Islamic Views on the Shape of the Earth: Difference between revisions

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 [[File:Flat Earth The Wonders of Creation.jpg|right|thumb|175px|Taken from Zekeriya Kazvinî's "Acaib-ül Mahlûkat" (The Wonders of Creation). Translated into Turkish from Arabic. Istanbul: ca. 1553. <BR>This map depicts "a traditional Islamic projection of the world as a flat disk surrounded by the sundering seas which are restrained by the encircling mountains of Qaf".<ref>[http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/world/earth.html Views of the Earth] - World Treasures of the Library of Congress, July 29, 2010</ref> ]]
 Islamic [[scriptures]] imply, adhere to, and describe a flat-Earth cosmography ([[Geocentrism and the Quran|arranged in a geocentric system]]) which conceives of the earth as existing in the form of a large plane or disk. While some early Islamic authorities maintained that the earth existed in the shape of a "ball", such notions are entirely absent in the earliest Islamic scriptures.
-Nonetheless, as knowledge of the Earth's spherical form has existed to greater or lesser degree since at least classical Greek (4th Century BCE) - even rising to the level of common knowledge among early medieval Europeans and with the Holy Roman Empire opting to use an orb to represent the spherical Earth from as early as 395 CE - it has been frequently argued in recent times that early Islamic scholars and indeed scripture itself supported the spherical-earth model, although evidence for these claims is lacking.
+Nonetheless, as knowledge of the Earth's spherical form has existed to greater or lesser degree since at least classical Greek (4th Century BCE), it has been frequently argued in recent times that the early scholars of Islam, the first followers of Muhammad, and indeed Islamic scripture itself supported the spherical-earth model, although evidence for these claims is lacking.
+Knowledge of the spherical shape of the Earth prominently entered the Islamic milieu in the 9th century CE when many Greek texts were being translated into Arabic for the first time under the sponsorship of the of Abbasid [[Khilafah (Caliphate)|caliphate]]. While there may have been earlier exposure to these ideas among Muslims, the later idea that Islamic scriptures themselves indicated a spherical Earth was a creative act of reinterpretation. Clear descriptions and assumptions made in the [[Qur'an]], [[hadith]], [[Tafsir|tafsirs]], and writings of early Islamic scholars demonstrate that Muhammad and his companions did not know the Earth was spherical and in fact held it to be flat and disk like.
+Today, some Islamic scholars still argue that Islamic scriptures and their first audiences were fully aware of the spherical shape of the Earth. However, other, often more senior scholars and the majority of educated Muslims today understand scriptures from a historical standpoint. Muhammad and his companions did not know the Earth was spherical, and so Islamic scriptures do not say as much. Rather, the Qur'an speaks from the perspective of its 7th-century contemporaries: to the unaided eye, the Earth is indeed flat, and so this is the framework within which the Qur'an operates.
 ==Greek and Indian astronomical knowledge==
-Ptolemy’s ''Almagest'', written in the mid 2nd century CE, was translated into Arabic in the 8<sup>th</sup> century CE after the Qur’an was completed and mostly [[Textual History of the Qur'an|standardized]]. Ptolemy recorded in book five of the ''Almagest'' 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, as well as the Aristotelian view which maintains that the Earth is spherical and that the heavens are celestial spheres.<ref>Toomer, G. J., Ptolemy and his Greek predecessors, In Astronomy Before the Telescope, Ed. Christopher Walker, p.86, London: British Museum Press, 1996</ref>
+Ptolemy’s ''Almagest'', written in the mid 2nd century CE, was translated into Arabic in the 9<sup>th</sup> century CE after the Qur’an had been completed and [[Textual History of the Qur'an|standardized]]. Ptolemy recorded in book five of the ''Almagest'' 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, as well as the Aristotelian view which maintains that the Earth is spherical and that the heavens are celestial spheres.<ref>Toomer, G. J., Ptolemy and his Greek predecessors, In Astronomy Before the Telescope, Ed. Christopher Walker, p.86, London: British Museum Press, 1996</ref>
 Professor Kevin Van Bladel, Professor of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at Yale University<ref>{{cite web| url=https://nelc.yale.edu/people/kevin-van-bladel| title=Kevin van Bladel| author=| publisher=Yale University| date=| archiveurl=http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/29/world/fg-abortion29&date=2011-09-17 | deadurl=no| accessdate=December 11, 2020| quote=Kevin T. van Bladel is a philologist and historian studying texts and societies of the Near East of the period 200-1200 with special attention to the history of scholarship, the transition from Persian to Arab rule, and historical sociolinguistics. His research focuses on the interaction of different language communities and the translation of learned traditions between Arabic, Iranian languages, Aramaic, Greek, and Sanskrit.}}</ref>, writes: