Dhul-Qarnayn and the Sun Setting in a Muddy Spring - Part One: Difference between revisions

This is part one of a [[Dhul-Qarnayn and the Sun Setting in a Muddy Spring - Part Two#Part Two: What do Qur’an 18:86 and 18:90 say happened next?|two-part]] article providing a comprehensive examination of the different interpretations of [[Qur'an]] 18:86 and 18:90.

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.

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

===Was al matliAA ever used to mean the east?===

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).  

The only place in the hadith<ref name="hadith"></ref> where matliAA might seem to be used in an idiom meaning the east is in Sahih Muslim:

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?

===Commentators use knowledge unknown to 7th century Arabs===

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

Incidentally, at the beginning of the same work in a section about pre-Islamic traditions<ref>Guillaume op. cit. p.12</ref>, 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.

==Second interpretation: He reached [a place at] the time of sunset and sunrise or he reached those times==

{{Quote|{{Bukhari|4|56|665}}|…bayna salati alAAasri ila maghribi a'''l'''shshamsi…<ref>For the Arabic, see #3272: [http://hadith.al-islam.com/Page.aspx?pageid=192&TOCID=2078&BookID=24&PID=3283 here]</ref><BR><BR>…between the ‘Asr prayer and sunset…}}

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

===Why say itha and balagha?===

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.<ref>See post #8 [http://www.lqtoronto.com/forums/showthread.php?t=241 here] - lqtoronto.com</ref> That is not the case here, so we wouldn’t know what Dhu’l Qarnayn reached and the sentence would make no sense.   

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

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.

===Other examples of balagha===

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.

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:

===Could balagha mean “it reached”?===

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.<ref>Van Bladel 2007a op. cit. pp.223-246.

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.

====Hadith====

There are also numerous sahih hadith that state that the sun rises and sets between the horns of Satan, for example:

{{Quote||It was said that Ibn ‘Abbas found Mu’awiya reading it (as) hot. He told him, ‘It is muddy.’ Mu’awiya sent to Ka’b al-Ahbar and asked him, ‘Where does the sun set?’ He said in water and mud and there were some people. So he agreed with the statement of Ibn al-‘Abbas.}}

Shamoun also quotes the same work of al-Baydawi in which he gives this among various interpretations for 36:38:

{{Quote||(Till, when he reached the setting place of the sun) where the sun sets, (he found it setting in a muddy spring) a blackened, muddy and stinking spring; it is also said that this means: a hot spring…<ref>[http://www.altafsir.com/Tafasir.asp?tMadhNo=0&tTafsirNo=73&tSoraNo=18&tAyahNo=86&tDisplay=yes&UserProfile=0&LanguageId=2 Sura 18 Verse 86] - Tanwîr al-Miqbâs min Tafsîr Ibn ‘Abbâs</ref>}}

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<ref>Alexander, ''not the sun, as was incorrectly translated'' by A. W. Budge according to Van Bladel (Van Bladel 2007b op. cit. p. 198, note 12)</ref> 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.<ref>A. W. Budge (trans.), “A Christian Legend Concerning Alexander” in ''The History Of Alexander The Great Being The Syriac Version Of The Pseudo-Callisthenes'', pp. 144-158, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1889 (''[http://www.answering-islam.org/Books/Budge/alexander.htm translation quoted in full]'')</ref>

{{Quote||Thus, quite strikingly, almost every element of this short Qur’anic tale finds a more explicit and detailed counterpart in the Syriac Alexander Legend. In both texts the specific events are given in precisely the same order. Already earlier several cases of specific words that are exact matches between the Syriac and the Arabic were indicated. The water at the place where the sun sets is “fetid” in both texts, a perfect coincidence of two uncommon synonyms (Syraic Saryâ and Arabic hami’a).<ref>Van Bladel 2007b op. cit. p181</ref>}}

