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Cosmology
In Islamic cosmology, the cosmos or universe (al-ʿālam) is defined generally as “everything other than Allah.” This definition, universally accepted in Islam, has its basis in the Qurʿān in which it is asserted repeatedly that Allah is “lord of all the worlds” and that to Allah belongs “everything in the heavens and the earth” and “what is in between.” “Everything other than Allah” is identified with what the Qurʿān refers to as “all the worlds” and “everything in the heavens and the earth.”
The cosmos is also identified with the whole created order (khalq) that, according to the Qurʿān, comes into existence through the divine creative command kun (be!). The term kawn, which is related etymologically to the word kun and conveys the meaning of engendered existence, is often used by Muslim cosmologists to refer to the whole cosmos; one of the terms used to denote cosmology is ʿilm al-kawn, meaning literally “the science of the cosmos.”
This traditional Muslim definition of the cosmos is of great significance to contemporary Muslims in their encounter with modern cosmology. First, in contrast to modern cosmology, which ignores or rejects altogether the existence of Allah and views the cosmos as a completely independent order of reality or even as the only reality, Islamic cosmology is theocentric. The idea of the cosmos in Islam is inseparable from the Qurʿānic conception of Allah.
The most fundamental teaching of the Qurʿān is that Allah is the central reality. Although from one point of view the cosmos is not Allah, and there is a fundamental distinction between the two, the cosmos is always defined in relation to this central reality that is its metaphysical source as well as its ultimate goal. Indeed, Allah enters into the definition of the cosmos. The various cosmological schemes or theories developed by the different schools of Islamic cosmology represent so many ways of looking at the relationship between Allah and the cosmos. The nature of this relationship has been a fundamental issue in Islamic cosmology.
Second, in contrast to Islamic cosmology, which deals with the whole cosmos (“all the worlds”), modern cosmology has in view only a small portion of this cosmos, namely, the physical world. Modern cosmology may have discovered many facts about the physical universe that were unknown to ancient and medieval cosmologists, and it may have extended the boundaries of that universe far beyond those they had ever known, but by their qualitative contents, the dimensions of the modern cosmos, which is limited to the physical realm, are far smaller than those of the traditional Muslim cosmos.
Islamic cosmology inquires into the nature of the nonphysical worlds without neglecting the physical; it has, in fact, made important contributions to the development of the natural and mathematical sciences. Islamic cosmology covers a far wider domain of rational inquiry than does modern cosmology. As defined by the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʿ (Brethren of Purity) — a secret brotherhood of philosophers and scientists in tenth- and eleventh-century Islam who wrote the influential Rasāʿil (theses), a collection of fifty-two treatises covering almost every branch of medieval philosophy and science — the cosmos is “all the spiritual and material beings who populate the immensity of the skies, who constitute the reign of multiplicity which extends to the spheres, the stars, the elements, their products, and to man” (Nasr, 1978, p. 53).
Sources Of Islamic Cosmology
For Muslims, the Qurʿān is the most important source of cosmological knowledge. It provides Muslims with the general cosmological principles that determine the dimensions and boundaries of the Muslim cosmos, both temporally and spatially, and that also serve as a necessary background for the scientific study of that cosmos.
These cosmological principles are explicitly stated in or derived from the metaphysical teachings of the Qurʿān as applied to the cosmic domain. According to the Qurʿān itself, its verses are of two kinds, the muḥkamāt (clear) and the mutashābihāt (ambiguous). Many Islamic cosmological ideas are derived from verses of the second kind and have been arrived at primarily through taʿwīl (symbolic or esoteric interpretation), which presupposes a deep spiritual insight and soundness of intellectual intuition (as distinct from the faculty of ratiocination or discursive reasoning) on the part of the interpreters who seek to understand the inner meanings of those verses.
