Cosmography in Early Kalām (Prof. Anchassi)

Article

1. In 219/834 Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855) was hauled before the caliphal confidante Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm (d. 235/850) for interrogation (i.e., miḥna) (see Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, The History of al-Ṭabarī, vol. 32: The Reunification of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate, tr. C. E. Bosworth (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987), 199; J. A. Nawas, Al-Maʾmūn, the Inquisition, and the Quest for Caliphal Authority (Atlanta: Lockwood Press, 2015), 59–60). Shown “an image of the heavens and the earth and other such things,” Ibn Ḥanbal responded with confusion. “I know nothing about it,” he protested, “I do not know what this is (mā adrī mā hādhā)” (Ḥanbal b. Isḥāq (d. 273/886), Dhikr miḥnat al-imām Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, ed. M. Naghash (Cairo: Dār Nashr al-Thaqāfa, 1403h), 42; idem, Kitāb al-Miḥna, ed. A. al-Ḥanbalī and M. al-Qabbānī (Riyadh: Markaz al-Malik Fayṣal, 1440/2019), 96–97). It is not clear why cosmography—ideas concerning the physical structure of the cosmos—featured in this reported encounter between theological “rationalism” and “traditionalism” (On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s Fayṣal al-Tafriqa Bayna al-Islām wa al-Zandaqa (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002), 19–29).
2. We also know that this period marked the apogee of the Translation Movement, which brought the corpus of late ancient learning, including astronomy, into Arabic (D. Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The GrecoArabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ʿAbbāsid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th Centuries), pp. 166–175). One wonders which vision of the cosmos Ibn Ḥanbal’s Muʿtazili persecutors subscribed to, traditionalist or Aristotelian-Ptolemaic (J. F. Ragep, “Islamic Culture and the Natural Sciences,” in The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 2: Medieval Science, ed. D. C. Lindberg and M. H. Shank (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013), 27). Later sources suggest that the rationalist mutakallimūn (exponents of kalām, dialectic theology) were typically hostile to the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic “science of the stars” (ʿilm al-nujūm), an amalgam of astrology and astronomy for much of this period. On the general hostility of the mutakallimūn toward astrology, see: R.G. Morrison, “Discussions of Astrology in Early Tafsīr,” JQS 11.2 (2009): 49–71, at 60–62 (for exceptions, see p. 60). On the emergence of the distinction between astronomy and astrology, see ibid., 49; idem, “Cosmography, Cosmology, and Kalām from Samarqand to Istanbul,” IHIW (online December 2020): 308–37, at 308–9. For the earliest known example of a work of astronomy proper, shorn of astrological elements, see Y. Mahdavi, “ʾAbū Saʿīd al-Siǧzī and the ‘Structure of the Orbs’, the Earliest Known Work on Hayʾa,” ASP 31.1 (2021): 45–94, at 71. For one early Muʿtazili critique of astrology, see Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī (attrib.), Kitāb al-Maqālāt, ed. Ö. Şimşek, A. İ. Sarıca, and Y. Arıkaner (Istanbul: Endülüs, 2020), 300. The thrust of the critique is that astrologers are incapable of benefiting from their supposed knowledge of the future (“most of them die of hunger, thirst, and poverty”). Cf. Ibn Ṭāwūs (d. 664/1266), Faraj al-mahmūm fī tārīkh ʿulamāʾ al-nujūm (Qom: Manshūrāt al-Riḍā, 1363h), 154–57.
3. This system had long been established as the regnant “scientific” paradigm in the Near East (See K. van Bladel, “Heavenly Cords and Prophetic Authority in the Quran and Its Late Antique Context,” BSOAS 70.2 (2007): 223–46, at 225–26; D. Janos, “Qurʾānic Cosmography in Its Historical Perspective: Some Notes on the Formation of a Religious Worldview,” Religion 42.2 (2012): 215–31, at 223; J. E. Wright, The Early History of Heaven (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000), 139–40; T. Tesei, “Some Cosmological Notions from Late Antiquity in Q 18:60–65: The Quran in Light of Its Cultural Context,” JAOS 135.1 (2015): 19–32, at 31). Only a minority of Christians seem to have accepted the Hebraic cosmography in this period. We are relatively well informed about the traditionalist cosmography and its sources, but know far less about the relevant views of the mutakallimūn (See also M. A. Tabatabaʾi and S. Mirsadri, “The Qurʾānic Cosmology, as an Identity in Itself,” Arabica 63.3–4 (2016): 201–34, at 202; Janos, “Qurʾānic Cosmography,” 215).
4. Physical structure of the heavens and the earth as discussed by rationalist theologians (mostly Basran and Baghdad Muʿtazilis, Ashʿaris, and Maturidis) (Dhanani, Physical Theory, 6). For the purposes of this article, the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmography is the view that the earth is an immobile sphere, nestled in the center of a series of concentric celestial orbs or shells. The precise number of orbs or shells, and the exact nature of their interaction, along with much else, was the subject of considerable disagreement among Aristotle and Ptolemy’s interpreters and interlocutors in later centuries, Muslim or otherwise (Ibn al-Malāḥimī, Kitāb al-Muʿtamad fī uṣūl al-dīn, ed. W. Madelung (Tehran: Mīrāth-i Maktūb, 2012), 647). As Ibn al-Malāḥimī (d. 536/1142) tartly observes, “they have no doctrine but that they disagree about it”. Notwithstanding their divergences, however, they “were in agreement with regard to the sphericity of the Earth and its position at the center of the universe, as well as the sphericity and the circular motion of the heavens” (P. Omodeo and I. Tupikova, “Cosmology and Epistemology: A Comparison between Aristotle’s and Ptolemy’s Approaches to Geocentrism,” in Spatial Thinking and External Representation: Towards a Historical Epistemology of Space, ed. M. Schemmel (Berlin: Pro Business Digital Printing, 2016), 145–74, at 146). https:// www.mprl-series.mpg.de/studies/8/index.html. For Aristotle’s views, see: “On the Heavens,” in The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. J. Barnes, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1984), 1: 447–511. For a useful summary of the views of Aristotle and Ptolemy and the differences between them, see E. Grant, “Cosmology,” in Lindberg and Shank, Medieval Science, 436–55, at 443–45.
5. These fundamental features of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic paradigm remained stable down to modernity. The defence of the immobility of the earth in three treatises of Aḥmad Riḍā Khān (d. 1921), Fatāwā Riḍawiyya, ed. R. Yash, 30 vols. (Lahore: Jāmiʿa Niẓamiyya Riḍawiyya, n.d.), 27: 195–382. This cosmography espoused by Muslim advocates of ʿilm al-nujūm in the period surveyed is the alternative against which traditionalists defined themselves, as shall become clear. The traditionalist cosmography, to which I devote a separate section below, consists of belief in a flat earth, beneath which are a further six earths. Instead of the celestial spheres of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmography, there is a series of seven heavens (either domed or vaulted), above which is God’s throne (ʿarsh). What lies beneath the seventh and lowermost earth was, in the traditionalist corpus, subject to considerable disagreement. Nonetheless, the basic features of the traditionalist cosmography permit one to refer to it as a single model, or paradigm, since it remains remarkably stable.
6. (1), the Ashʿaris are consistent in their occasionalism, which shapes their views on, e.g., the cause of the immobility (wuqūf) of the earth, and (2), the Maturidis are not “genetically” or geographically linked to the other three major schools, and are therefore typically less interested in exploring questions of cosmography in a kalām context. The Baghdad and Basran Muʿtazilis, along with the Ashʿaris (and unlike the Maturidis), “are not only geographically proximate to each other [. . .] they are genetically linked” (Dhanani, Physical Theory, 6). On Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) and his school, see: U. Rudolph, Al-Māturīdī and the Development of Sunnī Theology in Samarqand, tr. R. Adem (Leiden: Brill, 2015). Although Rudolph emphasizes the (mostly negative) influence of the Baghdad Muʿtazili Abū al-Qāsim al-Kaʿbī (d. 319/931) on the theology of al-Māturīdī (pp. 158–59), there remain fundamental differences between this relationship and that of al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/935f.) to the Muʿtazilis—for example, al-Māturīdī makes no reference to atomism in his Kitāb al-Tawḥīd (p. 245), an omission that would be inconceivable for al-Ashʿarī. Up to the early sixth/twelfth century there is no evidence of a trend of increasing accommodation of Greek cosmography by theologians of the four main rationalist schools. The question of the shape of the earth, for example, continued to be contested. This remained true even as the distinction between astronomy (ʿilm al-hayʾa) and astrology (aḥkām al-nujūm) emerged with greater clarity, and the former was (increasingly) shorn of metaphysical assumptions—developments that would clearly facilitate such an accommodation (e.g., Dallal, “Early Islam,” 123–24).
