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Nonetheless, as knowledge of the Earth's spherical form has existed to greater or lesser degree since at least classical Greek (4th Century BCE) - even rising to the level of common knowledge among early medieval Europeans<ref>{{cite web|url= http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth&oldid=556807448|title= Myth of the Flat Earth|publisher= Wikipedia|author= |date= accessed June 12, 2013|archiveurl= http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMyth_of_the_Flat_Earth&date=2013-06-12|deadurl=no}}</ref> and with the Holy Roman Empire opting to use an orb to represent the spherical Earth from as early as 395 CE<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Globus_cruciger&oldid=312872920 Globus cruciger] - Wikipedia, accessed September 9, 2009</ref>  - it has been frequently argued in recent times that early Islamic scholars and indeed scripture itself supported the spherical-earth model, although evidence for these claims is lacking.
Nonetheless, as knowledge of the Earth's spherical form has existed to greater or lesser degree since at least classical Greek (4th Century BCE) - even rising to the level of common knowledge among early medieval Europeans<ref>{{cite web|url= http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth&oldid=556807448|title= Myth of the Flat Earth|publisher= Wikipedia|author= |date= accessed June 12, 2013|archiveurl= http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMyth_of_the_Flat_Earth&date=2013-06-12|deadurl=no}}</ref> and with the Holy Roman Empire opting to use an orb to represent the spherical Earth from as early as 395 CE<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Globus_cruciger&oldid=312872920 Globus cruciger] - Wikipedia, accessed September 9, 2009</ref>  - it has been frequently argued in recent times that early Islamic scholars and indeed scripture itself supported the spherical-earth model, although evidence for these claims is lacking.
==Scholars' perspectives==


== Greek and Indian astronomical knowledge ==
Ptolemy’s Almagest was translated into Arabic in the 8<sup>th</sup> century CE after the Qur’an was completed. Ptolemy recorded in book five of his AlMagest in the mid-2<sup>nd</sup> century CE the discovery of Hipparchus, and of Aristarchus before him, that the sun is much larger than the earth and much more distant than the moon, and the Aristotelian view that Earth was spherical and the heavens were celestial spheres.<ref>Toomer, G. J., Ptolemy and his Greek predecessors, In Astronomy Before the Telescope, Ed. Christopher Walker, p.86, London: British Museum Press, 1996</ref>
Professor Kevin Van Bladel says:
{{Quote||When the worldview of educated Muslims after the establishment of the Arab Empire came to incorporate principles of astrology including the geocentric, spherical, Aristotelian-Ptolemaic world picture – particularly after the advent of the ‘Abbāsid dynasty in 750 – the meaning of these passages came to be interpreted in later Islamic tradition not according to the biblical-quranic cosmology, which became obsolete, but according to the Ptolemaic model, according to which the Quran itself came to be interpreted.<ref>Van Bladel, Kevin, “Heavenly cords and prophetic authority in the Qur’an and its Late Antique context”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 70:223-246, p.241, Cambridge University Press, 2007</ref>}}
Earlier in the same paper, Van Bladel describes how Christian theologians in the region of Syria in the sixth century CE shared the view that the Earth was flat and the heaven, or series of heavens was like a dome or tent above the Earth, based on their reading of the Hebrew and New Testament scriptures. This was a rival view to that of the churchmen of Alexandria who supported the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic view of a spherical Earth surrounded by spinning celestial spheres. See the footnote below<ref name="KVB">ibid. pp.224-226. Here are some more excerpts:
<BR>
{{Quote||Entering into the debate was John Philoponus, a Christian philosopher of sixth-century Alexandria, who wrote his commentary on Genesis to prove, against earlier, Antiochene, theologians like Theodore of Mopsuestia, that the scriptural account of creation described a spherical geocentric world in accord with the Ptolemaic cosmology. [...]