For example, the metaphysical statement “Allah is the First and the Last, the Outward and the Inward” (sūrah57:3) has implications for the cosmos: To say that Allah is al-Awwal (the First) means that the cosmos has an origin or a beginning. And to say that He is al-Ākhir (the Last) means that the cosmosIn other words, the world of multiplicity comes from the One Allah and returns to the One Allah. The cosmos therefore has not come into existence by chance or without purpose.
On the contrary, it is a purposive world, a fact supported by numerous Qurʿānic verses that assert that the whole universe is created in truth and by the truth (fī-al-ḥaqq, bi-al-ḥaqq) and not in vain (see, e.g., sūrahs 16:3 and 21:16). Muslims view the cosmos as governed by teleological principles. A discussion of these principles has a important place in Islamic cosmology and by extension in the particular sciences, such as the physical and the biological sciences.
If the first pair of the four Divine Names mentioned above, the First and the Last, determines the temporal boundaries of the cosmos, then the other pair, the Outward and the Inward, determines its spatial boundaries. How this latter pair of names shapes Muslims’ vision of the cosmos is more difficult to understand if one accepts only a logical interpretation of the names: looking at the cosmos through the two names presents two different pictures, one being the reverse of the other.
According to one traditional interpretation, saying that Allah is the Outward or al-Ẓāhir (the Manifested) means that the cosmos is contained or enclosed by Allah. If the cosmos is divided into its physical and nonphysical parts, then, following the same principle of outwardness, it is the physical world that is enveloped by the nonphysical. And to say that Allah is al-Bāṭin (the Hidden) means that the cosmos is a reality that lies outside Allah and veils him. If the same relation is now considered between the different parts of the cosmos itself, then it is the physical world that lies outside the spiritual world and hides the latter.
The two different pictures of the cosmos that arise from a consideration of the Divine Names, the Outward and the Inward, can be represented geometrically by two concentric circles. In the first picture, in which Allah is viewed as the Outward, the inner circle represents the cosmos while the outer circle represents Divine Reality. In the second picture, in which Allah is viewed as the Inward, we have the reverse.’ The inner circle now represents Divine Reality whereas the outer circle represents the cosmos. By further considering the hierarchy of existence within both Divine Reality itself and the cosmos, this simple geometric representation can be enlarged to include more concentric circles, each of which represents a particular state of existence. With this geometric scheme, Muslim cosmologists found a means of integrating elements of pre-Islamic cosmology into the Qurʿānic cosmological perspective.
Allusions to the dimensions of the cosmos are also found in those Qurʿānic verses that speak of the seven heavens and the seven earths, of the Divine Throne, ʿArsh, and the Divine Footstool, Kursī (see sūrahs 20:5 and 2:255), and of the cosmic mountain Qāf and the cosmic tree. And there are other verses that refer to complementary pairs — light and darkness, this world and the next world, paradise and hell, the origin and the return, spirit and body, sun and moon, and day and night — all of which allude to the dimensions of the Muslim cosmos. Even the term “Muslim cosmos” itself is derived directly from the Qurʿān: everything in the cosmos, says the Qurʿān, is a Muslim because it submits willingly or unwillingly to the will of Allah as manifested in the laws of the cosmos. “One who submits” to the divine will is precisely what the word “Muslim” means.
The best known Qurʿānic verses that deal with general cosmological principles are the Throne Verse (2:255) and the Light Verse (24:35). The Light Verse in particular has been commented on by many famous Muslim thinkers, including al-Fārābī (d. 950), Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037), the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʿ, al-Ghazālī (d. 1111), and Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1641). These commentaries include some of the most important cosmological speculations by classical Muslim thinkers, which seek to harmonize pre-Islamic cosmology with cosmological data contained in the Islamic revelation.
Another revelation that has influenced traditional Islamic conceptions of the cosmos is that of the laylat al-miʿrāj (night of the ladder), the Prophetʾs miraculous night journey (see sūrahs 17:1 and 53:11–18) from the earth to the Divine Throne, an event fresh in the memory of every generation of Muslims, because it is celebrated annually by Muslims everywhere. About the journey itself the Qurʿān tells us very little, only that the Prophet was transported from Mecca to Jerusalem, then taken to the heavens until he reached the farthest lote tree (sidrat al-muntahā; sūrah53:14) before being brought finally to the divine throne.
