Sun Prostrates Beneath the Throne (Abu Dawud's Wording)
Abu Dawud 4002 is the Sunan-genre version of the sun-cosmology hadith. The Bukhari version was treated under entry b06; the Muslim version under entry m15. The Abu Dawud version is substantively similar but has distinct chains and provides additional details — particularly the explicit reading from Ibn Masʿud's variant Quranic text.
The hadith content: — The sun travels at sunset to a specific location. — The sun asks permission to prostrate (or to rise — the wording varies slightly across collections). — The sun is granted permission and rises. — Eventually, the sun will be commanded to rise from where it set (the west) — the eschatological sign. — Muhammad cites Q 36:38 as referring to this cosmology, citing 'Ibn Masʿud's recension.'
The distinct features of the Abu Dawud version:
1. Independent attestation. The Abu Dawud hadith confirms what Bukhari 3199 and Muslim 159 record: the sun-prostration cosmology is preserved in three of the most authoritative Sunni collections, with multiple chains and consistent content. The triple attestation makes the teaching difficult to dismiss as a transmission anomaly.
2. The Ibn Masʿud variant. The hadith specifies that Muhammad recited Q 36:38 'in Ibn Masʿud's recension' (qirāʾat ʿAbd Allāh). This is significant because Ibn Masʿud had a Quranic codex that differed from the Uthmanic recension that became standard. The mention of his variant in the hadith suggests that the cosmological interpretation was anchored in textual readings that classical Sunni Islam later suppressed.
3. The Quranic interpretation. As with Bukhari and Muslim's versions, Muhammad explicitly interprets Q 36:38 as referring to the sun-prostration cosmology. This anchors the teaching in the Quran's own text — meaning the verse cannot be reinterpreted as referring to modern stellar physics without abandoning Muhammad's own explicit interpretation.
4. The Sunan genre. Abu Dawud's Sunan is part of the four canonical Sunan collections (along with Tirmidhi, Nasa'i, Ibn Majah). These are slightly less stringent in authentication than Bukhari/Muslim but still accepted as authoritative. The hadith's presence in the Sunan genre indicates that it was considered legally relevant — informing fiqh on cosmology, eschatology, and Quranic interpretation.
5. The eschatological connection. The Abu Dawud version emphasises the eschatological framework: the sun rising from where it sets (the west) as a sign of the end times. This is one of the major signs (al-ʿalāmāt al-kubrā) of the Day of Judgment in Islamic eschatology. The classical eschatological literature has elaborated this extensively, with apocalyptic timelines and prophetic descriptions.
The scientific issues are identical to those discussed in entries b06 and m15 — the sun is a star ~150 million km from Earth, with no possibility of physical prostration or location-specific journeying. The cosmology is pre-modern flat-earth/geocentric, matching pre-Islamic Near Eastern myth and incompatible with modern astronomy.
- P1. Abu Dawud 4002 records Muhammad teaching that the sun travels to a specific location to ask permission to prostrate and to rise.
- P2. The hadith is sahih in Abu Dawud, with parallels in Bukhari (3199) and Muslim (159), establishing triple-canonical attestation.
- P3. Muhammad anchors the cosmology in Q 36:38, citing Ibn Masʿud's Quranic recension.
- P4. The hadith forms part of a coherent sun-cosmology system across the canonical collections, with consistent content and multiple chains.
- P5. The cosmology is pre-modern flat-earth/geocentric, matching pre-Islamic Near Eastern myth.
- P6. Modern astronomy demonstrates that the sun is a star with no physical 'beneath' for prostration and no location-specific destination.
- P7. The eschatological prediction (sun rising from the west) depends on this cosmology being literally correct.
Abu Dawud 4002 confirms that the sun-prostration cosmology is preserved across the major Sunni collections — Bukhari, Muslim, and Abu Dawud — with consistent content. The teaching is not isolated to one collection; it is independently attested in three of the most authoritative sources. Muhammad anchors it in the Quran. The cosmology is pre-modern and incompatible with basic astronomy. Modern apologetic responses face the difficulty that the teaching is so multiply attested that dismissing one collection's version does not affect the others. The text is exactly what we would expect of 7th-century pre-modern cosmology preserved in religious authority, and exactly what we would not expect of a divine teaching about the structure of the cosmos.
Multiple attestation across collections does not establish the literal truth of the cosmology — the early Muslim community shared a common pre-modern worldview, which the hadith literature reflects.
This is precisely the critique. If the canonical Sunni hadith corpus reflects pre-modern Arabian cosmology rather than divine teaching, then the corpus is unreliable on basic claims about the natural world. The 'shared worldview' framing concedes the issue: the corpus is calibrated to its cultural moment, not to objective reality. The defence is itself the critique.
The Ibn Masʿud variant reading shows that early Muslims had multiple Quranic recitations — the cosmological interpretation may be a feature of one recension that does not bind modern Muslims.
The Ibn Masʿud variant question raises its own problem (Quranic preservation, treated under b03). And even if the variant reading is restricted to one early recension, the canonical hadith preserves the cosmological teaching across all three major Sunni collections. The cosmology is not anchored only in Ibn Masʿud; it is anchored in Muhammad's teaching as preserved across collections.
Muhammad used cosmological imagery accessible to his audience — the actual scientific reality may be different, but the spiritual point about Allah's control over the sun is preserved.
If 'used imagery' is a defence, it concedes that the image is not literally true. But the image is preserved in Muhammad's own teaching as direct cosmological description, not as imagery for spiritual point. Reading it as 'imagery' requires retroactive symbolisation. And the eschatological framework — the sun rising from the west as a sign of the Last Day — depends on the imagery being literal. Treating it as 'just imagery' empties the eschatology.
Modern Saudi Arabian textbooks have presented harmonisations between the hadith and modern astronomy — claiming the 'prostration' refers to cosmic-scale solar motion through space.
Saudi textbooks have presented such harmonisations, but the harmonisations are exegetical reach. The hadith describes a sun that 'travels' to a specific destination, 'asks permission,' 'prostrates,' and is 'commanded' to return — a clearly geocentric, agency-attributed cosmology, not a description of stellar physics. Reading it as galactic-orbit metaphor requires ignoring the hadith's specific narrative content.
The eschatological prediction (sun rising from the west) is supernatural — at the end of times, normal physical laws will be suspended. This does not depend on present-day cosmology.
If supernatural, the prediction is unfalsifiable and trivial — anything can happen. The hadith's specificity (the sun reverses its accustomed course) implies a specific event with cosmological content. Treating it as 'supernatural' empties the prediction of substantive content. And the same hadith is understood by classical Sunni scholars to be making cosmological claims about the present — not just about the eschaton.