The Idea of the Seven Climates and the Examination of References to it in Traditions

Document Type : Research Article

Author

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10.22067/jfiqh.2020.60719.0

Abstract

ccording to an ancient belief shared among various nations, the inhabited quarter of the world consists of seven parts, which is represented in Islamic culture as “Seven Climates”. Although we know that the most outstanding models of seven parts of the world have been those of the three Iranian, Indian, and Greek, it is to be admitted that etymologically the word “iqlīm” (climate) is a Greek term, rather than an Indian or a Persian one. Apart from the term itself, the Islamic idea of seven climates is originally related to the Greek pattern in some aspects and to the Iranian in others.
Notwithstanding the Greek idea of seven climates, which opened its way into the Islamic sources after the Translation Movement, it is to be asserted that the idea of seven Persian countries was well known among Muslims in the early centuries of Islam. It is not precisely known how and when the idea of “seven climates” entered the world of Islam; and its history up to the second half of the 3rd/9th century has remained ambiguous as an idea which had been used as a rather inaccurate geographical term in that period. We know that, in the first two centuries after Hijra, the word iqlīm had not been common in the Arabic works, neither by itself nor in combination with “seven climates”.
In the aforementioned circumstance, what is of high importance in research about the history of this concept in the Islamic culture is its application in several Shi’ite traditions, mainly related from Amīr
al-Mu’minīn (A.S.). Given the authenticity of the documentation of these traditions, it can be concluded that the idea of “seven climates” has been popular among Muslims before 40/660. It has been since then that the documentary status of these traditions has taken on a great importance in the history of the “seven climates” idea.

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