How Your Lord Moves the Shadow

Now there is an interesting verse in the Qurʾān that is really fascinating. Anyone who has begun examining shadows, and then started thinking about it and gone looking in the Qurʾān, will find a verse that says: have you not looked at your Lord, how your Lord moves the shadow? Now this gets back to a tawḥīdī idea, or an idea that the sun is a means, but in reality it is God who is creating this phenomenon for us. And then it says: and had your Lord wanted, He would have made the shadow stationary. So we could imagine a world in which the sun is directly overhead — it would be pretty hot to live in — but the shadow would not really move; it would be stationary. But we do experience a movement of the shadow. And then it says: and We made the sun an indicator of the shadow.

Now the interesting thing in Arabic is that the words for shade and shadow, which are related in English, are the same — the identical word. One who first reads that verse may be really struck: what does that mean, that We made the sun an indicator of shade, or of the shadow? Going to a commentary by Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, who is a ninth-century^**** Persian commentator on the Qurʾān, one finds that he gives a really interesting explanation of it. He says that what the Qurʾān here is doing is indicating that one of the greatest blessings of God, of which most human beings are completely unaware, is shade. Now this is obviously more obvious in a hot country, admittedly; but if one starts thinking about it, it actually gets quite profound, because what he said is that what shade is, is a mixture of light and darkness; and the only reason we can see is because of this admixture of light and darkness. If we were in pure light we could not see, and if we were in pure darkness we could not see. So shade in fact is everywhere, and it is happening all the time. Right now there is a mixture of light and darkness in whatever room one is sitting in, which is enabling one to see. And what the Qurʾān is saying is: had it not been for the sun, you would not even have thought about the shade. It is not something that one would give a whole lot of thought to. So there is an idea of learning about the shade, and seeing it as literally a proof of the existence of God. That is how al-Rāzī uses it. And the other thing about shade which is interesting is that Paradise is described as shade spread out. It is just shade spread out.

So what will happen, in a northerly climate in the summer, is that the shadow will reach its shortest point; and what a teacher can do is get the students — they like this — to put a stick up with a piece of paper, and they can measure it with a ruler. So they can watch the shadow going closer and closer until it reaches the shortest point, and then they will see it start increasing again. The point at which it reaches the shortest point is the meridian point. So they can actually learn to determine for themselves the meridian point, which is the ninety-degree angle. Now at the point at which the sun moves one altitudinal degree away from the centre of the sky, that is the beginning of the ẓuhr prayer, and the sign of it is that the shadow begins to increase towards the east. Now that is the first prayer that was given to the Prophet Muhammad.