7. Large multivolume works such as the Quran commentary (tafsīr) of Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī (d. 303/915f.) are lost to us, surviving only in quotation (especially by later Twelver authors, because of their Muʿtazili commitments). For partial reconstructions based on surviving fragments, see: Tafsīr Abī ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī, ed. K. M. Nabhā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1428/2007); D. Gimaret, Une lecture muʿtazilite du Coran: Le Tafsīr d’Abū ʿAlī al-Djubbāʾī (m. 303/915) partiellement reconstitué à partir de ces citateurs (Louvain: Peeters, 1995); R. W. Gwynne, “The Tafsīr of Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī: First Steps Toward a Reconstruction with Texts, Translation, Biographical Introduction and Analytical Essay” (PhD diss., Univ. of Washington, 1982). Gimaret’s reconstruction is the most comprehensive, drawing on the broadest range of sources. On the appropriation (and citation) of Muʿtazili tafsīr texts by Twelver Shiʿa, see S. A. Mourad, “The Survival of the Muʿtazila Tradition of Qurʾanic Exegesis in Shīʿī and Sunnī tafāsīr,” JQS 12.1–2 (2010): 83–108, at 84–86; on the adoption of Muʿtazili theology by Twelver Shiʿa, see H. Ansari and S. Schmidtke, “The Twelver Šīʿī Reception of Muʿtazilism,” in eidem, Studies in Medieval Islamic Intellectual Traditions (Atlanta: Lockwood Press, 2017), 293–309.
8. the quranic and traditionalist cosmographies
9. The provenance of quranic cosmography has long been of interest to Western scholarship, with theories that the seven heavens of Babylonian mythology were the (ultimate) source of Muslim belief on this point (C. Nallino, ʿIlm al-falak: Tārīkhuhu ʿind al-ʿarab fī al-qurūn al-wusṭā (Cairo: Maktabat al-Dār al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Kitāb, 1413/1993), 105–6; I. Hehmeyer, “The Configuration of the Heavens in Islamic Astronomy,” in Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam, ed. S. Günther and T. Lawson, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 1: 1083–98, at 1086) On possible Nestorian influence, see B. Radtke, “Persian Cosmography, Early Tafsīr, and Nestorian Exegesis,” in La science dans le monde iranien à l’époque islamique, ed. Ž. Vesel, H. Beikbaghban, and B. T. de Crussol des Espesse (Tehran: Institut Français de Recherche en Iran, 2004), 323–35, at 332), that one cannot speak of “scientific” interest in the cosmos among Muslims until more than a century after the death of the Prophet (Nallino, ʿIlm al-falak, 137–38). Ahmad Dallal states that for over a century after the rise of Islam, “Arabs had no science”; see his Islam, Science, and the Challenge of History (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2010), 10; while there is also an assertion (Tabatabaʾi and Mirsadri, “Qurʾānic Cosmology,” 223) that the heavens (excluding particular celestial bodies) hardly feature in the extant pre-Islamic Arabic poetry. A relationship between the pre-Islamic Arabian star lore of the rising and setting of asterisms (anwāʾ) and knowledge of the lunar stations (manāzil al-qamar) is doubtful (D. M. Varisco, art. Anwāʾ, EI3, online (accessed July 17, 2020); idem, “The Origin of the Anwāʾ in Arab Tradition,” Studia Islamica 74 (1991): 5–28, at 13–22).
10. The quranic cosmography has been described as scientifically “naive” (Tabatabaʾi and Mirsadri, “Qurʾānic Cosmology,” 211, 214, Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī (d. 440/1048), Alberuni’s India, tr. E. C. Sachau, 2 vols. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1910), 1: 263), containing no reflection of the late ancient debate between supporters of the biblical and Aristotelian-Ptolemaic models of the universe (Van Bladel, “Heavenly Cords,” 226. Tommaso Tesei, by contrast, holds (unpersuasively, in my view) that the Quran refers to both of the competing models, “Cosmological Notions,” 31, Angelika Neuwirth art. Cosmology, 445, E. Jachimowicz, “Islamic Cosmology,” in Ancient Cosmologies, ed. C. Blacker and M. Loewe (London: Allen and Unwin, 1975), 143–55, at 148, A. Heinen, art. Samāʾ, EI2, 8: 1014–18, at 1015), but “evidently already familiar in its rough outline to the ancient peoples of the Near East” (M. Jarrar, art. Heaven and Sky, EQ, 2: 410–12, at 412. On this point, see J. P. Monferrer-Sala, “Al-Baḥr al-muḥīṭ warāʾ al-samawāt wa-al-arḍ: Jewish and Christian Cosmogonic Beliefs in Early Islam,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 22 (2011): 147–60), featuring seven heavens and seven earths (Q 65:12) (Tabatabaʾi and Mirsadri, Qurʾānic Cosmology,” 211), above which is God’s throne, a solid edifice (e.g., Q 69:17) (Throne of God, EQ, 5: 276–78, at 277). There is some disagreement about the place of the kursī (“footstool,” Q 2:255) in this arrangement, or indeed whether it is a discrete physical structure at all (Cl. Huart-[J. Sadan], art. Kursī, EI2, 5: 509, Kitāb al-Tawḥīd wa-ithbāt ṣifāt al-rabb, ed. ʿA. al-Shahwān (Riyadh: Dār al-Rushd, 1408/1988), 248–49).
11. There is also some dispute about the shape of the firmament according to the Quran—are the seven heavens flat or dome-shaped (Janos, “Qurʾānic Cosmography,” 216–17; Tabatabaʾi and Mirsadri, “Qurʾānic Cosmology,” 218–19)? but the firmament itself is a solid structure, held up “without pillars that you [can] see” (bi-ghayri ʿamadin tarawnahā, Q 13:2), For the early difference of opinion on whether this meant “without pillars that you [can] see,” or “without pillars [at all],” see: l-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān, ed. ʿA. al-Turkī et al., 26 vols. (Cairo: Hijr, 1422/2001), 13: 408–11. Al-Ṭabarī himself endorses the first position (p. 411). For the late antique background of the quranic pillars, see J. Decharneux, “Maintenir le ciel en l’air « sans colonnes visibles » et quelques autres motifs de la creatio continua selon le Coran en dialogue avec les homélies de Jacques de Saroug,” Oriens Christianus 102 (2019): 237–67, at 238–43. Which prevent it from collapsing onto the earth, by God’s leave (Q 22:65). On the significance of the expression “by God’s leave (illā bi-idhnihi),” see Decharneux, “Maintenir le ciel en l’air,” 243–50.
12. Heavenly ropes or cords (e.g., Q 40:37) run along the top of this edifice, allowing it to be “traversed physically by people who arrive at them” (Van Bladel, “Heavenly Cords,” 226). Spiritual elites are thus permitted to ascend heavenward. A plain-sense reading of the quranic text renders the earth as flat (e.g., Q 88:20) (H. Toelle, art. Earth, EQ, 2: 2–5, at 2. Cf. Ḥ. al-Rāwī, Shakl al-arḍ: Dirāsa li-taṭawwur al-fikra ʿind al-ʿarab (Baghdad: Maṭbaʿat al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿIrāqī, 1382/1962), 3), and the seven flat earths are (implicitly) piled atop one another like “a stack of plates” (M. Cook, Muhammad (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986), 26). All of these details were debated by Muslims, but it is important to distinguish later opinion from the content of the Quran itself (Tabatabaʾi and Mirsadri, “Qurʾānic Cosmology,” 206). The first was the explication of quranic material on the subject. The Prophet may have done this himself, and the same may be true of Ibn ʿAbbās (d. 68/687) and his circle, among other early Muslims credited for their activities in tafsīr. Nicolai Sinai seems to accept, following Harald Motzki, that the group usually regarded as Ibn ʿAbbās’s students engaged in tafsīr. See his “The Qurʾanic Commentary of Muqātil b. Sulaymān and the Evolution of Early Tafsīr Literature,” in Tafsīr and Islamic Intellectual History: Exploring the Boundaries of a Genre, ed. A. Görke and J. Pink (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2014), 113–43, at 122, 129. Much cosmographical material is also attributed to transmitters of the so-called Isrāʾīliyyāt, 42 such as Kaʿb al-Aḥbār (d. ca. 32/652) and Wahb b. Munabbih (d. 131/748).