On the other hand, Cosmas Indicopleustes wrote his contentious ''Christian Topography'' in the 540s and 550s to prove that the spherical, geocentric world-picture of the erroneous, pagan Hellenes contradicted that of the Hebrew prophets. Cosmas was an Alexandrian with sympathies towards the Church of the East, who had travelled through the Red Sea to east Africa, Iran, and India, and who received instruction from the East Syrian churchman Mār Abā on the latter's visit to Egypt. His ''Christian topography'' has been shown to be aimed directly at John Philoponus and the Hellenic, spherical world-model he supported. [...] However, it is clear that Cosmas was going against the opinions of his educated though, as he saw it, misguided contemporaries in Alexandria.
A  number  of  Syrian  churchmen, notably but not only the Easterners working in the tradition of Theodore of Mopsuestia, took the view of the sky as an edifice for granted. Narsai d. ''c''. 503), the first head of the school of Nisibis, in his homilies on creation, described God's fashioning of the firmament of heaven in these terms: "Like a roof upon the top of the house he stretched out the firmament / that the house below, the domain of earth, might be complete". ''ayk taṭlîlâ l-baytâ da-l-tḥēt mtaḥ la-rqî῾â I d-nehwê mamlâ dûkkat ar῾â l-baytâ da-l῾el''. Also "He finished building the heaven and earth as a spacious house" ''šaklel wa-bnâ šmayyâ w-ar῾â baytâ rwîḥâ''. Jacob of Serugh (d. 521) wrote similarly on the shape of the world in his Hexaemeron homilies. A further witness to the discussion is a Syriac hymn, composed ''c.'' 543-554, describing a domed church in Edessa as a microcosm of the world, its dome being the counterpart of the sky. This is the earliest known text to make a church edifice to be a microcosm, and it shows  that  the debates over cosmology were meaningful to more than a small number of theologians.}}
</ref> for excerpts of that chapter, which he summarizes by saying:
{{Quote||Clearly the Ptolemaic cosmology was not taken for granted in the Aramaean part of Asia in the sixth century. It was, rather, controversial.}}
David A. King writes:
{{Quote||The Arabs of the Arabian peninsula before Islam possessed a simple yet developed astronomical folklore of a practical nature. This involved a knowledge of the risings and settings of stars, associated in particular with the cosmical setting of groups of stars and simultaneous heliacal risings of others, which marked the beginning of periods called naw’, plural anwā’. […] Ptolemy’s Almagest was translated at least five times in the late eighth and ninth centuries. The first was a translation into Syriac and the others into Arabic, the first two under Caliph al-Ma’mūn in the middle of the first half of the ninth century, and the other two (the second an improvement of the first) towards the end of that century […] In this way Greek planetary models, uranometry and mathematical methods came to the attention of the Muslims.<ref>King, David A., “Islamic Astronomy”, In Astronomy Before the Telescope, Ed. Christopher Walker, p.86, London: British Museum Press, 1996</ref>}}
Hoskin and Gingerich say:
{{Quote||In 762 [Muhammad’s] successors in the Middle East founded a new capital, Baghdad, by the river Tigris at the point of nearest approach of the Euphrates, and within reach of the Christian physicians of Jundishapur. Members of the Baghdad court called on them for advice, and these encounters opened the eyes of prominent Muslims to the existence of a legacy of intellectual treasures from Antiquity - most of which were preserved in manuscripts lying in distant libraries and written in a foreign tongue. Harun al-Rashid (caliph from 786) and his successors sent agents to the Byzantine empire to buy Greek manuscripts, and early in the ninth century a translation centre, the House of Wisdom, was established in Baghdad by the Caliph al-Ma’mun. […] Long before translations began, a rich tradition of folk astronomy already existed in the Arabian peninsula. This merged with the view of the heavens in Islamic commentaries and treatises, to create a simple cosmology based on the actual appearances of the sky and unsupported by any underlying theory.<ref>Hoskin, Michael and Gingerich, Owen, “Islamic Astronomy” in The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy, Ed. M. Hoskin, p.50-52, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999</ref>}}
==Muslim scholars' perspectives==
Knowledge of the spherical nature of the Earth existed, at the very least, for nearly a millennium prior to the emergence of [[Islam]] in the 7th century. However, due to the non-uniform distribution of knowledge across the world and the pervasive assumption of a flat-Earth in Islamic scriptures, it is widely held that Muhammad and his [[companions]] were almost certainly ignorant of the matter. In the absence of explicit and authentic formulations from [[Muhammad]] and his companions on the topic, however, full confidence is impossible and modern inquirers are left to infer the cosmology of the earliest Muslims on the basis of indirect scriptural allusions. Such allusions are plenty and uniformly point to the assumption of a flat-Earth.  
