dr. Naik’s interpretation, balagha is used as an intransitive verb, which even if it was technically allowed, would make no sense here. It is allowed in Arabic for the object (maf’ul bihi) of a transitive verb to be omitted (mahdhuf), but only if the object has already been mentioned, since otherwise the sentence would make no sense.^[31] That is not the case here, so we wouldn’t know what Dhu’l Qarnayn reached and the sentence would make no sense.

As noted at the beginning of this article, maghriba and matliAAa have the accusative case ending, which you'd expect if they are the objects of the verb balagha. If maghriba alshshamsi and matliAAa alshshamsi are not the things reached, but instead are redundantly stating the time of day (redundant because it mentions the sun setting/rising immediately afterwards), they would interrupt the flow of the sentence before it continues with the wajadaha phrase (“he found it…”). It would be a ludicrously awkward, and misleading way to phrase such a meaning, an easily avoidable flaw.

Balagha cannot mean that a person reached the time of an external event

It would be very unusual for balagha to be used to mean someone reaching a time of day in Arabic, and it is not used in that way in the Qur’an. Various verses have been used to support the claim that balagha (بَلَغَ), translated “he reached”, means that Dhu’l Qarnayn reached the time of sunset in 18:86 and reached the time of sunrise in 18:90.^[23] As well as reaching a location, balagha can mean reaching an age or milestone in one’s life. It is used in this way in the following verses (“old age”; “marriageable age”; “his full strength”; “puberty”; “work with his father”; “forty years”):

3:40; 4:6; 6:152; 12:22; 17:23; 17:34; 18:82; 19:8; 22:5; 24:58-59; 28:14; 37:102; 40:67; 46:15

It is important to notice that age is an attribute of a person, who is reaching a point on the human age scale. There is also a clear difference between saying that a man has reached 40 years (a personal duration - the sun has been orbited 40 times since his birth) and saying that he has reached a particular year or time of day, which is not a measurement of duration from a personal milestone.

The setting time of the sun is a point that the sun (or time of day at a particular location) can appear to reach on the daily cycle at that location. Dhu’l Qarnayn, who is doing the reaching in 18:86 and 18:90, does not have a personal attribute that can be described in those terms. Balagha is not used in the Qur’an to describe the time that a person is experiencing in terms of the time when an external event occurs rather than a personal milestone. Perhaps the sun can be said to “balagha” its setting time (or to be precise, “balaghat” – this interpretation is examined further below), but it would be very unusual to say that Dhu’l Qarnayn did so.

Other examples of balagha

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

In verse 68:39, balagha is used in reference to a covenant “reaching till the day of judgement”, “balighatun ila yawmi alqiyamati” (ila means “till” or “to”). Clearly, you could also speak of a covenant “reaching till the time of sunset”, “balighatun ila maghribi”. However, in these cases balagha has a different meaning to the examples above. Here it refers to the valid duration of the covenant. It always had this duration from the moment it was defined. It always could be said to reach till the day of judgement. Perhaps, when the day of judgement happened it could also be said that the covenant had “reached the day of judgement”, “balagha yawma alqiyamati”. Here it would mean that the covenant had now reached that point on its duration attribute, which can be described in terms of external events. Dhu’l Qarnayn is not like a covenant, as a person has no such attribute (a person’s age is described in terms of personal events and milestones, as we saw above). He could not be described as a man reaching until the day of his death or until sunset.

There are some other verses (2:231-232; 2:234-235; 6:128; 7:135; 40:67; 65:2) where balagha is used to refer, in the word-for-word translation, to widows reaching “their term” (ajalahuna), “a prescribed term its end” (alkitabu ajalahu), we (i.e. evil doers) reaching “our term which you appointed for us” (ajalana allathee ajjalta lana), the people of Pharaoh reaching “a term” (ajalin), or the listener addressed by the Qur’an reaching “a term specified” (ajalan musamman). In these verses, ajala means a term or period of duration.^[32]

They have the same meaning of balagha as in 46:15 mentioned above (“forty years”, “arbaAAeena sanatan”) where it refers to a period of duration. In these verses the attribute of the person or people or prescribed term is the quantity of time that has passed since the period began and the point that they reach is “the term” or “its end”. As with the age examples, they are not referring to the time of an external event that someone one other than those described as doing the reaching could also reach. Only the widows could be said to reach their term. No one other than Pharaoh’s people could be said to reach the term mentioned in 7:135. Most people reach marriageable age, but on the day when you reached marriageable age, it could not be said (in English or Arabic) that this is something that other people reached on that same day just because they were alive at the time when it happened to you. It was a personal event.

We have now seen how balagha may be used in reference to an event in time. In contrast, the time interpretation of 18:86 and 18:90 requires balagha to mean that Dhu’l Qarnayn reached the time of an external event, not a personal event. Furthermore, Lane’s lexicon defines balagha thus:

It is clear here and in the usage of balagha in the Qur’an that even when it is used in reference to a time, that time is distinguished as one that is reached (unlike any other time) because something is intended for that time (e.g. widows can remarry after waiting their term, a righteous man prays for gratitude when he is 40 years old etc.). The wajada phrases suggest that Dhu’l Qarnayn’s intention for his reaching would have been to find out what the sunset and sunrise looked like. This shows why the time interpretation would suffer from one of the contextual problems mentioned above (you needn’t follow a road to reach the time of sunset).

Could balagha mean “it reached”?

An alternative version of the time interpretation appears in a Muslim article on this topic when they attempt to use the following argument from common usage:

To apply this argument, balagha in 18:86, which has the masculine 3rd person singular perfect tense suffix, -a, meaning he/it,^[33] would have to mean “it reached”(where “it” refers to the sun) rather than “he reached”, referring to Dhu’l Qarnayn mentioned earlier. This is not grammatically possible for two reasons.

Firstly, the words following balagha, “maghriba alshshamsi” (“the setting place/time of the sun”), can only be the object of the verb balagha. It is not grammatically possible that the sun is the subject of balagha since it only appears as part of a genitive construction (called ’idāfa) with maghriba, which has the accusative case ending (indicating the object of the transitive verb, balagha). If balagha meant “it reached”, where “it” meant the sun, the verse would be grammatically incomplete since there would be no referent to which “it” refers.^[34] The same grammatical problem would also occur in 18:90. Note also that in Arabic, the word balagha cannot implicitly refer to the time of day as the subject. You can’t just say, “balagha almaghriba”, meaning “It reached sunset” (i.e. that the time of day had advanced to sunset), as someone might occasionally say in English.

Secondly, alshshamsu is a feminine noun, so verbs must use the feminine gender when the sun is their subject.^[35] We also see this in the next parts of the verses, which use the feminine 3rd person singular imperfect tense prefix, ta-, in words referring to the sun, taghrubu (“it/her set”) in 18:86, and tatluAAu (“it/her rise”) in 18:90.^[36] Balagha, as noted above, uses the masculine suffix, -a (called fatha in Arabic), rather than the feminine suffix –at,[44] so it cannot refer to the same subject (the sun) as taghrubu and tatluAAu do. Dhu’l Qarnayn must be the subject of balagha.

An interpretation invented in modern times

Finally, nowhere in the Qur’an nor in the hadith^[5] is there a phrase where alshshams or maghrib or matliAA are used with balagha to describe reaching a time. Thus the time interpretation requires a very unusual, perhaps unique, and certainly misleading phrase usage. With this and the other problems (and the strong evidence supporting the next interpretation examined below) it is clear that the time interpretation is not correct.

We saw that while maghriba alshsamsi is used a few times in the hadith to mean the time of sunset, matliAAa alshshamsi is not used to mean the time of sunrise, so it would be very uncommon usage. We saw that elsewhere in the Qur’an other phrases are always used for these purposes. We also saw that there were serious contextual problems, such as the same wording being used in verses 92-93, where the thing reached is indisputably a place.

So far as we have seen, supporters of the time interpretation cannot point to a classical commentator who took this interpretation for 18:86 or 18:90. We are asked to believe that nobody understood for centuries that these phrases, against strong evidence to the contrary, just meant that Dhu’l Qarnayn traveled until the times of sunset and sunrise or to unstated places at those times. It should come as no surprise by now that of the most popular Muslim translators of the Qur’an into English (A.Y. Ali, M. al-Hilali and M. Khan, M. Ali, M.H. Shakir, M. Asad, M. Pickthall and many others), none of them use the time interpretation.^[37] At most they use the non-committal phrase, “he reached the setting of the sun”.

Many arguments have been or could be used to support this interpretation (objections are also examined below).

Similar word usage in the Qur’an

Firstly, as noted at the beginning, al maghrib and al matliAA can each be used as an ism makan (a noun referring to the place of the action of the verb from whose root it is derived). This indeed is how maghriba alshshamsi and matliAAa alshshamsi are translated by the Muslim translators M. Khan / M. al-Hilali (“the setting place of the sun”, “the rising place of the sun”), M. Ali (“the setting-place of the sun”, “the (land of) the rising sun”), M. Pickthall and M.S. Ali (“the setting-place of the sun”, “the rising-place of the sun”), M.H. Shakir (“the place where the sun set”, “the land of the rising of the sun”), and others.^[37]

In 55:17 and 70:40 mentioned above, which are the only other verses in the Qur’an that refer to the place of sunset (depending on translation), maghrib is used (although without alshshamsi). MatliAA is not used elsewhere in the Qur’an to mean the place of sunrise (37:5, 55:17 and 70:40 are the only other possible references to the place of sunrise and mashriq is used there). On the other hand, gharaba (from which root maghrib is derived) and talaAAa (from which root matliAA is derived) are used later in 18:86 and 18:90 to mean setting and rising with a place preposition (fee, meaning “in” and AAala, meaning “on”).

These words mean the setting and rising places in the hadith

Far more significantly, we find the words used in 18:86 and 18:90 also used in hadith that concern the behaviour of the sun. We need not assume that these hadith are accurate reports about Muhammad. We can use them simply as contemporary evidence of how Arabic words and phrases were used.

The hadith below that refer to the setting or rising place of the sun use maghrib or matliAA followed by the suffix –ha (meaning “of it” or “its”) or –ki (meaning “your”) in reference to alshshamsu, “the sun”, mentioned earlier in those hadith. Therefore they effectively say maghriba alshshamsi and matliAAa alshshamsi.

