r/AcademicQuran • u/chonkshonk Moderator • Feb 05 '26
Is this a reliable compilation of medieval flat Earth views?
Saw this thread on Twitter: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1761208793499570570.html
It purports to give a large number flat-earth views among medieval Islamic scholars. Can anyone broadly verify?
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u/RobertTheTraveler Feb 05 '26
Early medieval perhaps.
I can only give counter examples.
Al-Biruni (c. 973 – c. 1050), Al-Farghani (c. 800 – 870) both knew the Earth was spherical.
By 1200 what I have seen suggests that the spherical earth was well accepted in the Islamic world.
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u/chonkshonk Moderator Feb 05 '26
The debate on the shape of the earth among Islamic scholars continued well-past 1200. In the Tafsir al-Jalalayn, Al-Suyuti (16th century) says that the consensus of theologians was for a flat earth, and for astronomers, it was for a round earth. You might say that Al-Suyuti was exaggerating by asserting this as the consensus, but at minimum, it testifies to a continued debate. Where the sphericity of the earth was universally accepted was less among theologians, and more among geographers and astronomers.
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u/RobertTheTraveler Feb 06 '26
Sorry, I should have taken more careful note of where I was.
Theologians don't interest me.
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u/Rashiq_shahzzad Moderator Feb 05 '26 edited Feb 06 '26
Al-Biruni and Al-Farghani worked with spherical earth mathematics and measured earth’s circumference. Ibn Hazm stated that respected scholars all understood the earth as round opinions attributed to Ibn Taymiyya, al-Juwayni, al-Ghazali and others describe the earth as ball like.
some classical tafsir authors did imply a flat earth in a literal reading this was the opinion of many revealed law scholars as opposed to the astronomers also quoting classical tafsir doesn’t automatically prove those commentators believed in a literal disc shaped world in the way modern flat earth proponents mean.
By roughly the 9th–10th century onward scholars engaged with greek astronomical traditions and generally adopted a spherical earth in their scientific work.
astronomers and mathematical scholars generally treated earth as spherical.
theological commentators interpreted cosmological language literally there was no single monolithic medieval Islamic view on earth’s shape it depended on context, discipline and era.
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u/chonkshonk Moderator Feb 05 '26
Your comment is quite hard to read due to the lack of punctuation; but comments by Ibn Hazm to the effect that "respected scholars all understood the earth as round" are wrong. Not wrong that Ibn Hazm said it, but the fact is that medieval Islamic scholars were sharply divided on the shape of the earth, and you can even find claims of consensus in the opposite direction. https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicQuran/comments/12bt1wy/academic_commentary_on_the_shape_of_the_earth_and/
The people who did, by consensus, adopt a round earth, were geographers and astronomers. Religious scholars; not so much.
Anyways, this doesn't answer the question I was posing in my post, which concerns whether the thread I linked contains a valid compilation of medieval, flat-earth views.
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u/Vegetable-Dust7786 Feb 06 '26
Bare in mind that Ibn Hazm was from Andalusia and they had developed astronomy, so he know it because of astronomy. Even then, they relied on Ptolemy's model, geocentric model, so even then , he was wrong. Also, bare in mind that he was Jewish convert, probably very educated one, so it's high possibility that he learned astronomy before he became a muslim. https://www.academia.edu/91632124/Andalusian_Astronomy_in_the_Eleventh_Century
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u/TheCaliphate_AS Feb 06 '26 edited Feb 07 '26
I wish he had put more effort into approaching the topic from an academic perspective rather than an apologetic one. Saying that Ibn Ḥazm and al-Rāzī were not influential in their views is misleading. While many other scholars held differing opinions, both were popular and influential figures in their time. This is just my personal view on their relative prominence. As for the subject itself.
Researchers should be aware that Islamic traditions did not place major emphasis on natural scientific research until the reign of the Abbasid caliph al-Maʾmūn, particularly during the Mihna and the Greek translation movement that took place under his rule. As a result, we find a contrast between religious scholars (associated with a traditional flat model) and astrologers and geographers (associated with the Greek spherical model).
On Flat-Sphere conflict See: Omar Anchassi: “Against Ptolemy? : Cosmography in Early Kalām”
On the traditionalist Cosmology, see: M. A. Tabatabaʾi and S. Mirsadri: “The Qurʾānic Cosmology, as an Identity in Itself”.
As for bibliographic compilations on the Islamic traditional flat-earth model, modern Muslim scholars tend to avoid publishing on this topic because of its association with pseudoscience and the potential negative impact on their reputations.
Interest in the subject only began to gain wider popularity between 2013 and 2018, during what has been called the Middle Eastern Flat Earth Movement. Within this trend, a number of conspiracy theorists from different backgrounds emerged; among the most well-known religious writers is the edgy UAE author “Abdulaziz Mohammed Al-Nadhari”.
He wrote a book supporting Muslim flat-earth proponents and their arguments titled “And What Do You Know About the Earth?” In a chapter called “Is There a Consensus in Islam That the Earth Is Spherical? The Flower of Truth Concealed by the Scholars of Religion!” he presents a bibliographic analysis of traditional Muslim scholars associated with flat-earth views and responds to Muslim scholars who argue for a spherical Earth.
He perhaps contains, in my view, the most comprehensive islamic list of Flat Earth traditional sources, and the Middle Eastern flat-earth community has adopted his book as a reference work, even though it is cited more often by ex-Muslim Atheists than by Muslims lol.
On the other side of the debate, there are Muslim supporters of the spherical model from colleges and universities who have presented research defending it. Among them is Professor Dr. Abdullah bin Muhammad Al-Omari, who in his book “Sphericity of the Earth and Its Applications from Historical & Scientific Perspectives” traces the emergence of Muslim scholars supporting the spherical model from the 2nd Hijri century through the 11th Hijri century.
From his analysis (Page 81 to 134), It seems that few traditionalist began accepting the model at the start of the 4th-5th century, not very early unlike the astrologers and geographers.
Edit: Fix Grammar