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Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation# (London Oriental Series)

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Wansbrough is often mentioned as a pioneer in literary/textual criticism of the Koran. After reading a number of works on the origins and content of the Koran (by Ibn Warraq, Robert Spencer, and others), after reading the Koran itself several times, and after considerable time spent in literary/textual criticism of the Bible, I thought it was time to tackle Wansbrough. To my disappointment, however, I found his book quite unreadable. His English is obscure and laced with words that would stump a Scrabble champion. Then there are the hundreds of passages or terms in the original Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and German. Perhaps there is merit buried in this tome, but it might as well have been written in cuneiform.

One of the questions which puzzled the ancient Arabs was, "Where did the sun go when night time came?" The Qur'an gave them Allah's answer.

He [i.e. Zul-qarnain] followed, until he reached the setting of the sun. He found it set in a spring of murky water.
(Surah XVIII ( Kahf) vs. 85-86)

We agree with Muslim scholars that Zul-qarnain refers to Alexander the Great (see Yusuf Ali's appendix on this subject in his translation of the Qur'an). According to this surah, Alexander the Great traveled west until he found out what happened to the sun. It went down into and under the murky waters of a pond. When it was completely covered by the water, darkness fell upon the earth.

To the early Muslims, this surah gave the divine answer as to why darkness fell when the sun set in the West. They assumed that the sun, like the moon, was the size perceived by the human eye, about the size of a basketball. Darkness came when with a mighty hissing roar it went down under the dark waters of a pond. They boldly and proudly proclaimed that this marvelous answer proved that the Qur'an was indeed the Word of God.

Today, modern Muslims are quite embarrassed by this passage and try to ignore it or to quickly dismiss it as poetry. But the passage is not part of a poem. Thus it cannot be dismissed as figurative language or poetic license. In the context, it is part of a historical narrative which relates several historical incidences in the life of Alexander the Great.

The mistake was based on the erroneous assumption that the earth was flat. The authors of the Qur'an did not know that the earth was a sphere which revolved around the sun.