There are numerous hadith relating to the end of the world and use these phrases. See for example:

Similarly, Sahih Muslim has the following:

The next hadith has, even more significantly:

Here, “mina matliAAiha” is translated as “from its rising place”, “mina maghribiki” as “from the place of your setting” (so the sun is commanded to go somewhere – it cannot be claimed that this is an idiomatic way of commanding the Earth to rotate), and “mina maghribiha” as “from the place of its setting”, all in reference to alshshamsu, “the sun”. Maghribiha and maghribiki can only mean the sun’s setting-place. The hadith would have just used “mina almaghribi” if the meaning had just been “from the west”.

There is some inconsistency about the way the English translators of Sahih Muslim and Sahih Bukhari translate maghribiha in other versions of the same hadith. See the footnotes for a discussion of this.^[41]

Finally, we have examples of matliAAa alshshamsi meaning the rising-place of the sun in Sahih Muslim Book 1, Number 91 (discussed above) and in Sunan Al-Nasa-I, which has the phrase:

It describes how Bilal volunteered to stay up to make sure the dawn prayer was not missed. He faced the rising place of the sun, but it only awakened them when it hit their ears and is similar to Sahih Muslim 4:1448.^[44]

Another example is found in a hadith in Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal, which says that faith in Allah alone, then jihad, then hajj are as preferable to other work as the distance between the rising place of the sun to the setting place of it (“kama bayna matlaAAi alshshamsi ila maghribiha”).^[45]

The evidence is that wherever matliAA and maghrib are followed by alshshamsi (or indirectly as when alshshamsu is the referent of matliAAiha and maghribiha in the hadith), then the phrases mean the rising place of the sun and the setting place (or occasionally setting time, but maybe not rising time) of the sun. Alshshamsi is probably added to maghrib to avoid the ambiguity that would arise if just al maghriba without alshshamsi is used, since that can be an idiom for the west.

Balagha is a perfect fit in this interpretation

There are numerous examples of balagha meaning to reach a location in the Qur’an and the hadith. It is worthwhile highlighting some important examples in this context.

Of most importance are verses 18:92 – 93 discussed above. We have the exact same phrase as in 18:85-86 and 18:89-90, “atbaAAa sababan hatta itha balagha”, used there to describe reaching a place, This is surely no accident.

Immediately preceding the passage about Dhu’l Qarnayn we have one about Moses. There we have:

There are at least four other examples of balagha meaning to reach a location in the Qur’an (6:19; 13:14; 16:7; 48:25;) and far more in the hadith, which contain a lot of brief historical narratives from Muhammad’s lifetime.

Finally, we saw above that balagha implies an intention. Finding the place of sunset serves as a purpose once the destination is reached after following a road / way.

It fits the context

This interpretation explains the purpose of the second phrase in verse 18:84 discussed above because reaching the setting and rising places of the sun would be an extraordinary feat and the desire to relate it to Allah is understandable.

Lane’s Lexicon indicates that a sabab (which Dhu’l Qarnayn follows to reach his destinations and is translated way / means / road in 18:84, 18:85, 18:89, and 18:92) is a means to an end:

Clearly, the setting place of the sun could be such an end, but reaching the time of sunset makes no sense as an end to which this sabab is a means. It is also worth mentioning that Kevin Van Bladel has written some interesting things about what may be the real meaning of this word.^[46][47]

Mentioning that Dhu’l Qarnayn found the sun setting in a spring also makes sense if he was at the place where it sets. Otherwise it could have just said that he found a people by a spring without mentioning the sun. Similarly, mentioning the people in 18:90 only in terms of how the sun affects them fits the rising place interpretation perfectly.

Compatibility with contemporary beliefs

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

Before we begin, it’s worth noting that in the same article just mentioned^[48], 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 sky or heaven was like a tent above the Earth, based on their reading of the Hebrew scriptures. This was a rival view to that of the churchmen of Alexandria who supported the Ptolemaic view of a spherical Earth surrounded by celestial spheres. He says, “Clearly the Ptolemaic cosmology was not taken for granted in the Aramaean part of Asia in the sixth century. It was, rather, controversial.”

Hadith

We saw above some of the hadith that describe the sun having setting and rising places which it goes into and comes out from. The following hadith is graded Sahih (authentic) by Dar-us-Salam (Hafiz Zubair 'Ali Za'i) and has a chain of narration graded as Sahih 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):

There is also another version of the hadith in Musnad Ahmad (this time the spring is muddy rather than warm - the Arabic words sound similar and the same variant readings exist for Qur’an verse 18:86). The same hadith is also recorded by al-Zamakhshari (1075-1143 CE) in his commentary on the Qur’an, al-Kashshaf.^[51] Even if one doubts that this is an authentic report about Muhammad, it is certainly further evidence that early Muslims understood 18:86 to mean a literal setting place. The possibility that Muhammad ever claimed a different interpretation thus further diminishes. There are also numerous sahih hadith that state that the sun rises and sets between the horns of Satan, for example:

These imply a belief that there were locations where the sun sets and rises. There are a few versions of the hadith below, which implies a bounded, flat Earth belief:

The following hadith (also found in Sahih Muslim 19:4327) demonstrates a belief that the sun actually moves through the sky each day:

As S. Shamoun and J. Katz point out,^[13] Al-Tabari (839-923 CE) gives a lengthy hadith in the first volume of his History of the Prophets and Kings, which claims that Ibn ’Abbas gave an account of what Muhammad said about the sun and moon and the setting and rising places. We have also read a library copy of Franz Rozenthal’s translation of this hadith, which they quote. Whether or not Muhammad said the things attributed to him here (or said anything similar), this hadith certainly demonstrates a belief in literal rising and setting places among the early Muslims.

The hadith continues with a description of an angel who releases parts of a veil of darkness each night, and how the sun and moon will behave at the end of the world. In volume 5 of the same work, al-Tabari quotes some lines of verse by a Yemeni king, Tubba’:

Tafsir (Commentaries)

Shamoun and Katz quote al-Tabari’s commentary (tafsir) on the Qur’an, in which he says at the beginning of his commentary on 18:86:

The end of the 3^rd and 2^nd from last sentences literally say, “In other words: it sets in a spring of muddy water” and, “That is to say that it sets in a spring of hot water”. Notice he omits wajada (“he found”) in these sentences. We can clearly see from al-Tabari’s commentary that it was understood by early Muslim communities that 18:86 meant that the sun actually sets in a spring. We can also imply from this that they understood the verse to say that Dhu’l Qarnayn reached the place where the sun sets. Al-Tabari continues the same passage giving reports concerning the different interpretations of hamiatin. He even gives some claimed to be from Ibn ‘Abbas such as:

The middle phrase is word for word, “And he says mud black, it sets in it, the sun”). It is also interesting that to this day, nobody knows which Arabic word was used to describe the spring (muddy or hot) in the original Arabic Qu’ran, and translators take different choices. Shamoun quotes from Al-Baydawi’s commentary on the Qur’an, The Secrets of Revelation and The Secrets of Interpretation (Asrar ut-tanzil wa Asrar ut-ta’wil; 13^th century CE), which has the following concerning 18:86 (although in the previous sentence Al-Baydawi gives his own view that perhaps Dhu’l Qarnayn went to the ocean coast and only saw it like the sun set in a spring):

Their translation of the last two sentences is a loose summary of the rest of the commentary on 18:86. The first sentence is literally: “How do you find the sun setting?” He said, “In water and clay. Likewise we find in the Torah.”^[56] Shamoun also quotes the same work of al-Baydawi in which he gives this among various interpretations for 36:38:

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

Tafsir al-Thalabi (also known as Al-Kashf wa-l-bayān; 11th century CE) reports the following view for verse 18:86:

The views reported in these commentaries understand these verses to mean literal setting and rising places (most early commentators include no opinion). It is clear from the hadith contained in hadith collections and commentaries that there was interest in what happens to the sun when it is beyond view, so if Muhammad had given another interpretation there would surely be hadith to indicate as such, yet there are none.

A close similarity with the Syriac legend about Alexander the Great

It has been known since 1890 thanks to Theodore Nöldeke that there is a very close similarity between the account in the Qur’an of Dhu’l Qarnayn and the Alexander Legend. This was written in Syriac, probably around 630 CE, but incorporates older traditions such as that of the iron gate built by Alexander to enclose Magog dating to at least the time of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in the 1^st century CE^[60] and journeys to the rising and setting place of the sun from the Epic of Gilgamesh.^[61]

It is part of a larger collection of legends about Alexander the Great known as the Alexander Romance. The Alexander Legend begins with Alexander expressing his desire to explore the ends of the Earth. It then has Alexander saying that God has given him horns on his head and he asks for power over other kingdoms. After collecting seven thousand iron and brass workers from Egypt, he goes to the fetid sea at the end of the Earth. He makes some evildoers go to the shore of the fetid sea, and they die. He and his men go to the window of heaven into which the sun sets between the fetid sea and a bright sea (although it does not say that the sun actually sets into this sea). The place where the sun rises is over the sea and the people who live there must flee from it and hide in the sea. The story then describes how Alexander^[62] prostrates before God and travels through the heavens at night to the place where the sun rises. He then visits some mountains and the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Next it has Alexander coming to some people who tell him about the Huns within the Northern mountains (Gog, Magog and other kings are listed). He offers to build an iron and brass gate to close up the breach between the mountains, does so and prophesises that God will destroy the gate at the end of the world and the Huns will go forth through it. Next there is a battle with the Persians and their allies after they were told of his gate. It then ends with Alexander worshiping in Jerusalem and his death in Alexandria.^[63]

Kevin Van Bladel sums up the correspondence with the Qur’an passage in his recent article:

It is often denied by modern Muslims that Dhu’l Qarnayn is meant to be Alexander because we now know that he was not a monotheist. However, it is clear from the Alexander Legend and other sources that he was widely believed in Muhammad’s time and region to have been pious and to have worshiped the God of Abraham, and the Qur’an tells his mythical legend.

Whatever the historical relationship between these texts^[65] and whether or not Dhu’l Qarnayn is meant to be Alexander the Great, it is clear from the legend that the setting and rising places interpretation of 18:86 and 18:90 was entirely compatible with contemporary beliefs in the region. Indeed, verse 18:83 tells us that what follows was supposed to relate to an already known story (“They ask thee concerning Zul-qarnain”).

