Of The Sun Set­ting In Murky Water : Qur’an­ic Com­men­tary on Sura’ Al-Kahf (18):86

Hesham Azmy & Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi

Dhul-Qar­nayn (Ara­bic : ذو القرنين‎ ḏū’l-qar­nayn), he of the two horns” (or he of the two ages”), appears in the Quran as a fig­ure empow­ered by God to erect a wall between mankind and Gog and Magog, the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of chaos. Dhul-Qar­nayn is gen­er­al­ly described as a right­eous ruler who trav­elled to spread the mes­sage of God. Of inter­est is this verse from Qur’an, 18:86 which has recent­ly raised much ruckus among the ene­mies of Islam.

The fol­low­ing Eng­lish trans­la­tion was tak­en from A. Yusuf Ali :

Until, when he reached the set­ting of the sun, he found it set in a spring of murky water : Near it, he found a Peo­ple : We said : O Dhul-Qar­nayn ! (thou hast author­i­ty) either to pun­ish them, or to treat them with kind­ness.” (Qur’an, 18:86)

A com­mon Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary objec­tion” to the verse above is by claim­ing it to be a sci­en­tif­ic contradiction”. 

    If the pres­ence of sci­en­tif­ic facts can prove the Qur’an’s divine ori­gins, the pres­ence of sci­en­tif­ic false­hood can dis­prove divine ori­gins. For exam­ple, Sura’ 18:86 :

    Until, when he reached the set­ting of the sun, he found it set in a spring of murky water : Near it he found a Peo­ple : We said : O Dhul-Qar­nayn ! (thou hast author­i­ty,) either to pun­ish them or to treat them with kindness.”

    Since we all know that the sun does not set in a spring of murky water and, there­fore, this is a big error. How­ev­er, Mus­lim apol­o­gists are quick to tell us that this is only poet­ic and not a sci­en­tif­ic mir­a­cle”! This type of apolo­getic is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­hon­est as well as a bit silly.

So who is the one that is actu­al­ly intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­hon­est as well as a bit sil­ly”? Let us analyse the verse part by part.

Analy­sis Of The Verse

Until, when he reached the set­ting of the sun…”: The trans­la­tion of this part of the verse does not say that Dhul-Qar­nayn reached the place where the sun sets lit­er­al­ly, rather it means here that Dhul-Qar­nayn was fac­ing the direc­tion in which the sun is set­ting. The set­ting of the sun,” is an Ara­bic idiom mean­ing the west­ern-most point’ of his expe­di­tion. How­ev­er, in gen­er­al, idioms should not be lit­er­al­ly translated.

…he found it set in a spring of murky water”: The Qur’an is obvi­ous­ly describ­ing what Dhul-Qar­nayn saw. What Dhul-Qar­nayn saw was the image of the sun set­ting in a dark body of water. Since the Qur’an is clear­ly describ­ing this from Dhul-Qar­nain’s direct point of view (the Qur’an is quite explic­it here in doing that), there is, in fact, no prob­lem with the descrip­tion of what Dhul-Qar­nain saw. Of course, one is cor­rect in say­ing that the sun does not set in a spring of murky water”, but try stand­ing at a beach dur­ing the time when the sun is about to set and any­one would be able to see the sun enter­ing” the sea far in the hori­zon. This, there­fore, gives us the con­clu­sion that Dhul-Qar­nayn was some­where west and by a large body of water, pos­si­bly the sea.

Crit­ics of this verse should be aware that the Qur’an is not descrip­tive prose, and the words of the Qur’an is of high poet­i­cal elo­quence, some­thing which the Bible is not able to claim. Since the beau­ty of the Qur’an is in its poet­i­cal nature, it is there­fore only nat­ur­al that the Qur’an uses emphat­ic expres­sions to describe some­thing like a sun­set”.

Keep in mind that the Qur’an is in poet­i­cal prose and is meant to be a chal­lenge to the pagan Arabs in Mec­ca who prid­ed them­selves as writ­ers of good poet­ry. Those neo­phytes who like to use this verse as a stick to beat Islam with should attempt to study Ara­bic lit­er­a­ture and the his­to­ry of that peri­od before com­ing up with sil­ly conclusions.

There­fore, it is clear the verse says that Dhul-Qar­nain went west and saw the sun set­ting over the hori­zon so that it looked to him as though it was set­ting into the sea, which is murky-look­ing. Prob­a­bly the crit­ic has nev­er stood by on the beach and observe the sunset.

For fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion of our expla­na­tion, we repro­duce two oth­er trans­la­tions of the same verse by M. M. Pick­thall and Shakir.

