The Cosmos
The Earth’s Motion: A Classical Debate
In 1919 Imam Ahmad Raza Khan of Bareilly wrote a detailed defence of a stationary Earth, with 105 arguments. This page presents his case accurately and respectfully, sets out the evidence modern astronomy relies on, and explains how Muslim scholars read the verses today.
Why this page exists
Modern science says the Moon orbits the Earth, the Earth orbits the Sun, and the Sun orbits the centre of the Milky Way. Until about four centuries ago almost every astronomer in the world, Muslim, Christian and Greek, held the opposite: that the Earth is at rest at the centre. In the twentieth century one of the most influential Sunni scholars of South Asia defended that classical view in detail. His argument deserves to be known accurately, and so does the modern evidence. Here are both.
Imam Ahmad Raza Khan (1856–1921)
Imam Aḥmad Riḍā Khān was born in Bareilly, in northern India, in 1856 and died there in 1921. He was a Ḥanafī jurist and a master of many sciences. His fatwa collection, al-ʿAṭāyā al-Nabawiyya fī al-Fatāwā al-Riḍawiyya, runs to many volumes, and his Urdu translation of the Qur’an, Kanz al-Īmān, is read by millions. He also wrote on mathematics and astronomy, including the astronomical timekeeping used to fix prayer times. He is revered as a mujaddid (renewer) by a large part of the Sunni world, especially in South Asia.
His own field was the Islamic sciences: jurisprudence, hadith and theology. Yet he worked at a technical level in mathematics, astronomy and physics, writing with geometric diagrams, algebra and logarithmic calculations, and engaging directly with the Newtonian mechanics of his day. It is rare and admirable for a scholar of religion to enter another discipline this deeply and argue in its own terms.
In 1919 and the months that followed, near the end of his life, he wrote three treatises defending the stationary Earth against the heliocentric astronomy taught in colonial India:
- Nuzūl-e-Āyāt-e-Furqān ba-Sukūn-e-Zamīn-o-Āsmān: the case from the Qur’an and hadith that the earth and the heavens are at rest.
- Muʿīn-e-Mubīn bahr-e-Daur-e-Shams-o-Sukūn-e-Zamīn (“A clear aid on the revolution of the Sun and the stillness of the Earth”): written in response to a sensational forecast (see below).
- Fauz-e-Mubīn dar Radd-e-Ḥarkat-e-Zamīn (“A clear victory in refuting the motion of the Earth”): the main work, containing 105 arguments.
The Porta prediction of 17 December 1919
In 1919 the American forecaster Albert F. Porta attracted worldwide newspaper attention by predicting that an unusual grouping of planets on 17 December 1919 would cause violent storms and upheavals on Earth. Imam Ahmad Raza Khan answered in Muʿīn-e-Mubīn. He calculated the planets’ actual positions for that date, disputed the alignment Porta claimed, and rejected the idea that the planets would cause such a catastrophe.
The day passed without any catastrophe. Mainstream astronomers of the time also dismissed Porta’s forecast. The episode is remembered as a demonstration of the Imam’s command of astronomical calculation.
How Fauz-e-Mubeen is built
In his own introduction the Imam explains his method. He first sets out the premises of modern astronomy, and then uses those premises to show that the motion of the Earth leads to contradictions. It is an internal critique that meets the astronomers on their own ground.
| Part | Content (as described by the author) | Proofs |
|---|---|---|
| Foreword | The accepted concepts of modern astronomy that the book will use | — |
| Chapter 1 | Arguments from repulsion (centrifugal force) showing the motion of the Earth to be false | 12 |
| Chapter 2 | Arguments from attraction (Newtonian gravitation) | 50 |
| Chapter 3 | Further proofs of the impossibility of the Earth’s motion | 43 |
| Chapter 4 | Replies to the objections astronomers raise in support of the Earth’s motion | — |
| Conclusion | Proofs from revealed scripture for the revolution of the Sun and the stillness of the Earth | — |
| Total. The author notes that 15 were adapted from earlier works, and 90 are his own. | 105 | |
The book ranges over centripetal and centrifugal force, gravitation, projectile motion, relative velocity, tides and the structure of the Earth, with geometric diagrams and logarithmic calculations throughout. It engages directly with Copernicus, Kepler and Newton, and with the classical Muslim astronomers.
A sample argument, in his words
…if at all, had the air, like the earth, rotated around the direction of east, then as per your speculation and calculation, it was a must to a stone thrown high up in the sky to go away to the direction of east and fall it at a very distant place… But actually it falls at the same spot from where it was thrown.
The reasoning is that if the ground moves hundreds of metres per second, a stone thrown straight up should land far from where it was thrown, yet it lands at the same spot. The Imam uses the astronomers’ own figures for the Earth’s speed to calculate how far the stone should drift.
The scriptural case
The Imam’s scriptural argument, and that of the scholars who follow him, rests on a consistent pattern in the Qur’an. It repeatedly ascribes motion to the Sun and the Moon, saying they are “constantly moving”, that the Sun “moves towards its final point”, and that each “floats in an orbit”. It describes the earth as a resting place, upheld by God “that they do not tremble”.
اِنَّ اللّٰهَ يُمْسِكُ السَّمٰوٰتِ وَالْاَرْضَ اَنْ تَزُوْلَاۚ وَلَىِٕنْ زَالَتَا͏ٓ اِنْ اَمْسَكَهُمَا مِنْ اَحَدٍ مِّنْۢ بَعْدِهٖؕ اِنَّهٗ كَانَ حَلِيْمًا غَفُوْرًا ٤١
Indeed, Allah upholds the heavens and the earth, that they do not tremble; and if they diverge, who could stop them except Allah? Indeed, He is Most Forbearing, Most Forgiving.
The key word is أَن تَزُولَا an tazūlā, from zawāl: to move away, depart, cease. Imam Ahmad Raza Khan’s own translation, shown above, renders it “that they do not tremble”. God holds the heavens and the earth so that they do not move from their places. Other translators render it “lest they cease” or “lest they collapse”.
اَمَّنْ جَعَلَ الْاَرْضَ قَرَارًا وَّجَعَلَ خِلٰلَهَا͏ٓ اَنْهٰرًا وَّجَعَلَ لَهَا رَوَاسِيَ وَجَعَلَ بَيْنَ الْبَحْرَيْنِ حَاجِزًاؕ ءَاِلٰهٌ مَّعَ اللّٰهِؕ بَلْ اَكْثَرُهُمْ لَا يَعْلَمُوْنَؕ ٦١
Or He Who made the earth (a place) for dwelling, and caused streams in its midst, and created (mountains as) anchors therefor, and kept a barrier between the two seas? Is there another god along with Allah? Rather, most of them (i.e. people) are ignorant.
وَسَخَّرَ لَكُمُ الشَّمْسَ وَالْقَمَرَ دَا࢜ىِٕبَيْنِۚ وَسَخَّرَ لَكُمُ الَّيْلَ وَالنَّهَارَۚ ٣٣
And He made the sun and the moon subservient to you, which are constantly moving, and made the night and the day subservient to you.
وَالشَّمْسُ تَجْرِيْ لِمُسْتَقَرٍّ لَّهَاؕ ذٰلِكَ تَقْدِيْرُ الْعَزِيْزِ الْعَلِيْمِؕ ٣٨
And the sun moves towards its final point (i.e. the Day of Judgement); this is the command of the Almighty, the All-Knowing.
The Sun “moves” (tajrī, literally “runs”) and the Sun and Moon are “constantly moving” (dāʾibayn), while the Earth is called qarār, a settled place “for dwelling” (27:61) and a “resting place” (40:64). Together with the hadith of the Sun’s prostration after it sets (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 3199), this is read as the Sun travelling around a resting Earth.
This was also the view of the great majority of classical Muslim scholars and astronomers, who worked within the Earth-centred cosmology inherited from Ptolemy and refined it greatly.
See the two descriptions side by side
Geometrically, both descriptions reproduce the same positions in the sky. The loops traced by Mars and Venus in the Earth-centred view are why pre-modern astronomers needed epicycles. The scientific question is about dynamics: which frame is non-rotating and non-accelerating, so that the laws of motion hold without extra “fictitious” forces?
The view of modern astronomy
Mainstream modern astronomy holds that the Earth rotates and orbits the Sun. For completeness, here are the observations it relies on. Most were made before 1919, and some were refined later.
Stellar aberration · 1729
James Bradley found that every star traces a small ellipse through the year, shifted by up to about 20.5 arcseconds from its average position. The size matches Earth’s orbital speed of about 30 km/s, and it was the first direct evidence of the Earth’s motion.
Stellar parallax · 1838
Friedrich Bessel measured the tiny annual shift of the star 61 Cygni against more distant stars, as seen from opposite sides of Earth’s orbit. Parallax has since been measured for over a billion stars by the Gaia spacecraft.
Foucault’s pendulum · 1851
A long free pendulum’s plane of swing turns steadily, by 360° × sin(latitude) per sidereal day. That is about 131° per day at Makkah and a full circle at the poles, exactly as a rotating Earth predicts.