Pre-Islamic and contemporary poets

Stories influenced by the Alexander legends appear in Arabic poetry shortly before and during the time of Muhammad. As Richard Stoneman says, “the poet Imru’ l-Qays (Diwan 158) referred to a Yemeni hero who undertook a similar campaign against Gog and Magog. … In addition, the pre-Islamic poet al-’Asha and the contemporary of Muhammad Hassan ibn Thabit both composed verses referring to the conquest of Gog and Magog and the furthest east by Dhu ’l-Qarnayn.”^[66]

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

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

As we can see, a literal setting in a spring is mentioned (in the Arabic those lines are literally, “he followed the sun nearby its sunset to observe it in its spring while lowly”).^[69] See also the poem at the end of section 6.5.1 above for another example. We only have these poems from Islamic sources, so it is possible that they were composed or edited after Muhammad’s death. Even if that is so, they still demonstrate how the story was understood in the early Islamic era.

The above hadith, tafsir (commentaries), legends and poetry, are strong circumstantial evidence that the literal setting of the sun in a spring and a literal rising of the sun are the intended meanings in the Qur’an’s version of the same story. Otherwise there would surely be some sign of an alternative interpretation among these early sources given that there was clearly great interest in the story, and Muhammad would have corrected any misunderstanding when people asked him about it.

If we suppose that even Muhammad himself misunderstood Allah’s words, then how could an all-powerful God have made such a poor choice of words if this is not the intended meaning? He would have known about the popular legend and how Arabic words and phrases were used and understood by the people, yet would have chosen wording that reinforced people’s false notions about this myth and the sun. The Alexander Legend, the poetry, and the phrase “They ask thee concerning Zul-qarnain” in 18:83 suggest this was a popular belief and need not have seemed unbelievable to Muhammad. The legend, or an earlier version of the same story, provides an obvious potential source for the Qur'anic version.

Arguments against this interpretation

Places on the horizon behind which the sun appears to set and rise

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

The root word from which maghrib is derived is gharaba, meaning “to set” in the context of the sun. This word also means “to go away” such that something can no longer be seen.^[70] Thus one might argue that maghriba alshshamsi is the area of land on the horizon, from Dhu’l Qarnayn’s perspective, behind which the sun disappears at sunset. On the other hand, matliAA is derived from talaAAa, meaning “to rise”^[71] in the context of the sun. Could matliAAa alshshamsi be the place on the horizon that the sun rises from behind?

The first problem with that explanation is that there are no single places on the Earth behind which the sun seems to set and rise, but rather it depends on the observer’s location. Perhaps we can suppose that maghriba alshshamsi means the point on the horizon that the sun disappeared behind from the perspective of Dhu’l Qarnayn’s starting position, so it was not a moving target. That’s reading quite a lot into the text. Even this makes no sense given the context. Why follow a special road / way to get there, and why then mention the sun setting, now hidden by a 2^nd horizon? Why describe both the 18:86 and 18:90 destinations in those terms? Another problem is that if maghriba means the disappearing place or the place where the sun goes away, can you really describe a place on the horizon as the place where a much more distant object disappears? It seems more natural that the place where something disappears would be in the same location as the thing that is disappearing. An ism makan, after all, is the place where an action occurs. Since the Earth’s rotation hides the sun from a location-specific viewpoint, a literal horizon interpretation doesn’t work as an ism makan, but a specific place that the sun literally sets into does work. A similar set of arguments applies to matliAAa.

Neither can these words be successfully interpreted as simply places which the sun sets or rises on as the Earth revolves. Anywhere outdoors is such a place. The same place would also simultaneously be a setting and rising place of the sun. Furthermore, there is no evidence in the Qur’an, hadith or Lane’s Lexicon that maghriba alshshamsi and matliAAa alshshamsi had any of these meanings.

Nor can the words here mean the apparent points in the direction of the horizon where the sun appears to set and rise when viewed from a particular location since they are not places (how could Dhu’l Qarnayn reach them?). These horizon interpretations lack supporting evidence and have serious problems.

Other verses in the Qur’an – the sun’s rounded course

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

Both verses end with “kullun fee falakin yasbahoona” (literally, “all in a rounded course floating/swimming”). If this phrase meant to say that the sun moves in a circle around the galactic center or around the Earth, then it would apparently preclude the existence of setting and rising places. Tafsir Ibn kathir comments on 36:40:

However, he comments on verse 31:29 that ibn 'Abbas also said that the sun runs in the sky / heaven (alssama) in its rounded course (falakha) during the day, and when it sets it runs at night (bi al-layli - omitted in the translation) in its falak beneath the Earth:

Moreover, we saw above in the hadith given by al-Tabari that belief in the sun circling the sky above a flat Earth and setting and rising in springs was believed to be compatible with the “falakin” phrase in the Qur’an:

In any case, falak does not necessarily mean a sphere. Arabs would have understood the phrase to mean a hemisphere, as Lane’s Lexicon entry for al falak defines the word:

Thus no conflict was seen between the falakin phrase in the Qur’an and the setting and rising places interpretation for 18:86 and 18:90. We must also look at another argument from Mahir Karaosmanovic.^[75] He quotes the following hadith in Tasfir Ibn Kathir when it comments on verse 36:38 to claim that the verse conflicts with a daily setting and rising event.

This is given by Ibn Kathir as an alternative view to the one expressed in the hadith that have the sun prostrating under Allah’s throne each night, which is the “destination” referred to in the commentary. The commentary then cites the following verse to support this view:

The Arabic word daibayni is translated as the phrase “both diligently pursuing their courses”. This is not actually a problem for the setting and rising place interpretation since the commentators and other hadith quoted above showed a belief that the sun keeps moving after passing through its setting place (springs in al-Tabari’s History) into heaven (or according to the Ibn ‘Abbas hadith quoted above, under the Earth) after it has set and continues back to its rising place. Unlike the hadith, the Qur’an does not mention the sun stopping to prostrate (but even if it did, that would simply be a stage of its daily course which happens reliably every day until judgement day). Either view is compatible with the setting and rising places interpretation of 18:86 and 18:90.

Perhaps the most likely explanation is that these verses do not have to be consistent with a single cosmology. Perhaps it seemed necessary to Muhammad to give a recitation about Dhu’l Qarnayn to confound those who had questioned him and any need for it to neatly fit the other recitations was of less importance. The already known story of the great traveler had Dhu’l Qarnayn reaching these places, so the recitation had to do so as well in order to pass the test of the questioners. However, we shall see later that it must have been intended to be believed as a true historical account.

Multiple setting and rising places

The Earth's tilt causes the apparent places of the sun's setting and rising to shift back and forth along the horizon during the course of a year. A flat Earth believer might imagine there were many places where the sun sets and rises, or places that move (see above for the set of springs or places the commentators mention), but 18:86 and 18:90 only refer to one of each. Al magharib and al mashariq in 37:5, 55:17 and 70:40 are usually translated as the easts and wests (or in 55:17, the two easts and the two wests). As noted earlier however, other translations have here the points of sunrise and sunset or explanatory notes to that effect. The commentators say that these verses are referring to the points from which the sun rises and sets from the Summer to Winter solstices. See for example Tafsir Ibn Kathir,^[76] Tafsir al-Jalalayn,^[77] Tafsir al-Tabari,^[78] and Tafsir Ibn ‘Abbas.^[79] It could mean points on the horizon (from a flat earth perspective) or actual setting and rising places (though they are not mutually exclusive).

We saw above the hadith referring to “the rising place”, “the setting place”, “its rising place” and “your setting place” in the singular. Both there and in the Qur’an it would mean the place where the sun set and the place where it rose on those particular days whether one or many were imagined to exist.

Perhaps Muhammad imagined there were many springs in the sky-ocean like al-Tabari’s hadith (in one early narration of the legend, Alexander sees the sun set in one of 360 immense, black, boiling springs like those in Tabari’s hadith ^[80]). It was clearly not seen as a problem in the Alexander Legend, which has the sun set and rise through windows of heaven over the sea encircling the world. The rising place also has people living there, like the Quran (perhaps people were imagined to live all along the range where it rises, or maybe just in the place Alexander went to on that day). As for the muddy spring, it is probably based on the pre-Islamic poems quoted above or derived from the fetid sea of the Alexander Legend, or their common source for the story. Muhammad would have felt bound to follow its outline (insofar as he correctly remembered or was informed about it) to meet the challenge of the questioners in 18:83. Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat tells us that the question about Dhu’l Qarnayn and others in Surah al Kahf were provided by Jews to test Muhammad’s claim of prophetic knowledge.

Why does it only say the people in 18:90 lacked shelter?

Unlike 18:90, verse 86 does not say anything about the people near the spring suffering from the sun's close proximity at sunset. There are a few possible explanations compatible with the setting and rising place interpretations. Most likely, Muhammad was simply following the outline of the popular legend he was using. The Alexander Legend itself only mentions the lack of shelter for the people at the rising place. The creator of the story may also have imagined that the people in verse 86 did have shelter, unlike those in verse 90. Finally, Muhammad might not have thought about or considered it worth mentioning how the sun affected the people in 18:86, just as he doesn’t mention what Dhu’l Qarnayn said or did (if anything) to the people in verse 90.

Some of the more nonsensical objections

The article on this topic by Osama Abdallah^[23] puts forth various arguments that the words discussed above are being used as metaphorical or figurative words. These arguments are nonsensical and very easily dismissed. We shall look at arguments that the passage as a whole is metaphorical or figurative later in part two.

First, his argument supposes that the use of maghrib means that Dhu’l Qarnayn first went to the west (but not to a literal setting place), but because matliAAa rather than mashriqa is used in 18:90, he did not then go to the east. As we saw above when looking at the west-east interpretation, this is indeed a problem for those who claim that maghriba in 18:86 just means the west and then claim that matliAAa in 18:90 just means east. However, it makes no sense at all as an argument against the rising and setting place interpretation, and as we saw above, the use of matliAAa in 18:90 supports that interpretation.

He then claims that the use of the verbs from which maghrib and matliAA are derived in verses 50:39 and 20:130 cannot mean literal rising and setting on Earth because even if we assume that the Qur’an follows a flat-Earth belief, all nations experience sunrise and sunset, not just those near the rising and setting places. This argument is apparently based on the absurd and false premise that if some event occurs in a particular place (the rising or the setting of the sun), then something done before that event (celebrating the praises in 50:39 and 20:130) must occur at that same place. This is obviously complete nonsense. Furthermore, these two verses are perfectly compatible with a literal rising and setting belief since for everywhere on a flat Earth there would be a time (the same time for all nations) when the sun sets and when it rises.

They then give examples of al mashriq and al sharq being used to mean the east. As discussed above, these are just options that were not used. They are not required in order to describe the rising place of the sun, and as we saw above, their non-use is evidence that 18:90 does not merely mean that Dhu’l Qarnayn went to the east.