Whatever the historical relationship between these texts<ref>Van Bladel’s thesis is that the Syriac Alexander Legend is the source for the Qur’anic account, rather than the other way around (which is indeed highly unlikely due to strongly evidenced dating of the former to 629-630 CE), or them having a common source. However, we wonder if he dismisses a common source too easily. The key point of his argument appears on page 189-190:<BR><BR>"''If Alexander’s prophecy was composed just for this purpose at this time [i.e. as propaganda for the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius – the prophecy in the Alexander Legend evidently serves this purpose], then the correspondence between the Syriac and the Arabic, which contains the same prophecy reworded, cannot be due to an earlier, shared source. Put differently, the only way to posit a common source is to assume that everything held in common between the Qur’anic account and the Syraic Alexander Legend could have been written for and would have made sense in an earlier context.''"<BR><BR>However, it seems Dhu’l Qarnayn’s prophecy in the Qur’an would have been meaningful before Heraclius and before Muhammad. As we saw, the story of Alexander’s gate enclosing Gog and Magog goes back at least as far as Josephus (or, at least enclosing the Scythians, who Josephus says are what the Greeks call the people of Magog in Antiquities of the Jews 1:6:1). We also know that the Christians believed that Gog and Magog would wage war across the world in the end times (see Revelation 20:7-10). Thus the simple, Qur’anic version of the prophecy about Gog and Magog would have made sense in a pre-Islamic Christian story about Alexander without needing a contempory invasion to motivate it ex eventu. Very significantly, it appears again briefly in 21:96 in a way that makes clear it has not been fulfilled yet. Van Bladel believes that the omission of the Alexander Legend’s pro Roman element in the Qur’anic account reflects some attitude of Muhammad’s community (p.196). Instead that element and others could just be adaptations to the common source to turn it into an ex eventu prophecy for the specific purposes behind the Alexander Legend. A common source also better explains the fact that in the Qur’anic version, “…not a single Syriac word is found, but rather there are true Arabic equivalents of Syriac words…” (Van Bladel 2007b, op. cit. p.194). This seems surprising if the Qur’anic account is directly related to the Syriac version, but not if there is a common source in Arabic or a 3rd language.</ref> 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”).

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 a'''l'''shshamsi, which might occur to some people.

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.

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

{{Quote|{{Quran-wi|21|33}}|It is He Who created the Night and the Day, and the sun and the moon: all (the celestial bodies) swim along, each in its rounded course.}}

{{Quote||(They all float, each in an orbit.) means, night and day, the sun and the moon, all of them are floating, i.e., revolving, in their orbits in the heaven. This was the view of Ibn ‘Abbas, `Ikrimah, Ad-Dahhak, Al-Hasan, Qatadah and `Ata’ Al-Khurasani. Ibn `Abbas, may Allah be pleased with him, and others among the Salaf said, “In an orbit like the arc of a spinning wheel.”<ref name="Tafsir Ibn Kathir">[http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1487 Among the Signs of the Might and Power of Allah are the Night and Day, and the Sun and Moon] - Tafsir Ibn Kathir</ref>}}

{{Quote||He continued. God created an ocean three ''farsakhs'' (18 kilometers) removed from heaven. Waves contained, it stands in the air by the command of God. No drop of it is spilled. All the oceans are motionless, but that ocean flows at the rate of the speed of an arrow. It is set free to move in the air evenly, as if it were a rope stretched out in the area between east and west. The sun, the moon, and the retrograde stars run in its deep swell. This is (meant by) God’s word: “Each swims in a sphere.” “The sphere” is the circulation of the chariot in the deep swell of that ocean.<ref>Al-Tabari, History of al-Tabari, op. cit. p.235</ref>}}

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.

====Some of the more nonsensical objections====

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 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.

==Tables summarizing word usage==

*[[Dhul-Qarnayn and the Sun Setting in a Muddy Spring - Part Two|Dhul-Qarnayn and the Sun Setting in a Muddy Spring (Part Two)]]

{{Hub4|Cosmology|Cosmology}}

*{{external link| url = http://skeptic-mind.blogspot.com/2011/12/sunset-sunrise-muddy-pool.html| title = Sunset, sunrise & the muddy pool| publisher = The Skeptic Mind| author = | date = December 6, 2011| archiveurl = http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fskeptic-mind.blogspot.com%2F2011%2F12%2Fsunset-sunrise-muddy-pool.html&date=2013-10-08| deadurl = no}}

==Notes on translations, transliterations, and sources==

http://hadith.al-islam.com/

''Download and search the hadith in English''

[[Category:Islam and Science]]

[[Category:Qur'an]]

{{page_title|Dhul-Qarnayn and the Sun Setting in a Muddy Spring (Part One)}}