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When I look up at the moon at night, it looks like a source of its own light just like the sun. surah 71:16 expresses this observation as:

And made the moon therein a [reflected] light and made the sun a burning lamp?

The [reflected] has been added and isn't part of the surah, so I'm looking for a surah that contains the word reflected or something similar to it.

Larry Harson
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2 Answers2

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The Quran does not explicitly say that the moon is lit by reflected sunlight. Also see related answer.

UmH
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The answer of this question is yes the Qur'an describes the moon as a corpus that is lit, but no it doesn't explicitly say it is lit by reflected sunlight.

There are a couple of verses that describe the "light" or kind of lightening or illumination of the sun and the moon.

  • It is He who made the sun a shining light and the moon a derived light and determined for it phases - ... (10:5)

  • And made the moon therein a [reflected] light and made the sun a burning lamp? (71:16)

and a rather indirectly in:

  • And constructed above you seven strong [heavens] (12) And made [therein] a burning lamp (78:12-13)

In these verses the attribute or example of the moon was that of a النور (an-Nur) which refers in Arabic to anything that is opposed to darkness (ضدّ الظُّلمة ) and anything that makes things visible (Source: معجم المعاني الجامع - ما يُبَيِّن الأشْياءَ ويُرِي الأبْصَارَ حقيقتها ).
While the sun has been named الضياء (a-Dyaa' coming from ad-Daw'u الضوء which is a synonym of an-Nur at least when we don't want to be too specific ) and السراج (as-Siraj) which actually is an oil lamp (that gives light). Note that the term ad-Diya' refers toa source of light or something that gives light!

Here a statement from the dictionary قاموس المعجم الوسيط

الضَّوْءُ : النُّورُ . وهما مُتَرَادِفانِ ، أَو الضوءُ أَقوى وأَسطعُ من النورِ ، أَو الضوء لما بالذاتِ كضوءِ الشمس والنارِ ، والنورُ لما بالعَرَضِ والاكتساب من جسم آخر

Ad-Daw'u: an-Nur and they are synonyms or ad-Daw'(u) is stronger and brighter than an-Nur or ad-Daw'(u) refers to anything that gives a light byitself like the sun and the fire while an-Nur appears as giving light or reflects it from another source (corpus).

The Qur'an therefore makes a distinction between sun and moon saying the sun is a source of light while the moon is a corpus that appears as giving light or reflects light, but it does not say that the reflected light actually is sunlight.

Medi1Saif
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