To support the claim that balagha is metaphorical in 18:86 and 18:90, the article uses verse 6:19, but their nonsensical argument relies on the fact that the Yusuf Ali translation does not translate the word bihi, “with it”. All other major translations do so by some means.

The transliteration of the relevant phrase in 6:19 reads:

A.Y. Ali has

M. Pickthall has

Even if the Qur’an did not have the word bihi here, the only metaphorical aspect of the sentence he could point to would be that Muhammad is warning people he hasn’t met (it is actually via the Qur’an, as the other translations show). Either way, the people who Muhammad’s message reaches (carried in the memory or written record of people) are indeed in actual physical locations away from where it initially was.

After quoting various verses where balagha refers to a reaching an age (this argument was addressed above), he then makes the pedantic criticism that balagha does not have to mean literally reaching a specific place (or in reference to time, to a specific time). Strictly speaking this is correct. Even in English, to say you reached the coastline does not have to mean that you came so close that you actually touched the very edge of the land. It must at least mean that you reached the vicinity, however.

He then claims that you would use yudrik / tudrik / adraaka instead of balagha to describe someone travelling to the sun, but you wouldn’t unless you wished to say that he came so close as to touch it! To claim that balagha is metaphoric after all of this is to confuse the word “metaphor” with “approximate”, a completely different concept.

The tables below show how some of the Arabic words discussed above are used in the Qur’an (not including the controversial instances in 18:86 and 18:90) and in the 6 major Sunni hadith collections. This might make it easier for the reader to verify the statements made in this article and reach his or her own conclusions. Of course, many of the most important arguments in the preceding discussion cannot be derived merely from these tables.

This is part one of a two-part article providing a comprehensive examination of the different interpretations of Qur'an 18:86 and 18:90.

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

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

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

Translation (Yusuf Ali)

Transliteration (muslimnet)

The Dhu’l Qarnayn episode can be divided into three journeys, the first two of which are described in verses 18:86 and 18:90. In the first phrase of 18:86, Dhu’l Qarnayn travels until he reaches maghriba alshshamsi (مَغْرِبَ الشَّمْسِ), and in the first phrase of 18:90, he travels until he reaches matliAAa alshshamsi (مَطْلِعَ الشَّمْسِ).

Three possible interpretations of the Arabic words maghriba alshshamsi in 18:86 and matliAAa alshshamsi in 18:90 have been claimed:

1. The west and the east
2. The time when the sun sets and the time when the sun rises
3. The place where the sun sets and the place where the sun rises

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

Derivation of the words maghrib and matliAA

The word alshshamsi, which immediately follows the words maghriba and matliAAa in 18:86 and 18:90, means “of the sun”. Maghrib and matliAA are nouns derived from the roots of the verbs gharaba, to set, and talaAAa, to rise, respectively. They are special types of nouns meaning either the place where the action of the verb happens or the time when it happens (the place or time of the sun setting or rising). If it indicates a place, such a noun is called an ism makan. If it means a time, it is called an ism zaman. In either case, these nouns are formed by adding the ma- prefix and using a kasarh (transliterated as ‘i’) after the 2^nd letter to create the words maghrib and matliAA.^[81]

The fatha, or “-a” suffix is added to maghrib and matliAA in 18:86 and 18:90 for the accusative grammatical case to indicate that they are the objects of the verb balagha, "he reached" (there is also a different interpretation that these are not the things reached, which we will examine in section 5). The definite article, “al” as in al maghrib, is missing but implied in these verses. That’s because in the genitive construction called ’idāfa (indicating possession, as in the X of Y), the definite article is implied for the first word when it is used for the genitive word, which in this case is alshshamsi, meaning “of the sun”.^[82]

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

Supporting this claim is the fact that al maghrib is a common Arabic idiom for the west, used in this way elsewhere in the Qur’an and hadith (indeed, the Arabic name for Morocco is al-Mamlakah al-Magribiyya, commonly called al-Maghrib for short). Supporters of this interpretation also point out that it was the one given in some classical commentaries of the Qur’an.^[83]

Words used to mean the east and west in the Qur’an

Looking outside of 18:86 and 18:90, there are two ways in which the west and east are referred to in the Qur’an. Derived from the verb ashraqa (“to rise / shine”), we have al mashriq, which literally means the place or time of the sun’s rising / shining, and is used to mean the east in many verses in the Qur’an (this is not, however, the word used in 18:90, which is matliAAa). In the following verses in the Qur’an, al maghrib is usually translated as the west or western, and al mashriq as the east or eastern:

2:115; 2:142; 2:177; 2:258; 7:137; 26:28; 43:38; 55:17; 70:40; and 73:9.^[84]

In verses 19:16; 24:35 and 28:44, gharb (from the same root as maghrib) is used in an adjectival form to mean western or of the west and sharq (from the same root as mashriq) is used in an adjectival form to mean eastern or of the east.

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

Was alshshams ever used with al maghrib to mean the west?

alshshams means “the sun”, and the -i suffix (an Arabic kasarh) in 18:86 and 18:90 is for the genitive case, which indicates possession (“of the sun”). When we look at how maghrib is used elsewhere in the Qur’an to mean west (see list above), we see that it is always used as a stand-alone word without alshshams, in contrast to 18:86. Why is alshshamsi added in 18:86 when it is not in the other instances if not to emphasize a literal meaning? Indeed, alshshams is not even used with maghrib when it means the west anywhere in the hadith.^[85]

Lane’s Lexicon of classical Arabic, long regarded as authoritative and drawing on many classical Arabic dictionaries and sources, says that al maghrib can signify the west, and also the time of sunset, but originally signified the place (or point) of sunset, which it says is the meaning when alshshamsi is added.^[86] Indeed, this is what these words are used to mean elsewhere outside the Qur'an where it clearly means a place where the sun is physically located, as we shall see in section 6.2. As we shall also see in section 6.5, such was a common belief at that time in that region where we find other versions of the same story.

Was al matliAA ever used to mean the east?

It gets even worse when we look at 18:90. Al matliAA means “the rising place” or “the rising time” (of the sun) and is the first word in the phrase matliAAa alshshamsi in 18:90. MatliAA, with or without alshshams, is not used to mean east anywhere else in the Qur’an, nor anywhere in the hadith.^[85] The verb talaAAa (“it rises”), from which it is derived, is not used in this connection either.

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

Furthermore, Lane’s Lexicon does not give the slightest indication that matliAA, with or without alshshamsi,^[87] nor related words like talaAAa^[88] can be used in an idiom meaning the east. The Lexicon is freely available online and links to cited pages are in the References below.

The only place in the hadith^[85] where matliAA might seem to be used in an idiom meaning the east is in Sahih Muslim:

Here, qibala means direction and matliAAi alshshamsi is translated as “of sunrise”, literally meaning the direction of the rising-place of the sun. The very next hadith is another version of the same hadith:

This version of the hadith ends with “qibala almashriqi”, translated, “towards the East”. As mentioned above, al mashriq usually appears as an idiom to mean the east. It seems easy at first to argue that just as almashriq means the east in one version of this hadith, matliAAi alshshamsi just means the east rather than the rising-place of the sun in the other version. However, even if almashriq means the east in Sahih Muslim Book 1, Number 92 (rather than literally, “the rising point”, as in Qur’an 37:5 and 70:40), both the east and the imagined setting-place of the sun would be in the same direction. These hadith only show that the directions (“qibala”) of these two things (“matliAAi alshshamsi” and “almashriq”) are interchangeable. Conclusive evidence that matliAAi alshshamsi in the above quoted hadith means literally the rising-place of the sun and not merely the east comes a little earlier in the first version of it in Book 1, Number 83, which has “where emerge the two horns of Satan”, which many other hadith tell us is where the sun rises.^[91]

Wajadaha refers back to the sun as a literal object

The next words after maghriba alshshamsi in 18:86 are wajadaha taghrubu, meaning “he found it setting”. Right after matliAAa alshshamsi in 18:90 we have the words wajadaha tatluAAu, meaning “he found it rising”.

In both cases, wajadaha (وَجَدَهَا) means “he found it”. That “it”, the feminine “-ha” suffix to wajada, refers to the previous word, the sun, as the object of the verb.^[92] Thus, the words mean “he found the sun setting” and “he found the sun rising”. However, in the west and east interpretation the sun has only been mentioned as one part of an idiom for the west or the east, yet wajadaha clearly refers back to it as a literal object. The west and east interpretation would only make sense if the sun had also been mentioned explicitly as a literal entity. It would probably omit alshshamsi in both verses, and then say, “wajada alshshamsa taghrubu…” (“he found the sun setting…”), and “wajada alshshamsa tatluAAu…” (“he found the sun rising…”).

For the same reason, neither can maghriba alshshamsi nor matliAAa alshshamsi mean nations or places that have those names in these verses (for example, the Japanese characters for Nippon (the Japanese name for Japan) means “sun origin”, and it is sometimes called The Land of the Rising Sun).

Better still, these verses would be worded completely differently. Even if one argues that there is some poetic reason to describe the west and east using the words we have in 18:86 and 18:90, it would be an extraordinarily poor choice of words since people reasonably understood them to be about the literal setting and rising places of the sun, as we shall see. How would we know what anything in the Qur’an means if it uses words that commonly (and when the context suggests) mean a particular thing when it really means a different concept, for which it uses a different word everywhere else?

An extraordinary coincidence

The simplest and perhaps greatest problem for the west-east interpretation is the striking combination of the two key elements in each of verses 18:86 and 18:90. Not only did Dhu’l Qarnayn reach “the setting place of the sun”, but there also he found the sun setting in a certain place. Not only did he reach “the rising place of the sun”, but there he found the sun rising in a certain way.

Thus, an extraordinary coincidence is required. Under this interpretation, it just so happens that straight after the verses inform us that Dhu’l Qarnayn reached places that merely mean the west and east, but are distinctively and literally worded as the setting and rising places of the sun, we are told of the sun’s behaviour.

Commentators use knowledge unknown to 7th century Arabs

Finally, we turn to the commentators of the Qur’an. There were certainly classical commentators who claimed that the verses just mean that Dhu’l Qarnayn reached the west and east. However, as pointed out by S. Shamoun and J. Katz at Answering Islam,^[93] when we look at their reasoning, it is based not on narrated traditions or linguistic or contextual analysis, but rather on their knowledge that the obvious interpretation describes something that is impossible. We can look at the reasoning (which is highlighted in bold) of the commentators, who are frequently cited on this topic to deny the obvious interpretation and support the west / east idiom interpretation:

The knowledge of these commentators that the obvious interpretation is impossible would not, however, be likely to have been known to Muhammad and the earliest Muslim community. This knowledge came to the Arabs after Ptolemy’s Almagest was translated into Arabic in the 8^th century CE after the Qur’an was completed. Ptolemy recorded in book five of his AlMagest in the mid-2^nd 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.^[95] In reference to the Dhu’l Qarnayn episode and other tales in the Qur’an, Professor Kevin Van Bladel says:

David A. King writes:

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

Furthermore, the commentators not only give the invented interpretation, but they also have to deny the literal setting and rising places interpretation (or for al-Qurtubi and Ibn Kathir, a caricature of it), thus confirming that the place where the sun sets on Earth was the interpretation that had been understood by Muslims before scientific knowledge was acquired later.