Detailed descriptions of the journey are given in the ḥadīths. Thanks to this second most important source of knowledge in Islam, we have more information not only about the journey from Mecca to Jerusalem but also about the Prophetʾs ascension from Jerusalem to the Divine Throne through all the heavens and about the throne itself. There is a description of every heaven through which the Prophet passed. He was guided throughout most of his journey by the archangel Gabriel. The only exception was during the final stage, from the lote tree to the divine throne, when the Prophet alone was given the honor of being transported on a beautiful rafraf (narrow piece of silk brocade; see the account given by Jalāl al-Din al-Suyūṭī [d. 1505], translated in A. Jeffrey, Islam: Muhammad and His Religion, Indianapolis and New York, 1958, pp. 42–46).
The language used to describe the journey is largely symbolic. The farthest lote tree symbolizes the outermost region of the universe, and the Prophetʾs passage through every heaven symbolizes his journey through all states of being in the cosmic hierarchy. The final goal of the journey is the Divine Presence, beyond the cosmos itself. The Prophetʾs nocturnal ascension to the Divine Throne has a great significance for Islamic cosmology. The accounts of that event in the Qurʿān and the ḥadīths give Muslims a clear picture of the overall dimensions of the cosmos, and the event also teaches them the ultimate< purpose of cosmology.
The highest goal of cosmology is to enable oneself to visualize the cosmos as a book of symbols that can be contemplated for spiritual uplift, or as a prison from which the human soul must escape to attain true freedom. This view concerning the role of the cosmos in manʾs spiritual journey to Allah, inspired by the Prophetʾs miʿrāj, was shared enthusiastically by the two main traditions of Islamic cosmology. One stands in opposition to Greek and other traditions and relied solely on the Qurʿān and ḥadīths for cosmological knowledge. Religious scholars, such as Abū Muḥammad al-Iṣfahānī (Abū al-Shaykh, d. 979), the eleventh-century al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, and al-Suyūṭī, who are leading representatives of this tradition but whose cosmological works are little known to the modern world, insisted that it is more important to contemplate the cosmos as a book of divine signs than to speculate rationally about it.
The other cosmological tradition, represented mainly by philosophers of various schools and by scientists, but also by some leading theologians and Ṣūfīs, sought to synthesize cosmological ideas from non-Islamic sources with the cosmological teachings of the Qurʿān and ḥadīths. For many representatives of this tradition, a vast knowledge of scientific cosmology was no obstacle to the acceptance of a spiritual or metaphysical cosmology in which the symbolic interpretation of all natural phenomena, the concept of the interiorization of the cosmos, and a spiritual journey through the universe to what lies beyond it are particularly important. On the contrary — as we find in the “visionary recitals” of Ibn Sīnā (see Corbin, 1980; Nasr, 1978, chap. 15) that were no doubt inspired by the Prophetʾs miʿrāj — they had the spiritual ingenuity to transform scientific facts into cosmic symbols that were to act as guideposts for the traveler on the path of spiritual perfection in his journey through and beyond the cosmos to the divine presence.
The Qurʿān provides us with general cosmological principles, but it is much more comprehensive and detailed than other sacred books of the world in its accounts of cosmogony, cosmography, the qualitative contents of the cosmos (such as angels), eschatological events, and other cosmic phenomena. The Qurʿānic accounts of the cosmos are, however, generally complemented by more detailed treatments in the ḥadīths. The beginning of cosmological speculation in Islam can be traced back to the commentaries and interpretations of cosmological data contained in these two main sources dating to the first few generations of Muslims.