13. The traditionalists drew on the quranic cosmography and supplemented it in various ways. Their views are found in compilations of hadith, works of theology, and Quran commentaries, and are widely reported by geographers, historians, and encyclopaedists:  E.g., al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870), Khalq afʿāl al-ʿibād wa-l-radd ʿalā al-jahmiyya wa-aṣḥāb al-taʿṭīl, ed. F. al-Fuhayd, 2 vols. (Riyadh: Dār Aṭlas al-Khaḍrāʾ, 1425/2005), 2: 17; ʿUthmān b. Saʿīd al-Dārimī (d. 282/893), Kitāb al-Radd ʿalā al-jahmiyya, ed. G. Vitestam (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960), 8–12; Ibn Khuzayma, Kitāb al-Tawḥīd, 248–49. For a general discussion, see ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī (d. 429/1038), al-Asmāʾ wa-l-ṣifāt, ed. A. M. ʿA. al-Sharqāwī et al., 3 vols. (Damascus: Dār al-Taqwā, 1441/2020), 2: 486–98. For geographical texts (advocating the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic viewpoint and sometimes documenting the alternatives), see, e.g., for the third/ninth century, Ibn Khurradādhbih (d. ca. 280/893), al-Masālik wa-l-mamālik (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, n.d.), 4–5; for the fifth/eleventh century, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Bakrī al-Andalusī (d. 487/1094), al-Masālik wa-l-mamālik, ed. S. Ghurāb, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1992), 1: 53–57; and for the seventh/thirteenth century, Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī (d. 626/1229), Muʿjam al-buldān (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1995), 1: 16–24. See also the discussion of the translation of late ancient works into Arabic in S. M. Ahmad, A History of Arab-Islamic Geography (9–16th Century A.D.) (Amman: Al al-Bayt University, 1416/1995), 9–17. On cosmography in historical texts, see B. Radtke, Weltgeschichte und Weltbeschreibung im mittelalterlichen Islam (Beirut: Franz Steiner, 1992). I thank Christian Lange for drawing my attention to this source.
14. For examples, see al-Ṭabarī, tr. Rosenthal, 1: 217–49; Ibn Ṭāhir al-Maqdisī (fl. fourth/tenth century), Kitāb al-Badʾ wa-l-tārīkh, ed. C. Huart, 6 vols. (Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqāfa al-Dīniyya, n.d.), 1: 146–51, 2: 7–73. For cosmography in encyclopaedias, see al-Nuwayrī (d. 733/1333), Nihāyat al-arab fī funūn al-adab, ed. M. Qumayḥa et al., 33 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2004), 1: 21–64, 187–206; Ibn Faḍl Allāh al-ʿUmarī (d. 749/1349), Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār, ed. K. Salmān al-Jubūrī et al., 27 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2010), 1: 121–34. Their views are also found in specialized treatises dedicated to elaborating a “traditionbased” cosmography, including the postclassical al-Hayʾa al-saniyya of al-Suyūṭī, “the most important systematization of this worldview”. Heinen (Islamic Cosmology, 38) highlights al-Suyūṭī’s dependence on Abū al-Shaykh al-Iṣfahānī (d. 369/979) in particular: al-Hayʾa al-saniyya “owes almost every fragment to him” (M. Salmasi and F. Negahban, “Abū al-Shaykh al-Iṣfahānī,” Encyclopaedia Islamica, online (accessed July 24, 2020). The earliest work with the title Kitāb al-ʿAẓama is attributed (Heinen, Islamic Cosmology, 48) to Ibn Abī al-Dunyā (d. 281/894). Although some cosmographical data can be found in Ibn Abī al-Dunyā’s Kitāb al-Maṭar wa-l-raʿd wa-l-barq wa-l-rīḥ (see F. al-Raqqī, ed., Mawsūʿat Ibn Abī al-Dunyā, 7 vols. (Riyadh: Dār Aṭlas al-Khaḍrāʾ, 1433/2012), 5: 537–85).
15. For example, the traditionalists usually stipulate a distance of five hundred years’ travel between each of the seven heavens and the seven earths, a view that seems to be of Jewish provenance (Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, ed. ʿA. M. Shiḥāta, 5 vols. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Tārīkh al-ʿArabī, 1423/2002), 1: 213; 4: 389, 679). For an interpretation of the “five hundred years” hadith, see (Heinen, Islamic Cosmology, 88–94). For the Jewish provenance of this figure, (see L. Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, tr. H. Szold, 7 vols. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1909–38), 1: 11; for the references, 5: 13). For the hadith itself, see (Musnad Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, ed. S. al-Arnaʾūṭ et al., 50 vols. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, n.d.), 3: 292–93, al-Iṣfahānī, Kitāb al-ʿAẓama, 3: 1047). Other hadith suggest lesser distances, and in the third century traditionalist theologians made attempts to reconcile these divergences. For variants, where the distance between the heavens is given as seventy-one, seventy-two, or seventy-three years, see: Sunan Abī Dāwūd, ed. S. al-Arnaʾūṭ, M. K. Qurahbalalī, and ʿA. Ḥ. Allāh, 7 vols. (Damascus: Dār al-Risāla al-ʿĀlamiyya, 1430/2009), 7: 105; Sunan al-Tirmidhī, ed. B. ʿA. Maʿrūf, 6 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1996), 5: 348–49; al-Iṣfahānī, Kitāb al-ʿAẓama, 3: 1051. Reconciling the divergent reports, Ibn Khuzayma (Kitāb al-Tawḥīd, 250) writes that “the [pace of] travel varies; similarly, the pace of riding animals such as horses, camels, mules and donkeys [. . .] also varies.” See also L. Holtzman and M. Ovadia, “On Divine Aboveness (alFawqiyya): The Development of Rationalized Ḥadīth-Based Argumentations in Islamic Theology,” in Rationalization in Religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, ed. Y. Friedmann and C. Markschies (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 224–69, at 232–33.
16. The throne also was a subject particularly dear to the traditionalists’ hearts (l-Dārimī, Kitāb al-Radd, 8–12 (also pp. 25–28 of introd.); al-Iṣfahānī, Kitāb al-ʿAẓama, 2: 543–665). It raised the question of the locus of God, whom they insisted was above the heavens, in contradistinction to a range of theological opponents. The followers (the so-called Jahmiyya) of Jahm b. Ṣafwān (d. 128/745f.)—the “first Muslim ‘theologian’ in the full and proper sense” (C. Schöck, “Jahm b. Ṣafwān (d. 128/745-6) and the ‘Jahmiyya’ and Ḍirār b. ʿAmr (d. 200/815),” in Schmidtke, Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology, 55–80)—seem to have been the first to doubt this, probably under non-Muslim influence (Al-Bukhārī, Khalq afʿāl al-ʿibād, 2: 17–18). On the sources of Jahmi theology, see: Schöck, “Jahm,” 56–58; Y. Kazi, Maqālāt al-Jahm b. Ṣafwān wa-atharuhā fī al-firaq al-islāmiyya, 2 vols. (Riyadh: Aḍwāʾ al-Salaf, 1426/2005). I thank Yasir Kazi for kindly sending me a copy of his book, and for a discussion of Jahm’s theology. On the Sumaniyya generally, see G. Monnot, art. Sumaniyya, EI2, 9: 869–70.