We should briefly discuss the passage relating to Dhu’l Qarnayn in Sirat Rasul Allah (Life of the Messenger of God) by Ibn Ishaq (died mid 8^th century CE and was the first biographer of Muhammad), which survives in a copied and edited version by Ibn Hisham (died 833 CE). It describes the story of Dhu’l Qarnayn in a passage about the occasion Sura al kahf was revealed. We are told that Muhammad’s enemies challenged him to tell them about “the mighty traveler who reached the confines of both East and West. ” literally, “the easts of the Earth and the wests of it”^[98] (…mashariqa alardi wamagharibaha…).^[99]

The same Arabic phrase occurs again shortly afterwards in this passage:

The square brackets show a 3^rd instance of almashriq and almaghrib (this time singular), which is omitted in the quoted translation.

This does not mean that Ibn Ishaq (or his source) did not believe that Dhu’l Qarnayn reached the setting and rising places of the sun. Unlike the commentators quoted above, Ibn Ishaq is not denying that Dhu’l Qarnayn did so. In the Arabic it literally says that there was nothing from creation behind these places, so it must mean the edges of a flat Earth, and the setting-place would be at the western edge and the rising place at the eastern edge. He even uses a different word order: mashriq then maghrib rather than maghrib then matliAA as in the Qur’an. This suggests he was simply quoting a common phrase to summarize Dhu’l Qarnayn’s adventure.

Incidentally, at the beginning of the same work in a section about pre-Islamic traditions^[101], Ibn Ishaq quotes some lines of verse by a Yemeni king called Tubba’ who says that Dhu’l Qarnayn witnessed the sun setting in its resting place into a muddy pool. See section 6.5.1 below for a quote by al-Tabari of these same lines.

Given all of the problems detailed above (especially the extraordinary coincidence required by the two elements in each verse; that alshshamsi is never used when the meaning is merely east or west; that matliAA is never used in a phrase that means the east; and the problem of what wajadaha refers to in the next phrases), it is clear that the west/east idiom interpretation of 18:86 and 18:90 cannot be correct.

Dr Zakir Naik, a prominent Muslim public speaker, claims that “balagha maghriba alshshamsi” means “he reached at the time of sunset”,^[102] and another interpretation appears on Osama Abdallah’s website, that it means “he reached the time of sunset”.^[103] In support of the time interpretation is the fact that both maghrib and matliAA can be used as an ism zaman (a noun to indicate the time that a verb happens). Maghrib is not used as an ism zaman anywhere in the Qur’an, but outside the Qur’an, al maghrib is the name given to the prayer that takes place at the time of sunset (one of the 5 daily prayers for Muslims). The phrase maghriba alshshamsi is also used to mean the time of sunset in two hadith, each with two versions (maghrib has an “-i” suffix here as it follows a preposition):

The other version of this hadith is Sahih Bukhari 6:61:539.^[105] Sahih Muslim has the following:

It also appears in a version of the same hadith in Sunan Abu Dawud.^[107]

There is one example in the Qur’an where matliAA is used as an ism zaman. Verse 97:5 has, “…hatta matlaAAi alfajri” (“…until the rise of morn”).

There is nowhere in the Qur’an where matliAAa alshshamsi is used to mean the time of sunrise. It is not used with this meaning in the hadith.^[85] There are many other weaknesses with this interpretation. We shall look at those that apply to it in general and then those specific to Dr Naik’s and Osama Abdallah’s interpretations.

Why say itha and balagha?

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

Contextual problems

There are also various contextual problems with this interpretation. Verse 18:84 has Allah giving Dhu’l Qarnayn “min kulli shayin sababan”, which in the word-for-word translation says, “of everything a means”. The word sababan is used again in the next verse, “FaatbaAAa sababan”, word-for-word translation, “So he followed a course”. The word fa (prefixed to atbaAAa) means “And so” or “thus”, clearly in reference to the preceding phrase.

Why say that Allah gave Dhu’l Qarnayn a course/way/road to everything without telling us what it was about the physical locations of the peoples he visited that made this a remarkable achievement?

The next problem is that verses 18:86 and 18:90 seem to be explaining the reason why Dhu’l Qarnayn followed the ways mentioned in the previous verses. It could be argued that the purpose of each journey was to find a people, but the beginnings of each verse seem to suggest that the intention related to the sun and that this unexpectedly resulted in the discovery of some people. He would be traveling distances in order to reach the times of sunset and sunrise, which seems rather pointless. Similar points are made by P. Newton^[108] and Cornelius^[109] at Answering Islam.

A related problem is that if he just followed a way until the time when the sun sets rather than until he reached the place where the sun sets, there is no reason to then describe what he found the sun to be doing.

Verses 92-93 use the exact same wording as 85-86 and 89-90 to mean reaching a location

A highly significant contextual problem is that verses 18:92 – 93 use exactly the same introductory phrase:

The next two words are “bayna alssaddayni” (“between two mountains”), clearly describing the location reached, and each of the three journeys of Dhu’l Qarnayn begins with the same phrase. Surely the exact same phrase would not be used to say that he reached a time or an unstated location at a time in the first two instances, but explicitly a location in the third.

Different wording is used elsewhere when the time of sunset is meant

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

Verses 18:86 and 18:90 could have simply followed this pattern if they were meant to express the time of sunset and sunrise, saying that he followed a way “until when the sun set” (hatta itha gharabat alshshamsu) and “until when the sun rose” (hatta itha talaAAat alshshamsu), similar to 18:17. They could have even said that he followed a way “til the setting of the sun” (ila ghuroobi alshshamsi) and “til the rising of the sun” (ila tulooAAi alshshamsi), similar to 50:39 and 20:130. Similar phrases are used many times in the hadith. For example:

The other way that the time of sunrise is referred to in the Qur’an uses the verb ashraqa, “to (sun)rise” in the form of an active participle or verbal noun as in the following verses:

If the Qur’an in 18:90 meant the time of sunrise, it would likely have used a formulation similar to these using a derivative of ashraqa or used talaAAat / tulooAAi as in the other 3 verses.

Could it mean he reached [a place at] the setting and rising time of the sun?

As well as the problems above, there are problems specific to Dr. Naik’s claim that the relevant words mean “until when he reached at the time of sunset, he found it…”. The verb balagha is always transitive when it means to reach, and always has an explicit object elsewhere in the Qur’an, but in Dr. Naik’s interpretation, balagha is used as an intransitive verb, which even if it was technically allowed, would make no sense here. It is allowed in Arabic for the object (maf’ul bihi) of a transitive verb to be omitted (mahdhuf), but only if the object has already been mentioned, since otherwise the sentence would make no sense.^[111] That is not the case here, so we wouldn’t know what Dhu’l Qarnayn reached and the sentence would make no sense.

As noted at the beginning of this article, maghriba and matliAAa have the accusative case ending, which you'd expect if they are the objects of the verb balagha. If maghriba alshshamsi and matliAAa alshshamsi are not the things reached, but instead are redundantly stating the time of day (redundant because it mentions the sun setting/rising immediately afterwards), they would interrupt the flow of the sentence before it continues with the wajadaha phrase (“he found it…”). It would be a ludicrously awkward, and misleading way to phrase such a meaning, an easily avoidable flaw.

Balagha cannot mean that a person reached the time of an external event

It would be very unusual for balagha to be used to mean someone reaching a time of day in Arabic, and it is not used in that way in the Qur’an. Various verses have been used to support the claim that balagha (بَلَغَ), translated “he reached”, means that Dhu’l Qarnayn reached the time of sunset in 18:86 and reached the time of sunrise in 18:90.^[103] As well as reaching a location, balagha can mean reaching an age or milestone in one’s life. It is used in this way in the following verses (“old age”; “marriageable age”; “his full strength”; “puberty”; “work with his father”; “forty years”):

3:40; 4:6; 6:152; 12:22; 17:23; 17:34; 18:82; 19:8; 22:5; 24:58-59; 28:14; 37:102; 40:67; 46:15

It is important to notice that age is an attribute of a person, who is reaching a point on the human age scale. There is also a clear difference between saying that a man has reached 40 years (a personal duration - the sun has been orbited 40 times since his birth) and saying that he has reached a particular year or time of day, which is not a measurement of duration from a personal milestone.

The setting time of the sun is a point that the sun (or time of day at a particular location) can appear to reach on the daily cycle at that location. Dhu’l Qarnayn, who is doing the reaching in 18:86 and 18:90, does not have a personal attribute that can be described in those terms. Balagha is not used in the Qur’an to describe the time that a person is experiencing in terms of the time when an external event occurs rather than a personal milestone. Perhaps the sun can be said to “balagha” its setting time (or to be precise, “balaghat” – this interpretation is examined further below), but it would be very unusual to say that Dhu’l Qarnayn did so.

Other examples of balagha

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

In verse 68:39, balagha is used in reference to a covenant “reaching till the day of judgement”, “balighatun ila yawmi alqiyamati” (ila means “till” or “to”). Clearly, you could also speak of a covenant “reaching till the time of sunset”, “balighatun ila maghribi”. However, in these cases balagha has a different meaning to the examples above. Here it refers to the valid duration of the covenant. It always had this duration from the moment it was defined. It always could be said to reach till the day of judgement. Perhaps, when the day of judgement happened it could also be said that the covenant had “reached the day of judgement”, “balagha yawma alqiyamati”. Here it would mean that the covenant had now reached that point on its duration attribute, which can be described in terms of external events. Dhu’l Qarnayn is not like a covenant, as a person has no such attribute (a person’s age is described in terms of personal events and milestones, as we saw above). He could not be described as a man reaching until the day of his death or until sunset.

