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

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:

بِسَاطًا = bisaatan = A thing that is spread or spread out or forth, and particularly a carpet (from the same root we also have بَسَاطٌ = bisaatun = Land, expanded and even; and wide or spacious)

For further discussion of this word and of modern claims attempting to associate it with the shape of eggs, see the [[Islamic_Views_on_the_Shape_of_the_Earth#Qur'an 79:30 - ''daha'' ("spread out", said to mean "ostrich egg")|dedicated section below]].

===Qur'an 18:86 - setting and rising places of the sun===

Till, when he reached the setting-place of the sun, he found it setting in a muddy spring, and found a people thereabout. We said: O Dhu'l-Qarneyn! Either punish or show them kindness.}}A flat conception of the Earth is the only sort that permits the setting of the sun in a spring of water. Contemporary 7th-century Arabic and Syriac poems of the same legend suggest that early Muslims understood the story literally, for while other parts of the legend were edited or removed to conform to the early Muslims' religious outlook before being introduced to the Qur'an, the idea that the Sun could set into a spring of water located somewhere in the "Western" part of the world was allowed to remain.

A similar, more elaborate hadith in Sahih Muslim describes a cycle in which Allah instructs the sun to go and rise "from its rising place" (min matli'iha مَطْلِعِهَا - this word also occurs as matli'a ash shamsi "the rising place of the sun" in {{Quran|18|90}}). One day, it will instead be told to go and rise "from the place of your setting" (min maghribiki مِنْ مَغْرِبِكِ), so it goes and rises "from the place of its setting" (min maghribiha مِنْ مَغْرِبِهَا ). The latter phrase also appears in all the simpler narrations of this hadith despite often being mistranslated as "in the west".<ref>Muhsin Khan is particularly guilty of this in his translation of Sahih Bukhari. Compare with min al maghribi in {{Quran|2|258}} which does mean "from the west".</ref> The sun is commanded to go to some particular place. The words "matli'" and "maghrib", when juxtaposed, refer to a "rising place" and "setting place", while the words "al mashriq" and "al maghrib", when juxtaposed, refer more generically to "the east" and "the west", although some English translations attempt to obscure this detail. The use of the words "matli'iha" and "maghribiha" in reference to specific locations as opposed to general directions is further confirmed by the lack of the definite article (al-) and usage of possessive pronouns (-ha) which make these "the sun's matli'" and "the sun's maghrib" - if the narration were referring to the "east" and "west" generically, the hadith would not refer to "the sun's east" and "the sun's west".