17. Various hadith add further detail to our knowledge of the heavenly realm, including the existence of a cosmic animal (such as the fish, ḥūt) and sometimes transmogrified angels, who support the throne and keep the (flat) earth anchored in place, in some versions of the traditionalist account. For a defense of the hadith, see: Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), Majmūʿ al-fatāwā, ed. ʿA. b. M. b. Qāsim, 35 vols. (Medina: Maṭbaʿat al-Malik Fahd, 1416h), 3: 192–93 (I thank Mohammad Abu Shareea for bringing this discussion to my attention); Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 1: 213; al-Iṣfahānī, Kitāb al-ʿAẓama, 3: 948–71 (on the bearers of the throne). On different solutions to the problem of what rested below the earth (the details differ considerably), see Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 4: 403; Heinen, Islamic Cosmology, 140, 143–45. On the cosmic fish (ḥūt), see, e.g., al-Iṣfahānī, Kitāb al-ʿAẓama, 4: 1393–418. Michael Cook (Muhammad, 26) remarks that “the whole structure is said to have posed serious underpinning problems, to which colourful solutions were found.” See also al-Ashʿarī, Maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn wa-ikhtilāf al-muṣallīn, ed. H. Ritter (Beirut: al-Maʿhad al-Almānī li-l-Abḥāth al-Sharqiyya, 1426/1980), 210–12. There was also occasional discussion of the Milky Way, no later than the third Islamic century (reporting much earlier material) (A. Eckart, “Ibn Raḥīq’s Text on the Milky Way: Perception of the Milky Way in the Early Islamic Society,” ASP 29 (2019): 227–60; idem, “Use of the Galaxy as a Tool for Spatial and Temporal Orientation during the Early Islamic Period and up to the 15th Century,” ASP 31 (2021): 1–44). The earth was understood to be encircled by a mountain range, Qāf (Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 4: 109, M. Streck and A. Miquel, art. Ḳāf, EI2, 4: 400–402; al-Iṣfahānī, Kitāb al-ʿAẓama, 4: 1484–92).
18. The six subterranean earths were depicted either as worlds unto themselves or, not infrequently, as layers of hell (Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 4: 368; Jachimowicz, “Islamic Cosmology,” 147; al-Iṣfahānī, Kitāb al-ʿAẓama, 4: 1378–92). Paradise was located immediately beneath God’s throne (C. Lange, Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2016), 131). The traditionalist cosmography, broadly shared by the early Shiʿa (Tafsīr al-Qummī, ed. M. B. M. al-Abṭaḥī et al., 3 vols. (Qom: Muʾassasat al-Imām al-Mahdī, 1435h), 2: 616, 3: 1003; al-ʿAyyāshī (d. 320/932), al-Tafsīr, 3 vols. (Qom: Muʾassasat al-Baʿtha, 1421h), 3: 113; al-Kulaynī, al-Kāfī, 8 vols. (Beirut: Manshūrāt al-Fajr, 1428/2007), 8: 88–89. Additionally, there is a massive amount of relevant material (some of which is early) in Muḥammad Bāqir al-Majlisī (d. 1110/1699), Biḥār al-anwār, 110 vols. (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1403/1983), vols. 54–63), is in all of its various iterations thus pregnant with meaning. To come close to God is literally to ascend (F. Salem, The Emergence of Early Sufi Piety and Sunnī Scholasticism: ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak and the Formation of Sunnī Identity in the Second Islamic Century (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 30), and to defy him is to be literally cast downward into hell (Lange, Paradise and Hell, 42–43). Carlo Nallino understood the presence of cosmographical traditionalism in the tafsīr literature (among other genres) as evidence that early Muslims lacked even the most rudimentary scientific curiosity, but this is something of a stretch (Nallino, ʿIlm al-falak, 137–40). it only goes to prove the point that cosmographical traditionalism could and did coexist alongside more Hellenized perspectives (al-Rāzī, al-Maṭālib al-ʿāliya min al-ʿilm al-ilāhī, ed. M. ʿA. Shāhīn, 9 vols. in 3 (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1420/1999), 3: 197–233).
19. On the other hand, he notes that the treatise “may have discouraged a good number of prospective students of the sciences by offering them a hayʾa [. . .] truly in harmony with their religion”. The traditionalists occasionally expressed their hostility toward the scientific cosmography. As knowledge of the contents of translated works radiated westward from Baghdad in the third/ninth century, some in al-Andalus grumbled at the new-fangled ideas (kalām disputation no less than Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmography). On early Iberian hostility to kalām, (see M. Cook, “Ibn Saʿdī on Truth-Blindness,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 22 (2007): 169–78). Ṣāʿid al-Andalusī (d. 462/1070) reports that Abū ʿUbayda Muslim b. Aḥmad al-Balansī (d. 295/908), a man learned in the science of the stars as well as law (fiqh) and hadith, was pilloried in verse for teaching the roundness of the earth, among other related errors (Ṣāʿid al-Andalusī, Kitāb Ṭabaqāt al-umam, ed. L. Shaykhū (Cheikho) (Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Kāthūlīkiyya, 1912), 64–65); ed. and tr. S. I. Salem and A. Kumar, Science in the Medieval World: “Book of the Categories of Nations”, (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1991), 60, D. A. King, “The Enigmatic Orientation of the Great Mosque of Córdoba,” Suhayl 16–17 (2018–19): 33–111, at 80).
20. cosmography in early kalām: First contact
21. Muslim awareness of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmography predates the apogee of the Translation Movement by several decades. The earliest opinions on the subject from mutakallimūn, preserved in later doxographies and other sources, already reflect familiarity with Aristotle, as noted by Josef van Ess (J. van Ess, Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries of the Hijra: A History of Religious Thought in Early Islam, vol. 1, tr. J. O’Kane (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 427–28; vol. 3, tr. G. Goldbloom (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 256–57). Hishām b. al-Ḥakam (d. 179/795f.), a disciple of the Shiʿi Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765), played the leading role in introducing cosmographical questions to kalām; his lead was followed by younger contemporaries, including Abū al-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf (d. 226/840f.) and al-Naẓẓām (d. 220/835 or 230/845) (Dhanani, Physical Theory, 8). Though it is not clear precisely when the distinction between the “subtleties” (daqīq, also laṭīf, ghāmiḍ) and “main topics” (jalīl) of kalām emerged, cosmography belonged firmly to the former domain and generated disagreement from the outset (see Dhanani, Physical Theory, 3–4; on the early history of these categories, see J. Weaver, “A Footnote to the Composition History of Maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn: The Internal Parallels in al-Ashʿarī’s Material on the Shia,” Journal of Abbasid Studies 4.2 (2017): 142–86, at 147–48. For a critique of the Muʿtazilis’ comprehensiveness in theological discussion, see Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Malaṭī (d. 337/987), al-Tanbīh wa-l-radd ʿalā ahl al-ahwāʾ wa-l-bidaʿ, ed. S. Dedering (Istanbul: Maṭbaʿat al-Dawla, 1936), 33). Cosmography was a standard feature of the discourse of the mutakallimūn, and the main lines of inquiry were already well established, before they received focused elaboration at the hands of theological systematizers toward the end of the third/ninth century.
22. Cosmographical discussion in this period occurs in the context of questions of bodies, motion, and void (i.e., physics) and, to a lesser extent, in the refutation of other religions.
23. As the first theologian known to have entertained views on Greek cosmography, Hishām b. al-Ḥakam’s profile emerges with the faintest of clarity in the sources. He is reported to have refuted the opinion that the earth extends infinitely in all directions, which Aristotle attributes (with some variation) to Xenophanes of Colophon (Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, al-ʿIqd al-farīd, 2: 251; van Ess, Theology and Society, 1: 426; Aristotle, “On the Heavens,” 1: 484 (Xenophanes’s view is that the earth extends infinitely downward, obviating the need to explain its suspension); Simplicius, On Aristotle On the Heavens 2.10–14, tr. I. Mueller (London: Duckworth, 2005), 62–63; L. Elders, Aristotle’s Cosmology: A Commentary on the De Caelo (Assen: VanGorcum, 1965), 249–50). The earth’s suspension in place raised important theological questions about God’s role in the maintenance of the cosmos, hence the sustained interest of mutakallimūn in the subject. Hishām is claimed to have taught that the earth rests on a body with a tendency to ascend (jism ṣaʿʿād), which counteracts the earth’s tendency to fall, thus keeping the latter in place (Abū al-Qāsim al-Kaʿbī, Kitāb al-Maqālāt wa-maʿahu ʿUyūn al-masāʾil wa-l-jawābāt, ed. H. Hansu, R. Kurdī, and ʿA. Kurdī (Amman: Dār al-Fatḥ, 1439/2018), 449–50; Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān, 1: 16). By seeking a rationalistic explanation for the earth’s suspension, as opposed to assuming it rests (e.g.) on the back of a cosmic fish, Hishām implicitly rejects the traditionalist cosmography. There is, however, no hint in the sources as to his views on the shape of the earth. Hishām is also reported to have persuaded a Zoroastrian priest (mūbadh) that there is nothing beyond the (finite) cosmos, i.e., that we would not be able to see anything or extend an outstretched hand beyond its borders (Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, al-ʿIqd al-farīd, 2: 251, Dhanani, Physical Theory, 73).