There are some other verses (2:231-232; 2:234-235; 6:128; 7:135; 40:67; 65:2) where balagha is used to refer, in the word-for-word translation, to widows reaching “their term” (ajalahuna), “a prescribed term its end” (alkitabu ajalahu), we (i.e. evil doers) reaching “our term which you appointed for us” (ajalana allathee ajjalta lana), the people of Pharaoh reaching “a term” (ajalin), or the listener addressed by the Qur’an reaching “a term specified” (ajalan musamman). In these verses, ajala means a term or period of duration.^[112]

They have the same meaning of balagha as in 46:15 mentioned above (“forty years”, “arbaAAeena sanatan”) where it refers to a period of duration. In these verses the attribute of the person or people or prescribed term is the quantity of time that has passed since the period began and the point that they reach is “the term” or “its end”. As with the age examples, they are not referring to the time of an external event that someone one other than those described as doing the reaching could also reach. Only the widows could be said to reach their term. No one other than Pharaoh’s people could be said to reach the term mentioned in 7:135. Most people reach marriageable age, but on the day when you reached marriageable age, it could not be said (in English or Arabic) that this is something that other people reached on that same day just because they were alive at the time when it happened to you. It was a personal event.

We have now seen how balagha may be used in reference to an event in time. In contrast, the time interpretation of 18:86 and 18:90 requires balagha to mean that Dhu’l Qarnayn reached the time of an external event, not a personal event. Furthermore, Lane’s lexicon defines balagha thus:

It is clear here and in the usage of balagha in the Qur’an that even when it is used in reference to a time, that time is distinguished as one that is reached (unlike any other time) because something is intended for that time (e.g. widows can remarry after waiting their term, a righteous man prays for gratitude when he is 40 years old etc.). The wajada phrases suggest that Dhu’l Qarnayn’s intention for his reaching would have been to find out what the sunset and sunrise looked like. This shows why the time interpretation would suffer from one of the contextual problems mentioned above (you needn’t follow a road to reach the time of sunset).

Could balagha mean “it reached”?

An alternative version of the time interpretation appears in a Muslim article on this topic when they attempt to use the following argument from common usage:

To apply this argument, balagha in 18:86, which has the masculine 3rd person singular perfect tense suffix, -a, meaning he/it,^[113] would have to mean “it reached”(where “it” refers to the sun) rather than “he reached”, referring to Dhu’l Qarnayn mentioned earlier. This is not grammatically possible for two reasons.

Firstly, the words following balagha, “maghriba alshshamsi” (“the setting place/time of the sun”), can only be the object of the verb balagha. It is not grammatically possible that the sun is the subject of balagha since it only appears as part of a genitive construction (called ’idāfa) with maghriba, which has the accusative case ending (indicating the object of the transitive verb, balagha). If balagha meant “it reached”, where “it” meant the sun, the verse would be grammatically incomplete since there would be no referent to which “it” refers.^[114] The same grammatical problem would also occur in 18:90. Note also that in Arabic, the word balagha cannot implicitly refer to the time of day as the subject. You can’t just say, “balagha almaghriba”, meaning “It reached sunset” (i.e. that the time of day had advanced to sunset), as someone might occasionally say in English.

Secondly, alshshamsu is a feminine noun, so verbs must use the feminine gender when the sun is their subject.^[115] We also see this in the next parts of the verses, which use the feminine 3rd person singular imperfect tense prefix, ta-, in words referring to the sun, taghrubu (“it/her set”) in 18:86, and tatluAAu (“it/her rise”) in 18:90.^[116] Balagha, as noted above, uses the masculine suffix, -a (called fatha in Arabic), rather than the feminine suffix –at,[44] so it cannot refer to the same subject (the sun) as taghrubu and tatluAAu do. Dhu’l Qarnayn must be the subject of balagha.

An interpretation invented in modern times

Finally, nowhere in the Qur’an nor in the hadith^[85] is there a phrase where alshshams or maghrib or matliAA are used with balagha to describe reaching a time. Thus the time interpretation requires a very unusual, perhaps unique, and certainly misleading phrase usage. With this and the other problems (and the strong evidence supporting the next interpretation examined below) it is clear that the time interpretation is not correct.

We saw that while maghriba alshsamsi is used a few times in the hadith to mean the time of sunset, matliAAa alshshamsi is not used to mean the time of sunrise, so it would be very uncommon usage. We saw that elsewhere in the Qur’an other phrases are always used for these purposes. We also saw that there were serious contextual problems, such as the same wording being used in verses 92-93, where the thing reached is indisputably a place.

So far as we have seen, supporters of the time interpretation cannot point to a classical commentator who took this interpretation for 18:86 or 18:90. We are asked to believe that nobody understood for centuries that these phrases, against strong evidence to the contrary, just meant that Dhu’l Qarnayn traveled until the times of sunset and sunrise or to unstated places at those times. It should come as no surprise by now that of the most popular Muslim translators of the Qur’an into English (A.Y. Ali, M. al-Hilali and M. Khan, M. Ali, M.H. Shakir, M. Asad, M. Pickthall and many others), none of them use the time interpretation.^[117] At most they use the non-committal phrase, “he reached the setting of the sun”.

Many arguments have been or could be used to support this interpretation (objections are also examined below).

Similar word usage in the Qur’an

Firstly, as noted at the beginning, al maghrib and al matliAA can each be used as an ism makan (a noun referring to the place of the action of the verb from whose root it is derived). This indeed is how maghriba alshshamsi and matliAAa alshshamsi are translated by the Muslim translators M. Khan / M. al-Hilali (“the setting place of the sun”, “the rising place of the sun”), M. Ali (“the setting-place of the sun”, “the (land of) the rising sun”), M. Pickthall and M.S. Ali (“the setting-place of the sun”, “the rising-place of the sun”), M.H. Shakir (“the place where the sun set”, “the land of the rising of the sun”), and others.^[117]

In 55:17 and 70:40 mentioned above, which are the only other verses in the Qur’an that refer to the place of sunset (depending on translation), maghrib is used (although without alshshamsi). MatliAA is not used elsewhere in the Qur’an to mean the place of sunrise (37:5, 55:17 and 70:40 are the only other possible references to the place of sunrise and mashriq is used there). On the other hand, gharaba (from which root maghrib is derived) and talaAAa (from which root matliAA is derived) are used later in 18:86 and 18:90 to mean setting and rising with a place preposition (fee, meaning “in” and AAala, meaning “on”).

These words mean the setting and rising places in the hadith

Far more significantly, we find the words used in 18:86 and 18:90 also used in hadith that concern the behaviour of the sun. We need not assume that these hadith are accurate reports about Muhammad. We can use them simply as contemporary evidence of how Arabic words and phrases were used.

The hadith below that refer to the setting or rising place of the sun use maghrib or matliAA followed by the suffix –ha (meaning “of it” or “its”) or –ki (meaning “your”) in reference to alshshamsu, “the sun”, mentioned earlier in those hadith. Therefore they effectively say maghriba alshshamsi and matliAAa alshshamsi.

There are numerous hadith relating to the end of the world and use these phrases. See for example:

Similarly, Sahih Muslim has the following:

The next hadith has, even more significantly:

Here, “mina matliAAiha” is translated as “from its rising place”, “mina maghribiki” as “from the place of your setting” (so the sun is commanded to go somewhere – it cannot be claimed that this is an idiomatic way of commanding the Earth to rotate), and “mina maghribiha” as “from the place of its setting”, all in reference to alshshamsu, “the sun”. Maghribiha and maghribiki can only mean the sun’s setting-place. The hadith would have just used “mina almaghribi” if the meaning had just been “from the west”.

There is some inconsistency about the way the English translators of Sahih Muslim and Sahih Bukhari translate maghribiha in other versions of the same hadith. See the footnotes for a discussion of this.^[121]

Finally, we have examples of matliAAa alshshamsi meaning the rising-place of the sun in Sahih Muslim Book 1, Number 91 (discussed above) and in Sunan Al-Nasa-I, which has the phrase:

It describes how Bilal volunteered to stay up to make sure the dawn prayer was not missed. He faced the rising place of the sun, but it only awakened them when it hit their ears and is similar to Sahih Muslim 4:1448.^[124]

Another example is found in a hadith in Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal, which says that faith in Allah alone, then jihad, then hajj are as preferable to other work as the distance between the rising place of the sun to the setting place of it (“kama bayna matlaAAi alshshamsi ila maghribiha”).^[125]

The evidence is that wherever matliAA and maghrib are followed by alshshamsi (or indirectly as when alshshamsu is the referent of matliAAiha and maghribiha in the hadith), then the phrases mean the rising place of the sun and the setting place (or occasionally setting time, but maybe not rising time) of the sun. Alshshamsi is probably added to maghrib to avoid the ambiguity that would arise if just al maghriba without alshshamsi is used, since that can be an idiom for the west.

Balagha is a perfect fit in this interpretation

There are numerous examples of balagha meaning to reach a location in the Qur’an and the hadith. It is worthwhile highlighting some important examples in this context.

Of most importance are verses 18:92 – 93 discussed above. We have the exact same phrase as in 18:85-86 and 18:89-90, “atbaAAa sababan hatta itha balagha”, used there to describe reaching a place, This is surely no accident.

Immediately preceding the passage about Dhu’l Qarnayn we have one about Moses. There we have:

There are at least four other examples of balagha meaning to reach a location in the Qur’an (6:19; 13:14; 16:7; 48:25;) and far more in the hadith, which contain a lot of brief historical narratives from Muhammad’s lifetime.

Finally, we saw above that balagha implies an intention. Finding the place of sunset serves as a purpose once the destination is reached after following a road / way.

It fits the context

This interpretation explains the purpose of the second phrase in verse 18:84 discussed above because reaching the setting and rising places of the sun would be an extraordinary feat and the desire to relate it to Allah is understandable.

Lane’s Lexicon indicates that a sabab (which Dhu’l Qarnayn follows to reach his destinations and is translated way / means / road in 18:84, 18:85, 18:89, and 18:92) is a means to an end:

Clearly, the setting place of the sun could be such an end, but reaching the time of sunset makes no sense as an end to which this sabab is a means. It is also worth mentioning that Kevin Van Bladel has written some interesting things about what may be the real meaning of this word.^[126][127]

Mentioning that Dhu’l Qarnayn found the sun setting in a spring also makes sense if he was at the place where it sets. Otherwise it could have just said that he found a people by a spring without mentioning the sun. Similarly, mentioning the people in 18:90 only in terms of how the sun affects them fits the rising place interpretation perfectly.

Compatibility with contemporary beliefs

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

Before we begin, it’s worth noting that in the same article just mentioned^[128], 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 sky or heaven was like a tent above the Earth, based on their reading of the Hebrew scriptures. This was a rival view to that of the churchmen of Alexandria who supported the Ptolemaic view of a spherical Earth surrounded by celestial spheres. He says, “Clearly the Ptolemaic cosmology was not taken for granted in the Aramaean part of Asia in the sixth century. It was, rather, controversial.”

Hadith

We saw above some of the hadith that describe the sun having setting and rising places which it goes into and comes out from. The following hadith is graded Sahih (authentic) by Dar-us-Salam (Hafiz Zubair 'Ali Za'i) and has a chain of narration graded as Sahih 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):

There is also another version of the hadith in Musnad Ahmad (this time the spring is muddy rather than warm - the Arabic words sound similar and the same variant readings exist for Qur’an verse 18:86). The same hadith is also recorded by al-Zamakhshari (1075-1143 CE) in his commentary on the Qur’an, al-Kashshaf.^[131] Even if one doubts that this is an authentic report about Muhammad, it is certainly further evidence that early Muslims understood 18:86 to mean a literal setting place. The possibility that Muhammad ever claimed a different interpretation thus further diminishes. There are also numerous sahih hadith that state that the sun rises and sets between the horns of Satan, for example:

These imply a belief that there were locations where the sun sets and rises. There are a few versions of the hadith below, which implies a bounded, flat Earth belief:

The following hadith (also found in Sahih Muslim 19:4327) demonstrates a belief that the sun actually moves through the sky each day:

As S. Shamoun and J. Katz point out,^[93] Al-Tabari (839-923 CE) gives a lengthy hadith in the first volume of his History of the Prophets and Kings, which claims that Ibn ’Abbas gave an account of what Muhammad said about the sun and moon and the setting and rising places. We have also read a library copy of Franz Rozenthal’s translation of this hadith, which they quote. Whether or not Muhammad said the things attributed to him here (or said anything similar), this hadith certainly demonstrates a belief in literal rising and setting places among the early Muslims.

The hadith continues with a description of an angel who releases parts of a veil of darkness each night, and how the sun and moon will behave at the end of the world. In volume 5 of the same work, al-Tabari quotes some lines of verse by a Yemeni king, Tubba’:

Tafsir (Commentaries)

Shamoun and Katz quote al-Tabari’s commentary (tafsir) on the Qur’an, in which he says at the beginning of his commentary on 18:86:

The end of the 3^rd and 2^nd from last sentences literally say, “In other words: it sets in a spring of muddy water” and, “That is to say that it sets in a spring of hot water”. Notice he omits wajada (“he found”) in these sentences. We can clearly see from al-Tabari’s commentary that it was understood by early Muslim communities that 18:86 meant that the sun actually sets in a spring. We can also imply from this that they understood the verse to say that Dhu’l Qarnayn reached the place where the sun sets. Al-Tabari continues the same passage giving reports concerning the different interpretations of hamiatin. He even gives some claimed to be from Ibn ‘Abbas such as:

The middle phrase is word for word, “And he says mud black, it sets in it, the sun”). It is also interesting that to this day, nobody knows which Arabic word was used to describe the spring (muddy or hot) in the original Arabic Qu’ran, and translators take different choices. Shamoun quotes from Al-Baydawi’s commentary on the Qur’an, The Secrets of Revelation and The Secrets of Interpretation (Asrar ut-tanzil wa Asrar ut-ta’wil; 13^th century CE), which has the following concerning 18:86 (although in the previous sentence Al-Baydawi gives his own view that perhaps Dhu’l Qarnayn went to the ocean coast and only saw it like the sun set in a spring):

Their translation of the last two sentences is a loose summary of the rest of the commentary on 18:86. The first sentence is literally: “How do you find the sun setting?” He said, “In water and clay. Likewise we find in the Torah.”^[135] Shamoun also quotes the same work of al-Baydawi in which he gives this among various interpretations for 36:38:

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

Tafsir al-Thalabi (also known as Al-Kashf wa-l-bayān; 11th century CE) reports the following view for verse 18:86:

The views reported in these commentaries understand these verses to mean literal setting and rising places (most early commentators include no opinion). It is clear from the hadith contained in hadith collections and commentaries that there was interest in what happens to the sun when it is beyond view, so if Muhammad had given another interpretation there would surely be hadith to indicate as such, yet there are none.

A close similarity with the Syriac legend about Alexander the Great

It has been known since 1890 thanks to Theodore Nöldeke that there is a very close similarity between the account in the Qur’an of Dhu’l Qarnayn and the Alexander Legend. This was written in Syriac, probably around 630 CE, but incorporates older traditions such as that of the iron gate built by Alexander to enclose Magog dating to at least the time of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in the 1^st century CE^[139] and journeys to the rising and setting place of the sun from the Epic of Gilgamesh.^[140]

It is part of a larger collection of legends about Alexander the Great known as the Alexander Romance. The Alexander Legend begins with Alexander expressing his desire to explore the ends of the Earth. It then has Alexander saying that God has given him horns on his head and he asks for power over other kingdoms. After collecting seven thousand iron and brass workers from Egypt, he goes to the fetid sea at the end of the Earth. He makes some evildoers go to the shore of the fetid sea, and they die. He and his men go to the window of heaven into which the sun sets between the fetid sea and a bright sea (although it does not say that the sun actually sets into this sea). The place where the sun rises is over the sea and the people who live there must flee from it and hide in the sea. The story then describes how Alexander^[141] prostrates before God and travels through the heavens at night to the place where the sun rises. He then visits some mountains and the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Next it has Alexander coming to some people who tell him about the Huns within the Northern mountains (Gog, Magog and other kings are listed). He offers to build an iron and brass gate to close up the breach between the mountains, does so and prophesises that God will destroy the gate at the end of the world and the Huns will go forth through it. Next there is a battle with the Persians and their allies after they were told of his gate. It then ends with Alexander worshiping in Jerusalem and his death in Alexandria.^[142]

Kevin Van Bladel sums up the correspondence with the Qur’an passage in his recent article:

It is often denied by modern Muslims that Dhu’l Qarnayn is meant to be Alexander because we now know that he was not a monotheist. However, it is clear from the Alexander Legend and other sources that he was widely believed in Muhammad’s time and region to have been pious and to have worshiped the God of Abraham, and the Qur’an tells his mythical legend.

Whatever the historical relationship between these texts^[144] and whether or not Dhu’l Qarnayn is meant to be Alexander the Great, it is clear from the legend that the setting and rising places interpretation of 18:86 and 18:90 was entirely compatible with contemporary beliefs in the region. Indeed, verse 18:83 tells us that what follows was supposed to relate to an already known story (“They ask thee concerning Zul-qarnain”).

Pre-Islamic and contemporary poets

Stories influenced by the Alexander legends appear in Arabic poetry shortly before and during the time of Muhammad. As Richard Stoneman says, “the poet Imru’ l-Qays (Diwan 158) referred to a Yemeni hero who undertook a similar campaign against Gog and Magog. … In addition, the pre-Islamic poet al-’Asha and the contemporary of Muhammad Hassan ibn Thabit both composed verses referring to the conquest of Gog and Magog and the furthest east by Dhu ’l-Qarnayn.”^[145]

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

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

As we can see, a literal setting in a spring is mentioned (in the Arabic those lines are literally, “he followed the sun nearby its sunset to observe it in its spring while lowly”).^[148] See also the poem at the end of section 6.5.1 above for another example. We only have these poems from Islamic sources, so it is possible that they were composed or edited after Muhammad’s death. Even if that is so, they still demonstrate how the story was understood in the early Islamic era.

The above hadith, tafsir (commentaries), legends and poetry, are strong circumstantial evidence that the literal setting of the sun in a spring and a literal rising of the sun are the intended meanings in the Qur’an’s version of the same story. Otherwise there would surely be some sign of an alternative interpretation among these early sources given that there was clearly great interest in the story, and Muhammad would have corrected any misunderstanding when people asked him about it.

If we suppose that even Muhammad himself misunderstood Allah’s words, then how could an all-powerful God have made such a poor choice of words if this is not the intended meaning? He would have known about the popular legend and how Arabic words and phrases were used and understood by the people, yet would have chosen wording that reinforced people’s false notions about this myth and the sun. The Alexander Legend, the poetry, and the phrase “They ask thee concerning Zul-qarnain” in 18:83 suggest this was a popular belief and need not have seemed unbelievable to Muhammad. The legend, or an earlier version of the same story, provides an obvious potential source for the Qur'anic version.

Arguments against this interpretation

Places on the horizon behind which the sun appears to set and rise

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

The root word from which maghrib is derived is gharaba, meaning “to set” in the context of the sun. This word also means “to go away” such that something can no longer be seen.^[149] Thus one might argue that maghriba alshshamsi is the area of land on the horizon, from Dhu’l Qarnayn’s perspective, behind which the sun disappears at sunset. On the other hand, matliAA is derived from talaAAa, meaning “to rise”^[150] in the context of the sun. Could matliAAa alshshamsi be the place on the horizon that the sun rises from behind?

The first problem with that explanation is that there are no single places on the Earth behind which the sun seems to set and rise, but rather it depends on the observer’s location. Perhaps we can suppose that maghriba alshshamsi means the point on the horizon that the sun disappeared behind from the perspective of Dhu’l Qarnayn’s starting position, so it was not a moving target. That’s reading quite a lot into the text. Even this makes no sense given the context. Why follow a special road / way to get there, and why then mention the sun setting, now hidden by a 2^nd horizon? Why describe both the 18:86 and 18:90 destinations in those terms? Another problem is that if maghriba means the disappearing place or the place where the sun goes away, can you really describe a place on the horizon as the place where a much more distant object disappears? It seems more natural that the place where something disappears would be in the same location as the thing that is disappearing. An ism makan, after all, is the place where an action occurs. Since the Earth’s rotation hides the sun from a location-specific viewpoint, a literal horizon interpretation doesn’t work as an ism makan, but a specific place that the sun literally sets into does work. A similar set of arguments applies to matliAAa.

Neither can these words be successfully interpreted as simply places which the sun sets or rises on as the Earth revolves. Anywhere outdoors is such a place. The same place would also simultaneously be a setting and rising place of the sun. Furthermore, there is no evidence in the Qur’an, hadith or Lane’s Lexicon that maghriba alshshamsi and matliAAa alshshamsi had any of these meanings.

Nor can the words here mean the apparent points in the direction of the horizon where the sun appears to set and rise when viewed from a particular location since they are not places (how could Dhu’l Qarnayn reach them?). These horizon interpretations lack supporting evidence and have serious problems.