    Trans­la­tion by M. M. Pickthall

    Till, when he reached the set­ting-place of the sun, he found it set­ting in a mud­dy spring, and found a peo­ple there­about. We said : O Dhu’l-Qar­neyn ! Either pun­ish or show them kind­ness. (Qur’an 18:86)

    Trans­la­tion by Shakir

    Until when he reached the place where the sun set, he found it going down into a black sea, and found by it a peo­ple. We said : O Zulqar­nain ! either give them a chas­tise­ment or do them a ben­e­fit.’ (Qur’an 18:86)

We can see that the gen­er­al agree­ment of the trans­la­tions of this verse is that Dhul-Qar­nain saw the sun set­ting into the hori­zon that it looks like it is set into a body of water (sea) that looks murky-look­ing. That this verse was nev­er tak­en lit­er­al­ly was not alien in the under­stand­ing of the ear­ly commentators.

How The Ear­ly Com­men­ta­tors Under­stood The Verse

In his famous com­men­tary known as Al-Game’ le Ahkam-el-Qur’an, Imam Al-Qur­tubi (died 671 AH/​1273 CE) wrote about this verse :

It is not meant by reach­ing the ris­ing or set­ting of the sun that he reached its body and touched it because it runs in the sky around the earth with­out touch­ing it and it is too great to enter any spring on earth. It is so much larg­er than earth. But it is meant that he reached the end of pop­u­lat­ed land east and west, so he found it — accord­ing to his vision — set­ting in a spring of murky water as we watch it in smooth land as if it enters inside the land. That is why He said, he found it ris­ing on a peo­ple for whom we had pro­vid­ed no cov­er­ing pro­tec­tion against the sun.” (Holy Qur’an 18:90) and did not mean that it touch­es or adheres to them, but they are the first to rise on. Prob­a­bly this spring is a part of the sea and the sun sets behind, with or at it, so the propo­si­tion takes the place of an adjec­tive and God knows best.Al-Qur­tubi, Al-Game’ le Ahkam-el-Qur’an, Vol. 16 (Dar-ul-Hadith, Cairo, Egypt), p. 47

Fakhr-ud-Deen Ar-Razi wrote in his com­men­tary on the same verse that :

When Zul-Qar­nain reached the fur­thest west and no pop­u­lat­ed land was left, he found the sun as if it sets in a dark spring, but it is not in real­i­ty. The same when sea trav­eller sees the sun as if it sets in the sea if he can­not see the shore while in real­i­ty, it sets behind the sea. Fakhr-ud-Deen Ar-Razi, At-Tafsir-ul-Kabeer, Vol. 21, p. 166

Ibn Kathir (701774 AH/​1302 – 1373 CE) wrote in his com­men­tary about this verse that :

Until, when he reached the set­ting of the sun” means he fol­lowed a cer­tain way until he reached the fur­thest land he could go from the west. As for reach­ing the set­ting of the sun in the sky, it is impos­si­ble. What nar­ra­tors and sto­ry­tellers say that he walked for a peri­od of time in earth while the sun was set­ting behind him is unre­al, and most of it is from myths of Peo­ple of the Book and inven­tions of their liars. he found it set in a spring of murky water” means he saw the sun accord­ing to his vision set in the ocean and this is the same with every­one end­ing to the shore see­ing as if the sun sets inside it (i.e. the ocean).Tafsir-ul-Qur’an Al-‘Azeem by Ibn Kathir, Vol. 5, p. 120

Accord­ing to Al-Mawar­di (d. 450 A.H) in his tafsir, the verse can be under­stood as :

That He (Dhul Qar­nayn) wajada­ha (found it, saw it) set­ting behind the spring (ayn) as if it was set­ting in the very spring.“Al-Mawar­di, Ali bin Muham­mad bin Habib, Al-Nukat wa al-‘Uyun, Vol. 3 (Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya), p. 450

And final­ly, to strength­en our obser­va­tion that the part of the verse above is indeed poet­i­cal in nature and that the Qur’an had nev­er meant the state­ment to be under­stood lit­er­al­ly or from a sci­en­tif­ic” per­spec­tive, let us now see a pic­ture of the sun set­ting in the horizon.

    Of The Sun Setting In Murky Water: Qur'anic Commentary on Sura' Al-Kahf (18):86 1

Con­clu­sions

The alle­ga­tion put forth against the Qur’an is utter­ly base­less and is refut­ed by the Ara­bic lan­guage itself. The verse con­tains no ref­er­ence at all to the sun lit­er­al­ly set­ting, or enter­ing, or going down, into a mud­dy pool of water. It is clear to us that the above-men­tioned verse is only con­sid­ered unsci­en­tif­ic” if we would also con­sid­er that sim­i­lar emphat­i­cal­ly-used phras­es such as Japan, the land of the ris­ing sun” or Sabah, the land below the wind” to be unsci­en­tif­ic” as well.

Our advice to those neo­phytes is that before they try to find any more dis­crep­an­cies” in the Qur’an they should con­sid­er the fol­low­ing dis­crep­an­cy of the Bible to clar­i­fy which Book actu­al­ly has a severe defect :

And the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof ; he is unclean unto you. (Leviti­cus 11:6)

Now we all know that the hare (or any­thing relat­ed to rab­bits) do not chew cud. Is this a poet­i­cal” expres­sion of the Bible ? And only God knows best. Of The Sun Setting In Murky Water: Qur'anic Commentary on Sura' Al-Kahf (18):86 2

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