24. We also know that he was associated with corporealism, famously advocating God as the possessor of “a body unlike bodies,” located above the throne (Van Ess, Theology and Society, 1: 426; al-Ashʿarī, Maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn, 207–8, 210). Among Hishām’s contemporaries, Abū al-Hudhayl and al-Naẓẓām entertained similar questions, and the extant sources are equally reticent on their views. Abū al-Hudhayl seems to have been the first mutakallim to refute the claim that the earth plummets downward perpetually (ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī, al-Farq bayn al-firaq wa-bayān al-firqa al-nājiya minhum, ed. M. I. al-Ḥasan (Cairo: Maktabat Ibn Sīnā, n.d.), 285). His argument closely recalls De Caelo: a stone dropped to the ground lands there. Were the earth indeed falling, the stone would never reach it (Al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. 415/1025), Kitāb Faḍl al-iʿtizāl wa-ṭabaqāt al-muʿtazila, ed. F. Sayyid (Tunis: al-Dār al-Tūnisiyya li-l-Nashr, 1393/1974), 259; van Ess, Theology and Society, 3: 257). Abū al-Hudhayl also contended that the earth is held in place by divine fiat, without the support of ascending bodies or anything else (an implicit rejection of cosmographical traditionalism) (Al-Kaʿbī, Kitāb al-Maqālāt, 449; al-Ashʿarī, Maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn, 326; van Ess, Theology and Society, 3: 257–58; Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān, 1: 16). We know somewhat less about the views of al-Naẓẓām, whom the Muʿtazili biographical literature suggests was both junior to and partly dependent on Hishām and Abū al-Hudhayl.
25. His student al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/868), who preserves most of the relevant material in Kitāb al-Ḥayawān, advocates the earth’s roundness in his al-Tarbīʿ wa-l-tadwīr, but reports nothing from his master on the issue (Al-Jāḥiẓ, “al-Tarbīʿ wa-l-tadwīr,” in Rasāʾil al-Jāḥiẓ, ed. ʿA. M. Hārūn, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, 1411/1991), 3: 65). al-Naẓẓām explained the earth’s immobility (sukūn) as a function of the absence of a place for it to move in (Ibn Mattawayh, al-Tadhkira, 1: 287; van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, 6: 112; Ibn al-Malāḥimī, Kitāb al-Muʿtamad, 649).
26. the Beginnings of systematization: the long third/ninth century
27. The earliest cosmographical discussion in kalām for which we are not dependent on fragments and later doxographies comes from Kitāb al-Dalīl al-kabīr of the Zaydi Imam al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm al-Rassī (d. 246/860) (Al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm, al-Dalīl al-kabīr fī al-radd ʿalā al-zanādiqa wa-l-mulḥidīn wa-yalīhi al-Radd ʿalā al-mulḥid, ed. I. Ḥ. ʿAbd Allāh (Cairo: Dār al-Āfāq al-ʿArabiyya, 1420/2000), 45–47; van Ess, Theology and Society, 3: 258 n. 7). Unlike Hishām, Abū al-Hudhayl, and al-Naẓẓām, al-Rassī spent most of his career in the cultural backwater of Medina, far removed from the cuttingedge developments of Baghdad and Basra (W. Madelung, art. al-Rassī, EI2, 8: 453–54). He seems to have been relatively well informed on the cosmographical opinions of various non-Muslim groups, however, most likely as the result of a sojourn in Egypt, where he is known to have interacted with Jews and Christians. Al-Rassī’s cosmographical views emerge with a clarity atypical of earlier generations. He explicitly rejects cosmographical traditionalism, condemning the proto-Sunnis (ḥashw hādhihi al-umma) for their belief that the earth rests on the back of a fish (ḥūt) (A. S. Halkin, “The Ḥashwiyya,” JAOS 54.1 (1934): 1–28. For al-Qāsim’s interpretation of the ʿarsh and kursī, see his “Tafsīr al-ʿarsh wa-l-kursī,” in Majmūʿ kutub wa-rasāʾil al-imām Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm al-Rassī (169–246), ed. ʿA. A. Jadabān, 2 vols. (Sanaa: Dār al-Ḥikma al-Yamāniyya, 1422/2001), 1: 655–85).
28. He advocates the view that the earth is kept aloft by a mixture of void and air (hawāʾ) beneath it, noting and dismissing the alternatives that the earth is, variously, the foundation of the cosmos, that it floats on a cosmic sea, that it seeks its “natural place” (as per Aristotle), and that there is only void beneath it, or only air (Al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm, al-Dalīl al-kabīr, 47). Kitāb al-Dalīl al-kabīr contains nothing on the shape of the earth, but it is not unlikely that al-Rassī pondered this question, though extant kalām sources do not address the issue until later in the century (H. Ansari, S. Schmidtke, and J. Thiele, “Zaydī Theology in Yemen,” in Schmidtke, Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology, 473–93). Al-Rassī’s grandson and fellow Zaydi, Imam Yaḥyā b. al-Ḥusayn, known as al-Hādī ilā al-Ḥaqq (d. 298/911), shared his disdain for the proto-Sunnis (i.e., mushabbiha), but recognized the footstool as a physical structure encompassing the heavens and the earth (“Kitāb Tafsīr al-kursī,” in Majmūʿ kutub wa-rasāʾil al-imām al-Hādī ilā al-Ḥaqq al-Qawīm Yaḥyā b. al-Ḥusayn b. al-Qāsim, ed. ʿA. b. M. al-Shādhlī (Saada: Markaz Ahl al-Bayt li-l-Dirāsāt al-Islāmiyya, 1421h), 205–8). He reports the “five hundred years” hadith in order to promote a sense of God’s manifest greatness in his readers’ hearts. In another treatise he observes that the seven heavens and earths are held in midair (fī al-hawāʾ), without physical support, by virtue of divine fiat, much like Abū al-Hudhayl.
29. Among the Imami Shiʿa, the mutakallim al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī (d. bet. 300/912 and 310/922) is known to have “adopted several theses of the Muʿtazilī theological school” (J. Weaver, art. al-Nawbakhtī, al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā, EI3). Unlike al-Rassī and al-Hādī ilā al-Ḥaqq, however, he enjoyed privileged access to the cosmographical knowledge of late antiquity through his residence in Baghdad and his association “with a group of translators of Greek philosophical works” (W. Madelung, “Al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī on the Views of Astronomers and Astrologers,” in Law and Tradition in Classical Islamic Thought: Studies in Honor of Professor Hossein Modarressi, ed. M. Cook et al. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 269–78). His views on astronomy and astrology have been carefully reconstructed by Wilferd Madelung based on later texts. Al-Nawbakhtī is known to have written against Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī’s critique of the science of the stars (Madelung, “Al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā,” 270). Al-Nawbakhtī is not always consistent in naming some of the mutakallimūn associated with particular cosmographical opinions. He ascribes the opinion that the earth rests “on the back of a fish [. . .] on the horn of a bull [. . .] standing on the ground (tharā)” to a group among the proto-Sunnis (qawm min ahl al-ḥadīth), without commenting on it. Like Abū al-Hudhayl, al-Nawbakhtī refutes the perpetual downward fall of the earth by appealing to the example of an object dropped to the ground (a feather or a clod of mud) (Madelung, “Al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā,” 274). His wide-ranging criticisms of the astronomers and astrologers (Madelung’s translations of munajjimūn and aṣḥāb al-aḥkām respectively) was to prove a valuable source for later theologians of disparate tendencies, including the idiosyncratic Hanbali Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1201) (Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs Iblīs, ed. A. A. al-Ṭabbāʿ (Beirut: Dār al-Qalam, 1403h), e.g., 76).
