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?===

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:

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===

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==

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====

{{Quote||Abu Dharr said: I was sitting behind the Apostle of Allah who was riding a donkey while the sun was setting. He asked: Do you know where this sets? I replied: Allah and his Apostle know best. He said: It sets in a spring of warm water.<ref>Kitab Al-Ahruf Wa Al-Qira’at [Book of Dialects and Readings Of The Qur’an], Chapter 1498, p. 1120 in Prof. Ahmad Hasan (trans.), Sunan Abu Dawud – English Translation With Explanatory Notes, Volume III. Chapters 1338-1890, XXV, hadith 3991, Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1984 quoted in [http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/shamoun/mhmd_on_sunset.html Muhammad and the Sun’s Setting Place] - Sam Shamoun, Answering Islam</ref> [The references section includes a link to the Arabic<ref>For the Arabic, see #4002 [http://hadith.al-islam.com/Page.aspx?pageid=192&TOCID=1520&BookID=28&PID=3490 here] and for the Arabic, English, and grading by al-Albani, see [http://sunnah.com/abudawud/32/34 here]</ref>]}}

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

{{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>}}

====A close similarity with the Syriac legend about Alexander the Great====

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.

{{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.

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

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