Evidence for this can be adduced from the words of the Exalted:

“Indeed, We have adorned the lowest heaven with lamps and made them missiles for the devils.” (al-Mulk 67:5)

and from His statement:

“He completed them as seven heavens in two days, and in each heaven He revealed its command; and We adorned the lowest heaven with lamps for adornment and as a protection. That is the determination of the All-Mighty, the All-Knowing.” (Fussilat 41:12)

He thus singled out the lowest heaven for the adornment of the stars. If this proves that the stars are actually set within it, then so be it; if not, there is nothing to invalidate the opinion of the others. Allah knows best.

In their view the seven—or rather the eight—celestial spheres rotate, along with all the fixed and wandering stars they contain, completing a full revolution from east to west every day and night. They also hold that each of the seven wandering planets (1) moves within its own sphere in the opposite direction, from west to east. The moon traverses its sphere in one month, whereas the sun covers its own sphere—the fourth—in one year. If the two revolutions differ only slightly and their motions are close to uniform, the fourth heaven would be twelve times the size of the lowest heaven. Saturn, however, traverses its sphere—the seventh—in thirty years; on that reckoning its sphere would be three hundred and sixty times the size of the lowest heaven.

They have discussed at length the sizes of these celestial bodies, their courses, and their motions (2), and have even ventured into the “science of judgments” and the earthly events they claim follow from it—knowledge that many of them in truth do not possess. The Greeks who inhabited Syria long ages before the time of the Messiah—peace be upon him—also produced extensive writings on this, too lengthy to set out here. They built the city of Damascus, gave it seven gates, and erected over each gate a temple modeled on one of the seven planets, worshipping each planet in the temple dedicated to it and invoking it with prayers transmitted by more than one historian (3) and others.

The author of the book “The Hidden Secret on Addressing the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars” (4) and other Ḥarrānian scholars (5)—the philosophers of ancient Ḥarrān—have recorded the same. These people were idolaters who worshipped the seven planets; they were a faction of the Sabians. Hence Allah, the Exalted, said:

“Among His signs are the night and the day, the sun and the moon. Do not prostrate to the sun or to the moon, but prostrate to Allah who created them, if it is truly Him that you worship.” (Fussilat 41:37)

And He said, conveying what the hoopoe said to Solomon—peace be upon him—about Bilqīs and her forces, the queen of Sheba in Yemen and its environs:

“I found a woman ruling over them, who has been given everything and possesses a magnificent throne. I found her and her people prostrating to the sun instead of Allah; Satan has made their deeds seem fair to them and thus kept them from the Way, so they are not guided—so that they do not prostrate to Allah who brings forth what is hidden in the heavens …” (al-Naml 27:23–24)