![]() Unlike the hundreds of other verses where the Arabic word yawm or its plural ayyam (أَيَّامٍ) is understood to mean day or days, when the Quran describes the creation of the world some modern Muslim scholars have appealed to its alternative meaning, 'time period'. This is in sharp contrast with the findings of modern cosmology which show the Earth to have formed some 9 billion years after the beginning of the universe. The Qur'an presents the prevailing Middle-Eastern myth that the Earth and heavens were formed in six days. Main Article: Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars:Creation The whole passage is about day and night and the sun and moon's movement in that context. Whichever interpretation was intended, the sun's movement is nevertheless mentioned right after describing day and night, just as the next verse mentions the different mansions appointed for the moon each night. Another version of the above hadith probably supports this view (for details of all these things see footnotes in the main article). Other verses talk about the sun swimming for a 'term appointed' (using a different Arabic word). The alternative view among exegetes was that this refers to the sun's final resting on the last day. This cycle repeats, until one day Allah asks the sun to rise 'from your setting place' (مِنْ مَغْرِبِكِ). There are also sahih hadith ( Sahih Muslim 1:297) that mention the sun's daily cycle using the same Arabic word to mean a resting place, which is underneath Allah's throne, and is where each night the sun prostrates and is asked to go and rise 'from its rising place' (مِنْ مَطْلِعِهَا). ![]() Quran 36:37-40, occurring in a passage about night and day, right after describing the change from day to night, states that the sun runs on to a resting place for it (لِمُسْتَقَرٍّ لَّهَا).
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