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

a'''l'''shshams 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 a'''l'''shshams, in contrast to 18:86. Why is a'''l'''shshamsi added in 18:86 when it is not in the other instances if not to emphasize a literal meaning? Indeed, a'''l'''shshams is not even used with maghrib when it means the west anywhere in the hadith.<ref name="hadith">Based on searches of the Sunni hadith collections in Arabic using [http://www.ekabakti.com ekabakti.com] and [http://hadith.al-islam.com al-Islam] and [http://www.sunnah.com sunnah.com]</ref>

===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:

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:

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).

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====

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.

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.