Knowledge of the spherical nature of the Earth existed, at the very least, for nearly a millennium prior to the emergence of [[Islam]] in the 7th century. However, due to the non-uniform distribution of knowledge across the world and the pervasive assumption of a flat-Earth in Islamic scriptures, it is widely held that Muhammad and his [[companions]] were almost certainly ignorant of the matter. In the absence of explicit and authentic formulations from [[Muhammad]] and his companions on the topic, however, full confidence is impossible and modern inquirers are left to infer the cosmology of the earliest Muslims on the basis of indirect scriptural allusions. Such allusions are plenty and uniformly point to the assumption of a flat-Earth.  


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Al-Qurtubi (d. 671 AH / 1273 CE), another prominent exegete, maintains that the Earth is shaped like a ball in his commentary on {{Quran|13|3}}.<ref>[https://www.altafsir.com/Tafasir.asp?tMadhNo=0&tTafsirNo=5&tSoraNo=13&tAyahNo=3&tDisplay=yes&UserProfile=0&LanguageId=1 altafsir.com] - Tafsir al-Qurtubi for verse 13:3</ref>
Al-Qurtubi (d. 671 AH / 1273 CE), another prominent exegete, maintains that the Earth is shaped like a ball in his commentary on {{Quran|13|3}}.<ref>[https://www.altafsir.com/Tafasir.asp?tMadhNo=0&tTafsirNo=5&tSoraNo=13&tAyahNo=3&tDisplay=yes&UserProfile=0&LanguageId=1 altafsir.com] - Tafsir al-Qurtubi for verse 13:3</ref>


=== Ibn Taymiyyah (d.1328) ===
===Ibn Taymiyyah (d.1328)===
In one oft-cited work, [[Ibn Taymiyyah]] (d. 728 AH / 1328 CE) references Abu’l-Husayn Ahmad ibn Ja‘far ibn al Munadi as saying that the scholars from the second level of the companions of Imam Ahmad (d. 241 AH / 855 CE) – i.e. the early Hanbalis – maintained there was consensus among the scholars that both heaven and Earth are balls, the latter consensus being based on astronomical reasoning. However, this evidence does not help determine earlier beliefs, since from the 8th century CE onwards, Muslims had access to Greek and Indian astronomical scholarship, which had already come to learn of the Earth's spherical form (see below). The term 'consensus' ([[Daleel#Ijma .28.D8.A5.D8.AC.D9.85.D8.A7.D8.B9.29|ijma]]) has been used in different ways by different scholars, but essentially means the agreement of Muslim scholars, or, ideally, also of the [[Salaf al-Salih (Pious Predecessors)|salaf]] (the first generations of Muslims)<ref>[http://www.sunnah.org/fiqh/ijma.htm sunnah.org] Questions on Ijma` (concensus), Taqlid (following qualified opinion), and Ikhtilaf Al-Fuqaha' (differences of the jurists) by Shaykh Hisham Muhammad Kabbani</ref>. In this case, it is used to claim the consensus of the scholars, not that of the salaf, and certainly not that of Muhammad and his companions.
In one oft-cited work, [[Ibn Taymiyyah]] (d. 728 AH / 1328 CE) references Abu’l-Husayn Ahmad ibn Ja‘far ibn al Munadi as saying that the scholars from the second level of the companions of Imam Ahmad (d. 241 AH / 855 CE) – i.e. the early Hanbalis – maintained there was consensus among the scholars that both heaven and Earth are balls, the latter consensus being based on astronomical reasoning. However, this evidence does not help determine earlier beliefs, since from the 8th century CE onwards, Muslims had access to Greek and Indian astronomical scholarship, which had already come to learn of the Earth's spherical form (see below). The term 'consensus' ([[Daleel#Ijma .28.D8.A5.D8.AC.D9.85.D8.A7.D8.B9.29|ijma]]) has been used in different ways by different scholars, but essentially means the agreement of Muslim scholars, or, ideally, also of the [[Salaf al-Salih (Pious Predecessors)|salaf]] (the first generations of Muslims)<ref>[http://www.sunnah.org/fiqh/ijma.htm sunnah.org] Questions on Ijma` (concensus), Taqlid (following qualified opinion), and Ikhtilaf Al-Fuqaha' (differences of the jurists) by Shaykh Hisham Muhammad Kabbani</ref>. In this case, it is used to claim the consensus of the scholars, not that of the salaf, and certainly not that of Muhammad and his companions.