30. Abū ʿAlī is the first mutakallim known to have figuratively interpreted Q 18:86 (“until he reached the setting-place of the sun; he found it setting into a muddy spring”), pointing out that the sun does not literally set into a body of water, but only appears to from afar (Tafsīr Abī ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī, ed. K. M. Nabhā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1428/2007), 368; al-Jishumī, al-Tahdhīb fī al-tafsīr, ed. ʿA. b. S. al-Sālimī, 10 vols. (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb al-Miṣrī, 1439h), 6: 4482), and may have inaugurated this tradition of understanding the verse (al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 15: 374–75; ʿA. al-Khaṭīb, Muʿjam al-qiraʾāt, 11 vols. (Damascus: Dār Shams al-Dīn, 1422h), 5: 290–91; A. M. ʿUmar and ʿA. S. Makram, Muʿjam al-qiraʾāt al-qurʾāniyya, 8 vols. (Kuwait City: Maṭbaʿat Jāmaʿat al-Kuwayt, 1408/1988), 4: 9–10). This interpretation contradicts both the plain-sense meaning of the Quran and the widely reported hadith of the Companion Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī (d. 31/652) on the rising of the sun. He is also known to have advocated the flatness of the earth against those learned in the science of the stars, apparently on quranic grounds (Tafsīr Abī ʿAlī, ed. Nabhā, 68; al-Jishumī, al-Tahdhīb, 1: 283; Abū Rashīd al-Naysābūrī (d. 460/1068), Kitāb al-Masāʾil fī al-khilāf bayn al-baṣriyyīn wa-l-baghdādiyyīn, ed. M. Ziyāda and R. al-Sayyid (Tripoli: Maʿhad al-Inmāʾ al-ʿArabī, 1979), 100; al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā (d. 436/1044), Amālī al-Murtaḍā: Ghurar al-fawāʾid wa-durar al-qalāʾid, ed. M. A. Ibrāhīm, 2 vols. (Cairo: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya, 1373/1954), 2: 187–88). Abū ʿAlī also rejects the view that the sky is held up by pillars; were this the case, he avers, they would have to be “massive bodies (ajsāman ghilāẓān) and would be visible” (Tafsīr Abī ʿAlī, ed. Nabhā, 332).
31. He similarly eschews most of the standard kalām explanations for the immobility of the earth on the grounds that weight is not an accident but a quality (maʿnā) pertaining to bodies themselves (Ibn Mattawayh, al-Tadhkira, 1: 284). Abū ʿAlī affirms the existence of seven earths (as per Q 65:12) (Tafsīr Abī ʿAlī, ed. Nabhā, 469), and denies (in one report) that any distance, gaps (sg. khalal), or clefts (futūq) separate the subterranean levels from our own (Al-Jishumī, al-Tahdhīb, 10: 6981). He also refuses to identify the seven heavens (samāwāt) of the Quran with the celestial spheres, whose motion he implicitly concedes (Ibn Taymiyya, al-Risāla al-ʿarshiyya (Cairo: Idārat al-Ṭibāʿa al-Munīriyya, 1925), 12). Abū ʿAlī thus proves to be critical of the traditionalist cosmography on some points, and is no less willing to reject the Greek view on others. He is independently minded and discards popular interpretations of the Quran, or hadith, when they seem to contradict his sense of what is rational. The cosmographical views of Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī always occur alongside discussions of the opinions of his father, Abū ʿAlī. On many issues, including cosmography, they fail to see eye to eye; they are even said to have anathematized one another (i.e., takfīr) (Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (d. 414/1023), al-Baṣāʾir wa-l-dhakhāʾir, ed. M. al-S. ʿUthmān, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2014), 2: 303; J. van Ess, The Flowering of Muslim Theology, tr. J. Marie Todd (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 2006), 9–10).
32. The chief systematizer of the Baghdad Muʿtazilis, Abū al-Qāsim al-Kaʿbī, disagreed with Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī on most questions of cosmography, and unlike Abū Hāshim is almost always remembered to have unambiguously affirmed the earth’s roundness (l-Jishumī, al-Tahdhīb, 1: 284; al-Naysābūrī, al-Masāʾil fī al-khilāf, 100; al-Mufīd, Awāʾil al-maqālāt, 100; R. el Omari, The Theology of Abū l-Qāsim al-Balkhī/al-Kaʿbī (d. 319/931) (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 86). Al-Kaʿbī agreed with the munajjimūn in believing the earth to be immobile at the center of the cosmos, encompassed by the celestial spheres, but he shared this belief with “many of the ahl al-tawḥīd [i.e., fellow Muʿtazilis],” along with many of the “ancients” (Al-Mufīd, Awāʾil al-maqālāt, 99). Al-Kaʿbī, like Abū ʿAlī, interprets Q 18:86 figuratively, arguing that the sun is much larger than the earth, so cannot set into any part of it (Tafsīr Abī al-Qāsim, ed. Nabhā, 260). He also denies the existence of intra- and extracosmic void (El Omari, Theology of Abū l-Qāsim, 85–86; Cf. Dhanani, Physical Theory, 73; al-Kaʿbī, Maqālāt, 485), and continues the tradition of his Muʿtazili forebears in refuting the infinitude of the cosmos (Al-Kaʿbī, Maqālāt, 591–97). He is reported to have frequented the teaching circle of Abū Muslim al-Iṣfahānī (d. 322/943), a fellow Baghdad Muʿtazili who similarly interpreted Q 18:86 figuratively and denied that the sky is held up by pillars. On the relationship between them, see Ibn al-Murtaḍā, Ṭabaqāt al-muʿtazila, 91. On Abū Muslim’s interpretation of Q 18:86 and view of pillars, see Tafsīr Abī Muslim Muḥammad b. Baḥr al-Aṣfahānī, ed. K. M. Nabhā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1428/2007), 181–82 and 160; al-Jishumī, al-Tahdhīb, 6: 4482.
33. the road to classical sunnism: the next generation
34. Of these eponyms of the two most prominent schools of Sunni kalām, the career of al-Ashʿarī has the most significance for the development of cosmographical discourse in kalām. Notwithstanding his dramatic “conversion,” traditionally dated to the (significant) year 300/912f (M. Watt, art. al-Ashʿarī, Abu ’l-Ḥasan, EI2, 1: 694–95; Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn kadhib al-muftarī fī mā nusiba ilā al-imām Abī al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī, ed. M. Z. al-Kawtharī (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1399h), 52–54, 142–48), al-Ashʿarī “retained much of the subject matter, rationalist methodology, and cosmology of the Muʿtazilis” (Ragep, “Islamic Culture,” 55). As such, his views on cosmography share obvious structural similarities with theirs, and he addresses the points expected of a Muʿtazili theologian of the period. Al-Ashʿarī’s most sustained treatment of the question is found, unsurprisingly, in his Maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn, and important material is also reported from him in Ibn Fūrak’s Mujarrad (Al-Ashʿarī, Maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn, 326; Ibn Fūrak, Mujarrad maqālāt al-shaykh Abī al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī, ed. D. Gimaret (Beirut: Dar al-Machreq, 1987), 275, 277–78). It is generally agreed that Maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn was written in stages, some predating al-Ashʿarī’s conversion (Weaver, “Footnote,” 144). The question of the book’s sources remains more controversial; James Weaver argues for the dependence of al-Ashʿarī on al-Kaʿbī, while van Ess suggests that they both relied on a common source.
35. Al-Ashʿarī’s presentation of the competing views of the mutakallimūn on the subject is dispassionate, and it is unclear which of the four opinions he reports is regarded as the correct one. Ibn Furāk provides the necessary information. He notes that al-Ashʿarī held that “there is no reason for the suspension of the earth [in place] other than God’s volition (ikhtiyār) (Ibn Fūrak, Mujarrad, 275)”. Al-Ashʿarī explicitly rejects, in good occasionalist fashion, all alternative causal accounts of the earth’s immobility, whether produced by advocates of ṭabāʾiʿ (the four elemental qualities) (G. Schwarb, “Early Kalām and the Medical Tradition,” in Philosophy and Medicine in the Formative Period of Islam, ed. P. Adamson and P. E. Pormann (London: The Warburg Institute, 2017), 104–69) or tawallud (Muʿtazilis): “God, the most exalted, is the one who holds the earth [in place], preserves, and oversees it, [the one who] renders the mobile bodies thereon immobile, by his will” (Ibn Fūrak, Mujarrad, 275). Similarly, in al-Ashʿarī’s Risāla ilā ahl al-thaghr it is God alone who prevents the firmament from collapsing onto the earth (echoing Q 22:65) (Al-Ashʿarī, Risāla ilā ahl al-thaghr, ed. ʿA. Sh. M. al-Junaydī (Medina: Maktabat al-ʿUlūm wa-l-Ḥikam, 1422/2002), 155). The view that the earth is hurtling downward, attributed by Ibn Fūrak to the materialists (Dahriyya), is rejected by al-Ashʿarī, as is the (more unusual) opinion that it floats upward, also ascribed to them. The opinion that the earth is comprised of parts whose properties counteract each other (the fourth solution presented in Maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn) is also refuted, as is the claim that it rests on a body that is re-created every moment for this purpose (solution three): God instead re-creates the accident of motionlessness (fiʿl al-sukūn) in it every instant.