The indigenous Islamic tradition, which was strongly opposed to Greek and other foreign sciences, formulated a cosmology based almost entirely on Islamic sources, namely the Qurʿān, the ḥadīths, and the transmitted (i.e., traditional Islamic) sciences. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a leading contemporary historian and philosopher of Islamic science, has likened the position of this indigenous cosmology in the Islamic cosmological tradition to that of Prophetic medicine within the larger body of Islamic medical knowledge.
The other tradition, which had a far greater impact than the first on the historical and philosophical development of Islamic science, developed a number of cosmologies that were partly inspired by ideas inherited from pre-Islamic cosmological systems. The most important of these were the Hermetic, Pythagorean, and Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmologies made available to the Muslims mainly through translations of Greek sources, Mazdean (Zoroastrian) cosmology from Persia, and certain forms of Indian cosmology. All these non-Islamic elements were, however, fully integrated into the more universal Qurʿānic cosmological perspective.
Historical Development Of Islamic Cosmology
Islamic cosmological thought began with the first speculations on the subject by some of the most distinguished companions of the Prophet, whom Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 728) referred to as the ahl al-bāṭin (people of inwardness), those having an esoteric cast of mind and a command of the science of taʿwīl of both the Qurʿān and ḥadīths, particularly the sacred ḥadīths (ḥadīth qudsī). Prominent among these companions were ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, Ibn ʿAbbās, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd, and Abū Ḥurayrah.
Ibn ʿAbbās, an uncle of the Prophet, tells us that he learned from the Prophet the esoteric meaning of the seven heavens and the seven earths mentioned in the Qurʿān. In his commentary on this sacred text, which continues to be widely read in traditional Muslim circles and which is popularly referred to as tafsīr Ibn ʿAbbās (Exegesis of Ibn ʿAbbās), he clarified the meanings of many verses related to cosmology and delved into the symbolic meanings of letters of the alphabet which appear at the opening of some chapters of the Qurʿān.
Ibn ʿAbbās defines the qualitative contents of the Muslim cosmos in relation to the Qurʿānic term ʿālamīn ([all] the worlds). He explains the nature and number of angelic bearers of the divine throne. He also names and describes in symbolic language the angel in charge of each of the seven heavens. This illustrates the close relationship between cosmology and angelology that has existed in Islamic cosmological thought since its beginnings. Ibn ʿAbbās is also an important early source of a detailed account of the Prophetʾs miʿrāj.
It was ʿAlī, the Prophetʾs cousin and son-in-law, the fourth rightly guided caliph of Sunnī Islam and the first imam of Shīʿī Islam, who enjoyed the greatest respect and influence in both the exoteric and the esoteric sciences. In what has survived of his sermons, letters, poems, and proverbs — as preserved mainly in the Nahj al-balāghah (The Way of Eloquence), a late Shīʿī compilation by al-Sharīf al-Raḍī (d. 1015) — we meet for the first time in Islam a number of technical expressions of an almost philosophical nature as well as tendencies toward an analytical intellectual discourse. Of interest to historians of Islamic cosmology is ʿAlīʾs reference in one of his poems to man as al-ʿālam al-ṣaghīr (microcosm). It is the earliest explicit mention of this important cosmological idea in Islamic sources.
Traditional sources have also attributed to ʿAlī the origin of several distinctively Islamic arts and sciences, such as khaṭṭ (calligraphy) and the study of the numerical symbolism of the alphabet (ʿilm al-jafr). According to Bel-Mughus al-Maghribī, a sixteenth-century historian of alchemy, ʿAlī also inherited the alchemical art from the Prophet. In Islam, the science of alphabetical symbolism and alchemy have always been closely linked with cosmology. The cosmological teachings of ʿAlī as inherited and further developed by both his blood and intellectual descendants must have served as important foundational elements in the early development of Islamic cosmology. His idea of the analogy between the microcosm and the macrocosm, and his use of numerical symbolism for the letters of the Arabic alphabet, found fuller and more systematic exposition in later cosmological writings, such as those of Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʿ and Ibn Sīnā.