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The word "sutihat" in {{Quran|88|20}} [[Flat Earth and the Quran#Qur.27an 88:20 - sutihat .28spread out flat.29|means "laid out flat"]].
The word "sutihat" in {{Quran|88|20}} [[Flat Earth and the Quran#Qur.27an 88:20 - sutihat .28spread out flat.29|means "laid out flat"]].
==Acquisition of Greek and Indian astronomical knowledge==
Ptolemy’s Almagest was translated into Arabic in the 8<sup>th</sup> century CE after the Qur’an was completed. Ptolemy recorded in book five of his AlMagest in the mid-2<sup>nd</sup> century CE the discovery of Hipparchus, and of Aristarchus before him, that the sun is much larger than the earth and much more distant than the moon, and the Aristotelian view that Earth was spherical and the heavens were celestial spheres.<ref>Toomer, G. J., Ptolemy and his Greek predecessors, In Astronomy Before the Telescope, Ed. Christopher Walker, p.86, London: British Museum Press, 1996</ref>
Professor Kevin Van Bladel says:
{{Quote||When the worldview of educated Muslims after the establishment of the Arab Empire came to incorporate principles of astrology including the geocentric, spherical, Aristotelian-Ptolemaic world picture – particularly after the advent of the ‘Abbāsid dynasty in 750 – the meaning of these passages came to be interpreted in later Islamic tradition not according to the biblical-quranic cosmology, which became obsolete, but according to the Ptolemaic model, according to which the Quran itself came to be interpreted.<ref>Van Bladel, Kevin, “Heavenly cords and prophetic authority in the Qur’an and its Late Antique context”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 70:223-246, p.241, Cambridge University Press, 2007</ref>}}
Earlier in the same paper, Van Bladel describes how Christian theologians in the region of Syria in the sixth century CE shared the view that the Earth was flat and the heaven, or series of heavens was like a dome or tent above the Earth, based on their reading of the Hebrew and New Testament scriptures. This was a rival view to that of the churchmen of Alexandria who supported the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic view of a spherical Earth surrounded by spinning celestial spheres. See the footnote below<ref name="KVB">ibid. pp.224-226. Here are some more excerpts:
<BR>
{{Quote||Entering into the debate was John Philoponus, a Christian philosopher of sixth-century Alexandria, who wrote his commentary on Genesis to prove, against earlier, Antiochene, theologians like Theodore of Mopsuestia, that the scriptural account of creation described a spherical geocentric world in accord with the Ptolemaic cosmology. [...]
On the other hand, Cosmas Indicopleustes wrote his contentious ''Christian Topography'' in the 540s and 550s to prove that the spherical, geocentric world-picture of the erroneous, pagan Hellenes contradicted that of the Hebrew prophets. Cosmas was an Alexandrian with sympathies towards the Church of the East, who had travelled through the Red Sea to east Africa, Iran, and India, and who received instruction from the East Syrian churchman Mār Abā on the latter's visit to Egypt. His ''Christian topography'' has been shown to be aimed directly at John Philoponus and the Hellenic, spherical world-model he supported. [...] However, it is clear that Cosmas was going against the opinions of his educated though, as he saw it, misguided contemporaries in Alexandria.