36. The bottom surface (al-ṣafīḥa al-suflā) of the earth cannot be described as either immobile or moving, al-Ashʿarī points out, seemingly because it cannot be described as having a place (makān).
37. In his exegesis of Q 50:1 he acknowledges the world-encompassing mountain range (made of green or red ruby), but suggests that this cannot be the correct interpretation as “the [pagan] Arabs knew nothing of Mt. Qāf or its greatness”: He notes that the greenness of the ruby (yāqūta) gives the sky its greenish hue. On the greenness of the sky and Mt. Qāf, see A. Morabia, art. Lawn, EI2, 5: 698–707, at 700, 706 respectively. Morabia remarks that Mt. Qāf is made of “green emerald,” i.e., zumurrud. On rubies generally, see al-Bīrūnī, al-Jamāhir fī al-jawāhir, ed. Y. al-Hādī (Tehran: Maktab Nashr al-Turāth al-Makhṭūṭ, 1416/1995), 107–55. For al-Bīrūnī’s critique of Mt. Qāf (made of emerald), which he dismisses as mere superstition (khurāfāt), see pp. 269–70. He claims the “Shumaniy ya” (closer to the Sanskrit śrmana than the normal Sumaniyya, reflecting his knowledge of that language) to be the source of this notion (pp. 270–71), because of their comparable belief in Mt. Meru, “a lofty mountain situated under the north pole, whose four sides are comprised of rubies of various colors.” See also idem, Alberuni’s India, 1: 243–50 (p. 249 for Mt. Qāf, “as it is called by our common people”).
38. [9:31 PM]God would not swear an oath, presumably, by anything unfamiliar to the original, mostly pagan audience of the quranic revelation. Al-Māturīdī’s reading of Q 65:12 is revealing of his general approach to the subject. He notes three interpretations for the seven earths: that they are layered one above the other like the heavens (as per the traditionalist view); that these “earths” are in fact seven continents (jazāʾir) ( Jachimowicz, “Islamic Cosmology,” 147); and that the six earths are located somewhere beyond the lowest heaven (al-samāʾ al-dunyā, Q 67:5). Refusing to commit himself to any of these options, al-Māturīdī writes, “We have no need to know the nature, modality, or number of [the earths], because there is no legal ruling (ḥukm) attached thereto, and God knows best” (Al-Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān, 15: 244). He does mention the possibility that the firmament is not held up by pillars, but this view is also reported by the contemporaneous al-Ṭabarī, and has no necessary connection to the mutakallimūn as such. According to Jean-Claude Vadet, his theology was “more pietistic and more popular, more in accordance with his Shāfiʿī ideas and his knowledge of ḥadīth and of tafsīr” than was commonly the case for his Muʿtazili peers (J.-C. Vadet, art. Ibn al-Ikhshīd, EI2, 3: 807).
39. Similar conclusions may apply outside the Muslim community for this period: the Jewish mutakallim Dāwūd al-Muqammaṣ (d. ca. 325/937), whom most scholars regard to have been deeply influenced by the Muʿtazilis, claims that the earth is discoid and the sky dome-shaped, in good Talmudic fashion. Al-Muqammaṣ, Twenty Chapters, ed. and tr. S. Stroumsa (Provo: Brigham Young Univ. Press, 2016), xxiii–xxiv, 114–15 respectively (Stroumsa argues that Muʿtazili influence on the Jews postdates al-Muqammaṣ, while recognizing that his treatise is produced in the conventional kalām style). On the Talmudic vision of the cosmos, see J. Brown, New Heavens and a New Earth: The Jewish Reception of Copernican Thought (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2013), 27–41.
40. [9:47 PM]Ibn Fūrak echoes al-Ashʿarī’s affirmation of the exclusive character of divine agency: “The earth is immobile by virtue of God’s holding it in place, and none can support heavy things in place without pillars other than him.” He does distinguish between the heavens and the celestial spheres (aflāk), rather than rejecting the latter outright, suggesting a certain deference to the views of the astronomers (Ibn Fūrak, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-mansūb li-Abī Bakr Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan b. Fūrak, ed. M. al-Sulaymānī et al., 3 vols. (Cairo: Council of Muslim Elders, 1441/2020), 1: 451).
41. [9:47 PM]Before his death, al-Ashʿarī migrated from his native Basra to Baghdad, as did his student Ibn Mujāhid al-Baṣrī (d. 370/980f.) (Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn, 177). Another Basran, al-Juʿal b. ʿAlī, better known as Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Baṣrī (d. 369/980), the chief Bahshami of his generation, made the same journey (Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh madīnat al-salām, ed. B. ʿA. Maʿrūf, 17 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1422/2001), 8: 626–27). Abū ʿAbd Allāh, a student of Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī, who counted al-qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār and the vizier Ibn ʿAbbād (M. al-Khalīfa (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1429/2008), 279) (d. 385/995) among his own students, was a major figure in the early history of the school (ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Kitāb Faḍl al-iʿtizāl, 325). Because of these migrations, the signifiers “Basran” and “Baghdad” (i.e., of the Muʿtazilis) lost their geographical meaning; in a manner of speaking, they transitioned from “regional” to “classical” schools of theology. In Baghdad al-Ashʿarī’s student, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Bāhilī (d. ca. 370/980f.), taught the major theologians of the next generation of the school: al-Bāqillānī, Ibn Fūrak, and Abū Isḥāq al-Isfarāʾīnī (Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn, 178). Ibn Fūrak’s comments on cosmography are fairly limited. The Quran commentary attributed to him—approximately one-third of the original, beginning with Q 23, is extant—is a curious work, written in question-and-answer format and inconsistent in its engagement of theological points (M. Nguyen, “Exegetes of Nishapur: A Preliminary Survey of Qurʾanic Works by Ibn Ḥabīb, Ibn Fūrak, and ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī,” JQS 20.2 (2018): 47–73).
42. Q 65:12 as the only quranic evidence for the existence of seven earths, and mentions the possibility that Q 68:1 refers to the cosmic fish that bears the earths aloft. Al-Mufīd has typically been understood to have made major contributions to the adoption of Muʿtazili theology in the Twelver school, paving the way for “the greater rationalization of Imamism that took place at the hands of his pupils” (Bayhom-Daou, Shaykh Mufid, 29; see also Abdulsater, Shiʿi Doctrine, Muʿtazili Theology, 2–7). Al-Mufīd defines the cosmos (ʿālam) in two places as “the sky and the earth, whatever they contain and whatever is between them” (Al-Mufīd, Awāʾil al-maqālāt, 99; idem, “al-Nukat fī muqaddimāt al-uṣūl,” in al-Nukat al-iʿtiqādiyya, ed. M. R. al-Jalālī al-Ḥusaynī et al. (Tehran: Dār al-Mufīd, 1431h), 30). This location at the center (fī al-markaz) is the cause of the earth’s immobility—contra al-Jubbāʾī père et fils, as well as many other theologians (Al-Mufīd, Awāʾil al-maqālāt, 99–100). Much like al-Balkhī in a previous generation, al-Mufīd’s views align very closely with the advocates of the science of the stars, at least as far as narrow questions of cosmography are concerned (McDermott, Theology of al-Shaikh al-Mufīd, 213–15). Al-Mufīd’s inclination toward the cosmographical views of the munajjimūn was echoed by his student Abū al-Fatḥ al-Karājikī (d. 449/1057), whose endorsement is, if anything, more full-throated (Abū al-Fatḥ al-Karājikī, Kanz al-fawāʾid, ed. ʿA. Niʿma, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Aḍwāʾ, 1405/1985), 2: 101–4).
