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Philosopher Pythagoras

Pythagoras came in the sixth century B.C. He was the first to say that the earth itself is a sphere. This was most likely a response to the demands of beauty, as being spherical requires that there be a spherical earth in its middle. To him, it is a fixed sphere, around which all bodies move.

But how do moving bodies move around the fixed Earth, when they differ in their annual rotation from the rest of the stars in the sky with fixed orbits? He said that it moves in more than one orbit, as the sun revolves in a circle around the Earth that it travels in a day. At the same time, it revolves in another circle around the Earth, crossing it in a year. In the first circle is the difference between day and night, and in the second is the difference in the seasons.

This image has dominated the imagination of the people of the earth since the time of Pythagoras, and it extended for 16 centuries after Christ, with little change or modification.

Plato

Plato came and approved what Pythagoras did not, but he saw with regard to the zodiacal region (A) that it was one circle, then it was divided into seven circles. In the first, the moon rotated, in the second, the sun rotated, and in the third, Mercury, then Venus, then Mars, then Jupiter, and finally Saturn, each in its own circle (orbit).

(A) The zodiacal circle is the belt that they thought was eight degrees above the orbit of the sun visible in the sky, and eight degrees below it. It includes the orbit of the moon and the orbits of the major planets as well. They divided it into twelve sections that they called constellations. Each constellation was named after a constellation of the stars in the sky. They are Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Sagittarius, and Pisces.

Aristotle:

Aristotle came after Plato, and he saw that among the philosophers (who were the scholars of that time) were those who doubted the image of the Earth, and that it was round, which Pythagoras believed, and Plato agreed with him. So Aristotle asked for proofs for the Earth’s sphericity, and these proofs are well known today. Among them is the disappearance of a sailing ship that goes out to sea. It disappears from sight, but its sail remains visible. Then the sail disappears little by little due to the curvature of the Earth.

Among the proofs that Aristotle came up with based on his observation is that a person traveling on earth to the south, to Egypt, for example, sees stars in the south that he did not see when he was in Greece, is the evidence of the earth being rounded.

- And the Arabs:

The Arabs took astronomy from the Greeks, and their mainstay was a book written by Ptolemy, called the Almagest, which is a corruption of the word Mageste, meaning the greatest source. This Ptolemy was a Greek astronomer and geographer from the people of Alexandria who lived in the second century AD. He wrote this book, a comprehensive book of Greek astronomy and his efforts. He gave it a lot.

It was established among the Arabs, as it was established among the Greeks, that the Earth is a sphere, the center of the universe, and around which bodies revolve
Heavenly all.

The question remained: (Does the sun revolve around the earth, or does the earth revolve around the sun), an outstanding issue..

Aristotle thought about this issue, then he presented it and he was right, and it took no time. This was in the fourth century BC. The Greek astronomer Aristarchus came in the third century BC and taught that the Earth revolves around the sun, and so do the planets.

And he forgot all this. It prevailed that the Earth was the origin around which the entire universe revolved until the sixteenth century came and established that the Sun was the center on which the planets revolve, and the Earth with it. The centuries that came after that until today only further confirmed this.

- Digression:

We continued until we departed from our original topic, which is the shape of the Earth, whether it is round or flat.

We apologize for this, because the shape of the earth and its movement are two related things, one of which supports the other, according to Al-Hajjaj.

(The universe as they drew it in the Middle Ages, before the time of Galileo. The Earth is a sphere in the middle, and it is the center of the universe. And the universe itself is a sphere around it. And around the Earth are seven spheres, starting with the moon, then the sun and the other moving bodies, and after that come the stars. After the stars comes, in... Their leadership is God and the saints.)