Coriolis effects
Large storms rotate one way in the northern hemisphere and the other way in the southern. Long-range projectiles and dropped objects are measurably deflected. Bodies dropped down deep mine shafts land slightly east of the plumb line, as rotation predicts.
The equatorial bulge
Earth’s equatorial radius (6,378 km) is about 21 km larger than its polar radius (6,357 km). That flattening is what a rotating, slightly fluid body should have.
Spaceflight & GPS
Interplanetary trajectories are computed in a frame centred on the Solar System’s centre of mass, and they arrive. GPS receivers must correct for Earth’s rotation during a signal’s travel time (the Sagnac effect).
How modern physics treats the thrown stone
Modern mechanics approaches the stone question through inertia, the principle Galileo introduced. In that view, before it is thrown, the stone is already moving eastward with the ground and the air at the same speed. Once released, nothing removes that eastward speed, so it keeps pace with the ground and lands essentially where it started, just as a ball tossed upward in a smoothly moving train lands back in your hand. Because the top of the stone’s path is a little farther from Earth’s axis, there is a tiny predicted deflection, and precise experiments detect exactly that.
“Isn’t all motion relative?”
Supporters of the stationary Earth sometimes note that modern physics has no “absolute rest”. That is true, and it is worth stating carefully. You can describe the universe from a frame in which the Earth is fixed. Engineers routinely use an Earth-fixed frame for GPS and for everyday navigation. The 3D model shows that such a description can reproduce every position in the sky.
Physics does, however, distinguish frames that rotate or accelerate from frames that do not, and it does so by experiment. In a rotating frame, a Foucault pendulum turns, gyroscopes drift, and centrifugal and Coriolis forces appear without any physical cause. Distant galaxies would have to sweep around the Earth every day at speeds far greater than light. Every one of these effects is exactly what you would expect if the Earth rotates within a non-rotating universe. That is why physicists conclude that the Earth rotates and orbits. Strictly, the Earth and Sun both orbit their common centre of mass.
How other Muslim scholars read these verses
Muslims agree that the Qur’an is true. The question is what these verses mean. Alongside the reading of Imam Ahmad Raza Khan and the scholars who follow him, some contemporary scholars read the verses as compatible with a moving Earth:
- The Sun and Moon do move. Every verse ascribing motion to them is literally true in modern astronomy. The Sun runs around the galaxy and the Moon orbits the Earth. The Qur’an nowhere states explicitly that the Earth has no motion.
- Qarār as stability. A place “for dwelling” (27:61) or a “resting place” (40:64) can describe the Earth’s steadiness for its inhabitants: no violent shaking, a stable climate and a firm surface. A ship on calm water is a steady home for passengers even while it sails.
- Zawāl as ceasing or collapsing. Many translators and commentators render 35:41 as God holding the heavens and earth “lest they cease” or “lest they collapse”. On that reading the verse concerns their continued existence and order, not orbital motion. Imam Ahmad Raza Khan’s rendering, “that they do not tremble”, is the reading his argument rests on.
- The Sun’s prostration in the hadith is widely understood as an unseen reality (see 22:18, which says the Sun, Moon and stars all prostrate), not a description of the Sun’s path across the sky.
The classical tradition was not unanimous either. Al-Bīrūnī (d. 1048) discussed an astrolabe designed on the assumption that the Earth rotates and considered the question hard to settle. The astronomer ʿAlī Qūshjī (d. 1474), who worked in Samarkand and later in Istanbul, argued that observation does not rule out the Earth’s rotation.
Some modern writers go the other way and cite 27:88, “you will see the mountains, you will think that they are fixed, whereas, they will be moving like the moving of the clouds”, as a proof of the Earth’s rotation. The verse comes directly after a description of the trumpet of the Last Day (27:87), and classical commentators, like the future tense of the translation quoted here, placed it then. We do not use it as proof in either direction.
Our summary
Fauz-e-Mubeen is a serious and learned work in the long tradition of classical astronomy. It is carefully argued, mathematically detailed and written from deep conviction by one of the great scholars of the Muslim world. Imam Ahmad Raza Khan held, from the Qur’an, the hadith and 105 arguments of his own, that the Earth is at rest and the Sun moves. Mainstream modern science holds that the Earth rotates and orbits the Sun. Muslims who follow the Imam hold that the Qur’an’s wording supports his reading. Others read the same verses differently. The verses themselves are true on every reading: the Sun and Moon each run their appointed courses, and it is Allah who upholds the heavens and the earth. Wa-Allāhu aʿlam: and Allah knows best.
If you are a student of Imam Ahmad Raza Khan’s works and believe any detail above misrepresents him, please write with the reference and we will correct it: sharjeelmazhar@gmail.com.