43. [9:55 PM]Cosmography hardly features in the extant volumes and fragments of his voluminous al-Mughnī fī abwāb al-tawḥīd wa-l-ʿadl, but may have been addressed in its lost parts. Like previous Muʿtazilis, ʿAbd al-Jabbār refutes the dualist belief in the infinitude of the cosmos (ʿAbd al-Jabbār, al-Mughnī, 5: 28). In his Tanzīh al-Qurʾān ʿan al-maṭāʿin, an apologetic work written against the text’s critics, he maintains that the firmament is not held up by pillars and the sun does not literally set into a body of water (Abd al-Jabbār, Tanzīh al-Qurʾān ʿan al-maṭāʿin (Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Azhariyya, 1329h), 179, 217; al-Jishumī, al-Tahdhīb, 6: 4482). Al-Jishumī reports ʿAbd al-Jabbār as suspending judgment on the shape of the earth, which suggests that he regarded the evidence for both sides of the argument as equipollent (takāfuʾ al-adilla) (Al-Jishumī, al-Tahdhīb, 1: 284). ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s student Ibn Mattawayh produced the most extensive extant account of kalām physics in al-Tadhkira fī aḥkām al-jawāhir wa-l-aʿrāḍ, which includes long passages on cosmography (mostly in the context of discussions of motion) (Ibn Mattawayh, al-Tadhkira, 1: 283–88, 305–7; see also S. Schmidtke, An Anonymous Commentary on Kitāb al-Tadhkira by Ibn Mattawayh: Facsimile Edition of Mahdavi Codex 514 (6th/12th Century) (Tehran: Iranian Institute of Philosophy, 2006), 82a–85b. Cf. Ibn al-Murtaḍā, Muqaddimat Kitāb al-Baḥr al-zakhkhār al-jāmiʿ li-madhāhib ʿulamāʾ al-amṣār, ed. ʿA. b. ʿA. al-Jarāfī (Sanaa: Dār al-Hikma al-Yamāniyya, 1409/1988), 103–4).
44. [9:56 PM]Ibn Mattawayh affirms the immobility of the heavens and the earth, based on Q 35:41 ( Ibn Mattawayh, al-Tadhkira, 1: 283). Ibn Mattawayh argues that the firmament does not encompass the earth from all sides, contra al-Balkhī, for if the earth is below the firmament, then it must always be beneath it wherever on the earth one is. Al-Kaʿbī’s mistaken view entails that if one dug deep enough into the earth, eventually the stars and heavens would be visible beneath one’s feet, and this is absurd.
45. [9:59 PM]In the course of his survey, al-Baghdādī mentions more obscure ancients, including Eudoxus of Cnidus (Qanādūs, d. 337 Bce) and Menelaus of Alexandria (Mīlāwūsh, d. 140 ce) (Ibn al-Nadīm, ed. Sayyid, 2: 214; Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn, 254). Muslims, Jews, and Christians, al-Baghdādī informs us, are all agreed that the earth is immobile, with the exception of the occasional earthquake afflicting its inhabitants. The view that it is the earth that moves and the firmament that is fixed, contra the munajjimūn (Al-Baghdādī, Kitāb Uṣūl al-dīn, 61). Following al-Ashʿarī, al-Baghdādī’s main purpose in the discussion is to argue that the earth remains in place only by virtue of God’s power: “God [. . .] has suspended it [in place] neither by means of a body [on which it rests] nor by means of the air that encompasses it”. The seven heavens are stationary plates (sg. ṭabaq) one above the other and the “stars (kawākib) are all located in the lowermost heaven,” against the astronomers, who claim that the firmament is a sphere.
46. [9:59 PM]He insists that the heavens are both flat and immobile, and is even more strident on these points in his heresiography, al-Farq bayn al-firaq (Al-Baghdādī, al-Farq bayn al-firaq, 285–86). This passage is very clearly evoked by the Quran commentator al-Qurṭubī (d. 671/1273), who observes that Q 12:3 “refutes those who claim the earth is round”; al-Jāmiʿ li-aḥkām al-Qurʾān, ed. ʿA. b. ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī et al., 24 vols. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1427/2006), 12: 8–9. Ibn Taymiyya (al-Risāla al-ʿarshiyya, 12–13) is probably alluding to al-Baghdādī when he criticizes mutakallimūn who “contradict the philosophers on the [issue of] the [heavenly] spheres with views that lack a basis in scripture or in reason, all the while thinking they champion religion thereby”; see also Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 751/1350), Miftāḥ dār al-saʿāda wa-manshūr wilāyat al-ʿilm wa-l-irāda, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1419/1998), 2: 212. For a modern debate on this material, see M. Ṣāliḥ al-Ghursī, Manhaj al-ashāʿira fī al-ʿaqīda bayn al-ḥaqāʾiq wa-lawhām (Konya: Ravza, 1429/2008), 153–55.
47. Abū Rashīd al-Naysābūrī was also a student of ʿAbd al-Jabbār, whom he succeeded as the leading theologian of the Bahshami school (Al-Jishumī, “Sharḥ al-ʿUyūn,” 382). Al-Naysābūrī produces three main arguments to prove the earth is flat, in addition to refuting several objections. If the earth were round, he writes, it would be equidistant at all points from the firmament, like a dot drawn at the center point of a circle. If this were the case, one would not see the sun rise and set, nor would it appear higher and lower in the sky at various points during the day, increasing and decreasing in size, because it would not move farther from or draw closer to the earth in the course of its daily cycle. Furthermore, bodies of water would not remain in place on a round earth; there would be nothing to keep them from falling into the surrounding air. Finally, the earth’s roundness contradicts the straightforward meaning of Q 79:30, according to which God spread out or “flattened” the earth (daḥāhā) following its creation. While al-Naysābūrī does note that this verse can be interpreted as referring to parts rather than to the whole of the earth (the view favored by al-Murtaḍā), he does not ultimately agree. The objection is that “God intended [by this verse] only parts of the earth (baʿḍ al-arḍ); for the earth contains flat expanses, and there is no reason not to restrict the scope [of this phrase] if some evidence requires it”; ibid., 101; compare with al-Mūsawī et al., eds., Tafsīr al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā, 1: 311.
48. Baghdad was to remain the “intellectual center for kalām among the Imāmīs [. . .] until the Saljuq invasion of the city in 447/1056” (Ansari and Schmidtke, “Shīʿī Reception of the Muʿtazila,” 202). Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī authored major works in the domains of fiqh, kalām, and hadith, though it is his Quran commentary (among his extant published titles) that shows the most engagement with cosmography. Al-Ṭūsī concurs with Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī that the firmament is not held up by pillars (Al-Ṭūsī, al-Tibyān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān, ed. A. Ḥ. Q. al-ʿĀmilī, 10 vols. (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, n.d.), 6: 213), and like him refuses to identify the quranic heavens (samāwāt) with the spheres of the astronomers, on the grounds that the former (like the earth) are immobile. Al-Ṭūsī also affirms the existence of the seven earths, but implies that six are uninhabited. His tafsīr bears the impress of Abū ʿAlī’s, so it is perhaps no surprise to note that, like al-Murtaḍā, he inclined to Basran positions. Abū Shakūr al-Sālimī’s (d. after 460/1068) al-Tamhīd fī bayān al-tawḥīd focuses its critique of the munajjimūn on astrology, revealing nothing of al-Sālimī’s cosmographical commitments (Et-Temhîd fî beyâni’t-tevhîd, ed. Ö. Türkmen (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 2016), 85–88). Somewhat more promisingly, Baḥr al-kalām of Abū al-Muʿīn al-Nasafī (d. 508/1114f.) denounces the astronomers’ belief that the lowermost of the heavens (al-samāʾ al-dunyā) contains only the moon among the celestial bodies (M. al-S. al-Barsījī (Amman: Dār al-Fatḥ, 1435/2014), 255. Cf. Rukn al-Dīn al-Ṭuraythīthī (d. after 400/1010), Mutashābih al-Qurʾān, ed. ʿA. al-Sālimī (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿĀmma li-Dār alKutub wa-l-Wathāʾiq al-Qawmiyya, 1436/2015), 978).
49. [10:15 PM]Quranic Verses That Attracted the Most Sustained Cosmographical Commentary
50. [10:15 PM]