Other verses in the Qur’an – the sun’s rounded course

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

Both verses end with “kullun fee falakin yasbahoona” (literally, “all in a rounded course floating/swimming”). If this phrase meant to say that the sun moves in a circle around the galactic center or around the Earth, then it would apparently preclude the existence of setting and rising places. Tafsir Ibn kathir comments on 36:40:

However, he comments on verse 31:29 that ibn 'Abbas also said that the sun runs in the sky / heaven (alssama) in its rounded course (falakha) during the day, and when it sets it runs at night (bi al-layli - omitted in the translation) in its falak beneath the Earth:

Moreover, we saw above in the hadith given by al-Tabari that belief in the sun circling the sky above a flat Earth and setting and rising in springs was believed to be compatible with the “falakin” phrase in the Qur’an:

In any case, falak does not necessarily mean a sphere. Arabs would have understood the phrase to mean a hemisphere, as Lane’s Lexicon entry for al falak defines the word:

Thus no conflict was seen between the falakin phrase in the Qur’an and the setting and rising places interpretation for 18:86 and 18:90. We must also look at another argument from Mahir Karaosmanovic.^[153] He quotes the following hadith in Tasfir Ibn Kathir when it comments on verse 36:38 to claim that the verse conflicts with a daily setting and rising event.

This is given by Ibn Kathir as an alternative view to the one expressed in the hadith that have the sun prostrating under Allah’s throne each night, which is the “destination” referred to in the commentary. The commentary then cites the following verse to support this view:

The Arabic word daibayni is translated as the phrase “both diligently pursuing their courses”. This is not actually a problem for the setting and rising place interpretation since the commentators and other hadith quoted above showed a belief that the sun keeps moving after passing through its setting place (springs in al-Tabari’s History) into heaven (or according to the Ibn ‘Abbas hadith quoted above, under the Earth) after it has set and continues back to its rising place. Unlike the hadith, the Qur’an does not mention the sun stopping to prostrate (but even if it did, that would simply be a stage of its daily course which happens reliably every day until judgement day). Either view is compatible with the setting and rising places interpretation of 18:86 and 18:90.

Perhaps the most likely explanation is that these verses do not have to be consistent with a single cosmology. Perhaps it seemed necessary to Muhammad to give a recitation about Dhu’l Qarnayn to confound those who had questioned him and any need for it to neatly fit the other recitations was of less importance. The already known story of the great traveler had Dhu’l Qarnayn reaching these places, so the recitation had to do so as well in order to pass the test of the questioners. However, we shall see later that it must have been intended to be believed as a true historical account.

Multiple setting and rising places

The Earth's tilt causes the apparent places of the sun's setting and rising to shift back and forth along the horizon during the course of a year. A flat Earth believer might imagine there were many places where the sun sets and rises, or places that move (see above for the set of springs or places the commentators mention), but 18:86 and 18:90 only refer to one of each. Al magharib and al mashariq in 37:5, 55:17 and 70:40 are usually translated as the easts and wests (or in 55:17, the two easts and the two wests). As noted earlier however, other translations have here the points of sunrise and sunset or explanatory notes to that effect. The commentators say that these verses are referring to the points from which the sun rises and sets from the Summer to Winter solstices. See for example Tafsir Ibn Kathir,^[154] Tafsir al-Jalalayn,^[155] Tafsir al-Tabari,^[156] and Tafsir Ibn ‘Abbas.^[157] It could mean points on the horizon (from a flat earth perspective) or actual setting and rising places (though they are not mutually exclusive).

We saw above the hadith referring to “the rising place”, “the setting place”, “its rising place” and “your setting place” in the singular. Both there and in the Qur’an it would mean the place where the sun set and the place where it rose on those particular days whether one or many were imagined to exist.

Perhaps Muhammad imagined there were many springs in the sky-ocean like al-Tabari’s hadith (in one early narration of the legend, Alexander sees the sun set in one of 360 immense, black, boiling springs like those in Tabari’s hadith ^[158]). It was clearly not seen as a problem in the Alexander Legend, which has the sun set and rise through windows of heaven over the sea encircling the world. The rising place also has people living there, like the Quran (perhaps people were imagined to live all along the range where it rises, or maybe just in the place Alexander went to on that day). As for the muddy spring, it is probably based on the pre-Islamic poems quoted above or derived from the fetid sea of the Alexander Legend, or their common source for the story. Muhammad would have felt bound to follow its outline (insofar as he correctly remembered or was informed about it) to meet the challenge of the questioners in 18:83. Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat tells us that the question about Dhu’l Qarnayn and others in Surah al Kahf were provided by Jews to test Muhammad’s claim of prophetic knowledge.

Why does it only say the people in 18:90 lacked shelter?

Unlike 18:90, verse 86 does not say anything about the people near the spring suffering from the sun's close proximity at sunset. There are a few possible explanations compatible with the setting and rising place interpretations. Most likely, Muhammad was simply following the outline of the popular legend he was using. The Alexander Legend itself only mentions the lack of shelter for the people at the rising place. The creator of the story may also have imagined that the people in verse 86 did have shelter, unlike those in verse 90. Finally, Muhammad might not have thought about or considered it worth mentioning how the sun affected the people in 18:86, just as he doesn’t mention what Dhu’l Qarnayn said or did (if anything) to the people in verse 90.

Some of the more nonsensical objections

The article on this topic by Osama Abdallah^[103] puts forth various arguments that the words discussed above are being used as metaphorical or figurative words. These arguments are nonsensical and very easily dismissed. We shall look at arguments that the passage as a whole is metaphorical or figurative later in part two.

First, his argument supposes that the use of maghrib means that Dhu’l Qarnayn first went to the west (but not to a literal setting place), but because matliAAa rather than mashriqa is used in 18:90, he did not then go to the east. As we saw above when looking at the west-east interpretation, this is indeed a problem for those who claim that maghriba in 18:86 just means the west and then claim that matliAAa in 18:90 just means east. However, it makes no sense at all as an argument against the rising and setting place interpretation, and as we saw above, the use of matliAAa in 18:90 supports that interpretation.

He then claims that the use of the verbs from which maghrib and matliAA are derived in verses 50:39 and 20:130 cannot mean literal rising and setting on Earth because even if we assume that the Qur’an follows a flat-Earth belief, all nations experience sunrise and sunset, not just those near the rising and setting places. This argument is apparently based on the absurd and false premise that if some event occurs in a particular place (the rising or the setting of the sun), then something done before that event (celebrating the praises in 50:39 and 20:130) must occur at that same place. This is obviously complete nonsense. Furthermore, these two verses are perfectly compatible with a literal rising and setting belief since for everywhere on a flat Earth there would be a time (the same time for all nations) when the sun sets and when it rises.

They then give examples of al mashriq and al sharq being used to mean the east. As discussed above, these are just options that were not used. They are not required in order to describe the rising place of the sun, and as we saw above, their non-use is evidence that 18:90 does not merely mean that Dhu’l Qarnayn went to the east.

To support the claim that balagha is metaphorical in 18:86 and 18:90, the article uses verse 6:19, but their nonsensical argument relies on the fact that the Yusuf Ali translation does not translate the word bihi, “with it”. All other major translations do so by some means.

The transliteration of the relevant phrase in 6:19 reads:

A.Y. Ali has

M. Pickthall has

Even if the Qur’an did not have the word bihi here, the only metaphorical aspect of the sentence he could point to would be that Muhammad is warning people he hasn’t met (it is actually via the Qur’an, as the other translations show). Either way, the people who Muhammad’s message reaches (carried in the memory or written record of people) are indeed in actual physical locations away from where it initially was.

After quoting various verses where balagha refers to a reaching an age (this argument was addressed above), he then makes the pedantic criticism that balagha does not have to mean literally reaching a specific place (or in reference to time, to a specific time). Strictly speaking this is correct. Even in English, to say you reached the coastline does not have to mean that you came so close that you actually touched the very edge of the land. It must at least mean that you reached the vicinity, however.

He then claims that you would use yudrik / tudrik / adraaka instead of balagha to describe someone travelling to the sun, but you wouldn’t unless you wished to say that he came so close as to touch it! To claim that balagha is metaphoric after all of this is to confuse the word “metaphor” with “approximate”, a completely different concept.

The tables below show how some of the Arabic words discussed above are used in the Qur’an (not including the controversial instances in 18:86 and 18:90) and in the 6 major Sunni hadith collections. This might make it easier for the reader to verify the statements made in this article and reach his or her own conclusions. Of course, many of the most important arguments in the preceding discussion cannot be derived merely from these tables.

We have seen that only the setting and rising places interpretation of 18:86 and 18:90 fits the context, grammar, and words used in these verses and nearby verses such as 18:93. It was the only interpretation until the Muslims acquired Greek and Indian astronomical knowledge and it complimented the beliefs and legends of the region, including the remarkable match with the Alexander Legend.

The arguments against this interpretation have been demonstrated to be weak or groundless. The alternative interpretations have been shown to have fatal contextual, grammatical and logical flaws and use word meanings invented purely in an attempt to support those interpretations.

• Dhul-Qarnayn and the Sun Setting in a Muddy Spring (Part Two)
• Islamic Views on the Shape of the Earth
• - A hub page that leads to other articles related to Dhul-Qarnayn
• Cosmology - A hub page that leads to other articles related to Cosmology

• Sunset, sunrise & the muddy pool - The Skeptic Mind, December 6, 2011 (archived), http://skeptic-mind.blogspot.com/2011/12/sunset-sunrise-muddy-pool.html 
• Forum discussion showing Shi'ite hadith also confirm a literal meaning to the sun "setting in a muddy spring"

We have seen that only the setting and rising places interpretation of 18:86 and 18:90 fits the context, grammar, and words used in these verses and nearby verses such as 18:93. It was the only interpretation until the Muslims acquired Greek and Indian astronomical knowledge and it complimented the beliefs and legends of the region, including the remarkable match with the Alexander Legend.

The arguments against this interpretation have been demonstrated to be weak or groundless. The alternative interpretations have been shown to have fatal contextual, grammatical and logical flaws and use word meanings invented purely in an attempt to support those interpretations.

• Dhul-Qarnayn and the Sun Setting in a Muddy Spring (Part Two)
• Islamic Views on the Shape of the Earth

• Sunset, sunrise & the muddy pool - The Skeptic Mind, December 6, 2011 (archived), http://skeptic-mind.blogspot.com/2011/12/sunset-sunrise-muddy-pool.html 
• Forum discussion showing Shi'ite hadith also confirm a literal meaning to the sun "setting in a muddy spring"

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• Cosmology - A hub page that leads to other articles related to Cosmology

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