Among the most distinguished of ʿAlīʿs early intellectual successors were Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 765). Both were Ṣūfīs, but the former, a disciple of ʿAlī who lived long enough to see the first three generations of the Muslim community, was a Sunnī, and the latter was the sixth imam of Shi’ism, although he was revered also by many Sunnīs. The alchemical and other esoteric teachings and writings associated with the intellectual circle of Imam Jaʿfar are of particular importance in the later development of many schools of Islamic cosmology. Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, the greatest alchemist of Islam, also belonged to this circle.
In alchemical writings attributed to Jābir, the author claims to be expounding the teachings of his master, Imam Jaʿfar. The Jābirian cosmology is a remarkable synthesis of cosmological and scientific ideas drawn from diverse sources. There is a place in it for the Neoplatonic theory of emanation (the origination of created beings from Allah) and the depiction of the cosmos as a hierarchy of concentric spheres; a place for the Pythagorean concept of cosmic harmony arising from the qualitative, symbolic properties of numbers; a place for the magic square — reflected in the layout of the Ming Tang temple — taken from Chinese science thanks to the numerical symbolism inherent in it; and there is a place for the Hermetic science of alchemical and astrological symbolisms based on the maxim, “that which is lowest symbolizes that which is highest,” in which the sulfur-mercury principle is of fundamental importance. However, the alchemical perspective predominates.
The central idea in Jābirian cosmology that connects its elements coherently is the cosmological concept of the balance, by which the correct proportion of elements is achieved. It refers to the harmony of the various tendencies of the Universal Soul that determines and orders the qualities of cosmic existence. In Jābirʾs cosmological scheme, which he presented as a hierarchy of concentric circles, the Universal Soul exists below the intellect, above which is the First Cause (Allah). Below the Universal Soul is the world of substance, which is the principle of the physical cosmos.
Jābirian cosmology exerted a great influence on the cosmological thought of Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʿ and on Ismāʿīlī and Ṣūfī cosmologies, especially that of Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 1240). But during the period that separates Jābir from Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ and the flowering of Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī thought, there emerged another school of Islamic cosmology that was more rational and scientific in its intellectual outlook. This is the Peripatetic school of philosopher-scientists founded by Abū Yaʿqūb al-Kindī (d. c.873), further developed by al-Fārābī, and taken to its greatest height by Ibn Sīnā. Muslim Peripatetic cosmology is based on a synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy (as interpreted mainly by the Neoplatonists) with Islamic cosmology.
Al-Kindī argued for a closed and finite cosmos. He also believed in the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. In contrast, both al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā maintained the theory of emanation to explain the emergence of the world of multiplicity from the One. The picture of the cosmos associated with this school was the one largely used in Islam by its astronomers. Prior to and parallel with the development of Peripatetic cosmological thought were the various schools of kalām (dialectical theology), especially that of the Ashʿarīs, who possess what we might call an atomistic cosmology.
Al-Ghazālī, the best known of the Ashʿarī theologians, severely criticized Peripatetic thought. This criticism helped pave the way for the emergence of the Illuminationist school of philosophy of Suhrawardī and the mystical philosophy of Ibn al-ʿArabī. Each of these schools developed its own cosmology as well. Ibn al-ʿArabīʾs cosmology, which is a synthesis of earlier cosmological ideas and those produced by his own creative genius, has been the dominant cosmology in many parts of the Islamic world up to the present. In Iran, Mullā Ṣadrā, while greatly influenced by Ibn al-ʿArabīʾs cosmology, attempted to create his own synthesis. Mullā Ṣadrāʾs contemporaries in the Malay world, such as Ḥamzah Fansūrī and Nūr al-Dīn al-Rānīrī, translated Ibn al-ʿArabīʾs thought into Malay. The cosmological writings of these Malay thinkers continue to be read and discussed.
Many Muslim intellectuals, including scientists, are now interested in earlier Islamic writings on the subject of cosmology. Their encounter with modern cosmology has forced them to reexamine the Islamic cosmological heritage in a more favorable light.
Cosmology
652 – 008
Last Updated: 06/2021
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