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 Whenever I describe the details the Qur’an contains on certain points of astronomy to westerners, it is usual for someone not to reply that there is nothing special, in this, considering the Arabs made important discoveries in this field long before the Europeans.
This is, in fact, a singularly mistaken idea resulting from ignorance of history. In the first place, science was developed in Arabic countries at a time that was considerably after the Qur’anic Revelation had occurred; in the second, the scientific knowledge prevalent at the highpoint of Islamic civilization would not have made it possible for a human being to have written statements on the heavens comparable to those in the Qur’an.
Here again, the subject is so wide that I can only provide an outline of it. Whereas the Bible talks of the Sun and the Moon as two luminaries differing in size, the Qur’an distinguishes between them by the use of different epithets: light (nur) for the Moon, torch (siraj) for the Sun. The first is an inert body which reflects light, the second a celestial formation in a state of permanent combustion, and a source of light and heat.
The word ‘star’ (najm) is accompanied by another qualifying it which indicates that it burns and consumes itself as it pierces through the shadows of the night: it is the word thakib. In the Qur’an, the kawakib definitely seems to mean the planets which are celestial formations that reflect and do not produce light like the Sun.
Today it is known how the celestial organization is balanced by the position of stars in a defined orbit and the interplay of gravitational forces related to their mass and speed of movement, each with its own motion. But isn’t this what the Qur’an describes, in terms which have only become comprehensible in our own day, when it mentions the foundation of this balance in the Surah Al Anbiya’ (21:33) “And He it is Who has created the night and the day, the sun and the moon, each in an orbit floating.”
The Arabic word which expresses this movement is a verb sabaha (yasbahun in the text): it carries with it the idea of a motion which comes from any moving body, be it the movement of one’s legs as one runs on the ground, or the action of swimming in water. In the case of a celestial body, one is forced to translate it in the original sense, that is, to travel with one’s own motion.
The description of the sequence of day and night would, in itself, be rather commonplace, were it not for the fact that it is expressed in terms that today are highly significant, it is because it uses the verb kawwara in the Surah Al Zumar (39:5) to describe the way the night ‘winds’ or ‘coils’ itself about the day and the day about the night, just as in the original meaning of the verb, a turban is wound around the head. This is a totally valid comparison; yet at the time the Qur’an was revealed, the astronomical data necessary to draw it were unknown.
The evolution of the heavens and the notion of a settled place for the Sun are also described. They are in agreement with highly detailed modern ideas. The Qur’an also seems to have alluded to the expansion of the Universe. There is also the conquest of space. This has been undertaken thanks to remarkable technological progress and has resulted in man’s journey to the Moon. But this surely springs to mind when we read the Surah Al Rahman (55:33).
“O assembly of jinns and men, if you can penetrate the regions of the heavens and the earth, then penetrate them! You will not penetrate them save with [Our] Power.”This power comes from the Almighty, and the subject of the whole Surah is an invitation to recognize God’s Beneficence to man. The Earth: Let us now return to Earth. Let us examine, for example, this verse in the Surah Al Zumar (39:21) “Has thou not seen that God sent water down from the sky and led it through sources into the ground? Then He caused sown fields of different colours to grow.”
Such notions seem quite natural to us today, but we should not forget that they were not prevalent long ago. It was not until the sixteenth century, with Bernard Palissy, that we gained the first coherent description of the water cycle. Prior to this, people talked about the theory whereby the water of the oceans, under the effect of winds, were thrust towards the interior of the continents. They then returned to the oceans via the great abyss, which, since Plato’s time, has been called the Tartarus.
In the seventeenth century, a great thinker such as Descartes believed in it, and even in the nineteenth century there was still talk of Aristotle’s theory, according to which water was condensed in cool mountain caverns and formed underground lakes that fed springs. Today, we know that it is the infiltration of rainwater that is responsible for this. If one compares the facts of modern hydrology with the data to be found in numerous verses of the Qur’an on this subject, one cannot fail to notice the remarkable degree of agreement between the two.
In Geology, a fact of recently acquired knowledge is the phenomenon of folding, which was to form the mountain ranges. The same is true of the Earth’s crust, which is like a solid shell on which we can live, while the deeper layers are hot and fluid and thus inhospitable to any form of life. It is also known that the stability of the mountains is linked to the phenomenon of folding, for it was the folds that were to provide foundations for the reliefs that constituted the mountains.
Let us now compare modern ideas with one verse among many in the Qur’an that deals with this subject. It is taken from the Surah ‘Al Naba’ (78: 6-7). “Have We not made the earth an expanse and the mountains stakes?” The stakes (awtad), which are driven in the ground like those used to anchor a tent, are the deep foundations of geological folds. Progress in botany at the time of Muhammad  was in no country advanced enough for it to be established as a rule that plants have both male and female parts. Nevertheless, we may read the following in the Surah Taha (20: 53). “(God is the One Who) sent water down from the sky and thereby We brought forth pairs of plants each separate form the other.”
Today, we know that fruit comes form plants that have sexual characteristics (even when it comes from unfertilized flowers, like bananas). In the Surah Al Ra’d (13:3) “And fruits of every kind He made in pairs, two and two. He draweth the Night as a veil O’er the Day. Behold, verily In these things there are Sings For those who reflect!.”
Reflections on reproduction in the animal kingdom were linked to those on human reproduction. We shall examine them presently. In the field of physiology, there is one verse which appears extremely significant: one thousand years before the discovery of the circulation of the blood, and roughly thirteen centureis before it was known what happened in the intestine to ensure that the organs were nourished by the process of digestive absorption, a verse in the Qur’an describes the source of the constituents of milk, in conformity with these notions.
To understand this verse, we have to know that chemical reactions occur in the intestine and that, from there, substances extracted form food pass into the bloodstream via a complex system, sometimes by way of the liver, depending on their chemical nature. The blood transports them to all the organs of the body, among which are the milk-producing mammary glands.
Without entering into detail, let us just say that, basically there is the arrival of certain substances from the contents of the intestines into the vessels of the intestinal wall itself, and the transportation of these substances by the blood-stream.
This concept must be fully appreciated, if we are to understand this verse in the Qur’an, Al Nahl ( 16:66):
“Verily, in cattle there is a lesson for you. We give you to drink of what is inside their bodies, coming from a conjunction between the contents of the intestines and blood, a milk pure and pleasant for those who drink it.”
[From: The Qur’an and Modern Scienc
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