The Illusion of the Sun Sinking into the Sea

The ocean, like the earth, is spherical, and at sunset a person imagines that the sun is sinking into the sea. On his journey to the west, Dhū al-Qarnayn reached the shores of the North Atlantic Ocean, and since he watched the sunset from the eastern shore, he imagined that the sun had sunk, in the western islands of the ocean, into a black and muddy sea: “He found it setting in a muddy spring”.

The expression “he found it” means imagining and appearing to the eye; like a mirage, which is not water, though a person takes it to be water. Even now, if someone watches the sunset from the eastern edge and shore of a sea, he imagines that the sun has sunk on the western side of the sea.