Early Islamic Cosmology: Difference between revisions

The solitary piece of evidence that Ibn Taymiyyah brings from the companions about round heavens is that ibn 'Abbas and others said regarding {{Quran|36|40}} and the heavenly bodies swimming in a falak (rounded course):  

fee falka, ka-falkati almighzal

See the comments and footnotes about falak in the article [http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Geocentrism_and_the_Quran Geocentrism and the Quran] (a whirl was a small wheel or hemisphere that span around a spindle<ref>الفَلَكُ falak - [http://www.studyquran.org/LaneLexicon/Volume6/00000228.pdf Lane's Lexicon] Volume 1 page 2444. See also the [http://www.studyquran.org/LaneLexicon/Volume6/00000227.pdf previous page]. Lane says that the falak was generally imagined as a celestial hemisphere by the Arabs, but also that the Arab astronomers applied the term to seven spheres for the sun, moon, and the five visible planets, rotating about the celestial pole. This must reflect the post-Qur'anic influence of Ptolemy, whose astronomical work was translated for the Arabs from the 8th century onwards.</ref>). Now given that the sun and moon appear both to arc across the sky, even to those who imagined the Earth was flat and the heavens a dome (or a sphere), such people would also imagine some path for them continuing beneath the Earth after they have set so they can return whence they came (as also in the hadith from Abu Dharr discussed later in this article). Indeed, this is precisely what we read from ibn 'Abbas as noted by ibn Kathir in his Tafsir for {{Quran|31|29}}. The sun runs in its falak (فَلَكهَا) in the sky / heaven (السَّمَاء) during the day, and when it sets it runs during the night (بِاللَّيْلِ - omitted from the translation) in its falak beneath the Earth until it rises from its rising place (من مشرقها - mistranslated below as "in the east")<ref>See [https://www.altafsir.com/Tafasir.asp?tMadhNo=0&tTafsirNo=7&tSoraNo=31&tAyahNo=29&tDisplay=yes&UserProfile=0&LanguageId=1 altafsir.com] for the Arabic</ref>

The evidence from the companions presented by ibn Taymiyyah about the shape of the heavens is therefore ambiguous, and says nothing directly nor indirectly about the shape of the Earth.

The other hadith he mentions is in Sahih Bukhari, which says:

Ibn Taymiyyah then says that a middle only exists in a round thing. How any of this helps demonstrate that the heavens are spherical is a mystery.

Even the already dubious claims of just a ''scholarly'' consensus are further undermined when we read Tafsir al-Jalalayn, which was written centuries later by two people who were not trying to massage the Qur'an to fit a round Earth reality. For {{Quran|88|20}} we read the following:  

For details on this word, sutihat, in verse 88:20, see [[Flat Earth and the Quran#Qur.27an 88:20 - sutihat .28spread out flat.29|this section]] of the flat Earth article.