In the two Sahīh collections, the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, is reported to have said:

“When you ask Allah for Paradise, ask Him for al-Firdaws, for it is the highest and most central part of Paradise, and its roof is the Throne of the Most Merciful.”

A central position is possible only in something round. Iyās ibn Mu‘āwiyah said, “The sky is like a dome over the earth.” This fatwa cannot accommodate all the reports on this matter; I have merely written this in haste.

Sense perception, together with reason, also indicates this. It becomes apparent upon considering how the stars near the pole revolve in a narrow circuit around the north pole, while the stars in the middle of the sky revolve in a broad circuit, and observing their positions at the beginning and end of the night. Likewise, anyone who observes the sun at its rising, culmination, and setting—at all three times remaining at the same distance and having the same appearance to someone on the earth’s surface—will know that it travels in a circular orbit. Were its orbit square, then at its culmination it would be closer to the person directly beneath it than at sunrise and sunset. There are numerous proofs of this.

As for anyone who makes a claim contrary to the Book and the Sunnah, his claim is false, even if he maintains that he has evidence based on calculation. This is common among those who study “the celestial sphere and its phenomena.” An example is the claim of a group of ignorant people that the probable time of the crescent’s rising can be determined, so as to know when it will appear after its period of invisibility, by knowing its distance from the sun after separating from it at sunset, and by precisely determining the “arc of visibility,” which is a line laid out in a curve—a segment of a circle—