Nūḥ 71:15-16

A lam taraw kayfa khalaqa'llāhu sabʿa samāwātin ṭibāqā · Wa jaʿala'l-qamara fīhinna nūran wa jaʿala'l-shamsa sirājā

"Have you not seen how God created seven heavens in layers? And He made the moon in them a light, and made the sun a lamp."

The analysis of this construction was made in Sūrat al-Fīl (105/1): the verb raʾā conveys knowing and grasping as well as seeing with the eye; the construction a lam tara is a formula the Qurʾān uses to say "look at this thing everyone knows". I rely on the observation made there.

The difference here: in al-Fīl the construction was singular (a lam tara — addressed to the Prophet), here it is plural (a lam taraw — addressed to the people). And here something genuinely visible to the eye is spoken of. So the construction works in both its figurative and its literal sense.

Note that Noah changes his argument. In verses 13-14 the proof was the human being himself; in verses 15-20 the proof will be what is outside: the heaven, the moon, the sun, the plant, the earth, the roads. From near to far, from inside to outside.

On the number "seven" there have been two readings since the classical period:

The first reading — the number is in its literal sense. There are seven separate heavens; their nature has not been made known to us. This view is the majority one and is the reading that stands closest to the Qurʾān's expression. The Qurʾān repeats the phrase "seven heavens" in many places (al-Baqara 2/29; al-Isrāʾ 17/44; al-Muʾminūn 23/86; Fuṣṣilat 41/12; al-Mulk 67/3; al-Nabaʾ 78/12) — this repetition suggests that the number is not arbitrary.

The second reading — "seven" conveys multiplicity. That certain numbers in Arabic (seven, seventy, seven hundred) convey "many" rather than a definite quantity is a fact recorded in the classical sources on language. On this reading "seven heavens" means "layer upon layer, countless heavens".

I make no definite preference. One thing, though, must be said plainly: matching this expression with any layering in modern astronomy (the layers of the atmosphere, planetary orbits, galactic structures) is a work the text does not do. Such matchings became widespread in the twentieth century; but that they have had to be rebuilt with every new astronomical model is the proof of their own weakness. The verse offers no model of the structure of the heaven; it says that the heaven has been made.

Root ط-ب-ق: one thing's sitting exactly upon another, fitting it, matching it.

Its derivatives:

• ṭabaqa — a storey, a layer. (It has passed into Turkish as well.)
• muṭābaqa — two things' fitting each other, matching. It is used as a term in logic and rhetoric too.
• ṭabaq — a vessel that closes over; one whose lid sits exactly on its body.
• aṭbaqa — to close, to shut over.

So ṭibāq does not mean simply "one above another"; it means one above another in mutual fit. Like lid and vessel, in a way that completes each other.

The word occurs once more in the Qurʾān, in the same construct: "It is He who created seven heavens in layers" (al-Mulk 67/3). And that verse adds immediately after: "You will see no disharmony in the creation of the Merciful. Turn your gaze again: do you see any crack?" That is, Sūrat al-Mulk openly relates the word ṭibāq to harmony. This illuminates the sense of the word here too.

فِيهِنَّ — "in them". There is a matter here that the classical commentaries have dwelt on: how can the moon be in the seven heavens? Elsewhere the Qurʾān places the lights in the nearest heaven: "We adorned the nearest heaven with stars" (al-Ṣāffāt 37/6); "We furnished the nearest heaven with lamps" (Fuṣṣilat 41/12; similarly al-Mulk 67/5).

The explanations transmitted in the classical sources:

• Fī means not "inside" but "among / within the whole of". If a thing is in a part of a whole, it is counted as within that whole. In English too, when we say "I live in the city" we do not mean the whole of it.
• Fī means "together with" (maʿa). The use of one particle in place of another is not rare in Arabic.
• The light reaches all the layers; though the moon be in one layer, its light passes through them all.

All of these explanations are in the classical sources; I do not present one of them as definitely correct. The verse's real work is not to give a scheme of cosmology.

This is the most discussed detail in the sūra and it needs careful handling.

نور, root ن-و-ر: light. The word conveys light itself — what illuminates, what removes darkness. The Qurʾān uses this word for guidance too and always leaves it singular (this was treated in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/17: nūr singular, ẓulumāt plural).

سراج, root س-ر-ج: a lamp. The concrete referent of the word is an instrument that gives light by burning oil. From the same root come sirāj (lamp), masraja (the place the lamp is set).

The difference between the two words at the lexical level is this: nūr is light itself; sirāj is the body that produces light. A lamp is an object that gives light by something burning inside it.

And the Qurʾān distributes these two words between the moon and the sun consistently:

That is, the Qurʾān always chooses a word from the field of burning/blazing for the sun, and always one from the field of light for the moon. This is a choice repeated in more than one place; it becomes hard to call it coincidence.

The classical exegetes saw this difference. The different choice of words was dwelt on; explanations to the effect that the sun's light is from itself and the moon's light otherwise appear in the classical exegetical literature. Moreover, in medieval Islamic astronomy it was a known assumption that the moon's light is taken from the sun, and this knowledge filtered into the exegetical literature too.

Now let us draw the limit. I do not draw from this verse the conclusion that "the Qurʾān announced that the moon's light is reflected, and this is a scientific miracle", and the method of this text does not permit it. The reasons:

1. That the moon's light is not from itself was known in Greek astronomy long before the age in which the Qurʾān came down. It was not a new piece of knowledge. 2. The word nūr is used in Arabic for things that have their own light too; it has no technical sense such as "reflected light". 3. And this is what is decisive: the Qurʾān uses the word sirāj of the Prophet as well — "an illuminating lamp" (sirājan munīrā, al-Aḥzāb 33/46). There, of course, no burning body is meant. The word conveys not a physical mechanism but the function of being a source. That the same word is used of the sun conveys primarily this: the light comes from it.

What can be said is this, and it is not a small thing: the Qurʾān chooses different words for the sun and the moon and is consistent in that choice. The sun is named a source (a lamp), the moon a light. This distinction stands within the text itself; there is no need to translate it into modern physics, and translating it does not increase the text's force — it decreases it, because it leaves the text having to be defended anew with every new scientific model.

Why does Noah speak of the heaven? The structure of the proof is this: the people live inside an order and they did not set that order up themselves. The heaven, the moon and the sun are things a human being cannot intervene in, that work without interruption, and that everyone sees.

And that the moon and the sun in particular are chosen is no accident: these two are humanity's oldest instruments of the calendar. Sowing, harvest, migration, pilgrimage, trade — all of it is set by them. That is, Noah points to the two things that actually order his people's life and asks "who put these here?"

The Qurʾān makes this link openly elsewhere: "It is He who made the sun a brightness and the moon a light, and determined for it stations, that you might know the number of the years and the reckoning" (Yūnus 10/5).