Verse 33 of Surah Al-Anbiya (The Prophets) declares: "And it is He who created the night and the day and the sun and the moon; all [heavenly bodies] in an orbit are swimming." The Arabic term used is yasbahoun (يسبحون), which literally means "they swim."
This verb evokes a continuous and autonomous movement, without apparent effort, comparable to a fish swimming in water. This description is remarkably precise: celestial bodies indeed move through space along trajectories determined by the laws of gravitation.
The historical context
In the 7th century, the dominant conception of the cosmos was geocentric: the Earth was considered immobile at the center of the universe, and the stars were fixed on crystal spheres rotating around it. The idea that the Sun, Moon, and planets "swim" in their own orbits was revolutionary and did not correspond to any scientific theory of the time.
The scientific confirmation
It was only in the 17th century that Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) formulated his three laws of planetary motion, demonstrating that planets describe elliptical orbits around the Sun. Isaac Newton (1643-1727) completed this vision with his law of universal gravitation, explaining why celestial bodies follow these trajectories.
Today, we know that our Sun itself orbits the center of the Milky Way at about 828,000 km/h, carrying the entire solar system in a galactic rotation that lasts about 230 million years. The Moon, meanwhile, orbits the Earth while gradually moving away from it by about 3.8 cm per year.
Verse 40 of Surah Ya-Sin
The Quran also specifies: "It is not for the sun to overtake the moon, nor does the night outstrip the day. They all float, each in an orbit." (36:40). This statement emphasizes the independence of celestial trajectories and the absence of collision between bodies, a reality confirmed by modern celestial mechanics.