A  number  of  Syrian  churchmen, notably but not only the Easterners working in the tradition of Theodore of Mopsuestia, took the view of the sky as an edifice for granted. Narsai d. ''c''. 503), the first head of the school of Nisibis, in his homilies on creation, described God's fashioning of the firmament of heaven in these terms: "Like a roof upon the top of the house he stretched out the firmament / that the house below, the domain of earth, might be complete". ''ayk taṭlîlâ l-baytâ da-l-tḥēt mtaḥ la-rqî῾â I d-nehwê mamlâ dûkkat ar῾â l-baytâ da-l῾el''. Also "He finished building the heaven and earth as a spacious house" ''šaklel wa-bnâ šmayyâ w-ar῾â baytâ rwîḥâ''. Jacob of Serugh (d. 521) wrote similarly on the shape of the world in his Hexaemeron homilies. A further witness to the discussion is a Syriac hymn, composed ''c.'' 543-554, describing a domed church in Edessa as a microcosm of the world, its dome being the counterpart of the sky. This is the earliest known text to make a church edifice to be a microcosm, and it shows  that  the debates over cosmology were meaningful to more than a small number of theologians.}}
</ref> for excerpts of that chapter, which he summarizes by saying:
{{Quote||Clearly the Ptolemaic cosmology was not taken for granted in the Aramaean part of Asia in the sixth century. It was, rather, controversial.}}
David A. King writes:
{{Quote||The Arabs of the Arabian peninsula before Islam possessed a simple yet developed astronomical folklore of a practical nature. This involved a knowledge of the risings and settings of stars, associated in particular with the cosmical setting of groups of stars and simultaneous heliacal risings of others, which marked the beginning of periods called naw’, plural anwā’. […] Ptolemy’s Almagest was translated at least five times in the late eighth and ninth centuries. The first was a translation into Syriac and the others into Arabic, the first two under Caliph al-Ma’mūn in the middle of the first half of the ninth century, and the other two (the second an improvement of the first) towards the end of that century […] In this way Greek planetary models, uranometry and mathematical methods came to the attention of the Muslims.<ref>King, David A., “Islamic Astronomy”, In Astronomy Before the Telescope, Ed. Christopher Walker, p.86, London: British Museum Press, 1996</ref>}}
Hoskin and Gingerich say:
{{Quote||In 762 [Muhammad’s] successors in the Middle East founded a new capital, Baghdad, by the river Tigris at the point of nearest approach of the Euphrates, and within reach of the Christian physicians of Jundishapur. Members of the Baghdad court called on them for advice, and these encounters opened the eyes of prominent Muslims to the existence of a legacy of intellectual treasures from Antiquity - most of which were preserved in manuscripts lying in distant libraries and written in a foreign tongue. Harun al-Rashid (caliph from 786) and his successors sent agents to the Byzantine empire to buy Greek manuscripts, and early in the ninth century a translation centre, the House of Wisdom, was established in Baghdad by the Caliph al-Ma’mun. […] Long before translations began, a rich tradition of folk astronomy already existed in the Arabian peninsula. This merged with the view of the heavens in Islamic commentaries and treatises, to create a simple cosmology based on the actual appearances of the sky and unsupported by any underlying theory.<ref>Hoskin, Michael and Gingerich, Owen, “Islamic Astronomy” in The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy, Ed. M. Hoskin, p.50-52, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999</ref>}}


==Flat Earth in the Hadiths==
==Flat Earth in the Hadiths==
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*[http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Science/earth_egg.html Is the Earth Egg-Shaped?] ''- Answering Islam''
*[http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Science/earth_egg.html Is the Earth Egg-Shaped?] ''- Answering Islam''
*[http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fislammonitor.org%2Findex.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D1382%26Itemid%3D63&date=2011-03-26 The Earth is Flat] - ''Islam Monitor''
*[http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fislammonitor.org%2Findex.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D1382%26Itemid%3D63&date=2011-03-26 The Earth is Flat] - ''Islam Monitor''
*[{{Reference archive|1=http://www.islam-watch.org/SujitDas/MuslimGenius.htm|2=2011-03-26}} A Tribute to a Muslim Genius (Sheik Abdul-Aziz Ibn Baaz)] ''- [[Islam Watch]]''


*[http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Science/seven_earths.html The Seven Earths] - Answering Islam
*[http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Science/seven_earths.html The Seven Earths] - Answering Islam
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