The Splitting of the Moon.

How did the miracle of the splitting of the Moon occur. Was it really happened?

In Islam, this incident is called Shaq Ul Qamar. 

During the times of the Prophet, people used to wonder on his warnings regarding the end of this world as to how the God would destroy stars and stationaries of the sky which seemed so fixed and eternal. So when the split moon occured,  the prophet attracted the attention of the Meccans towards it that this is a sign of the last day when God will destroy all the things which are in the sky and on the earth. That is why, it is believed that the Quran points out to this incident mentioning that the Day of Judgement has come near and the moon was split in two and the disbelievers will still say that it's an old magic.

But, we should remember that the Prophet Muhammad didn't split the Moon in two halves on the demand of people of Mecca to prove his prophethood. On the contrary, this incident occurred on its own as lunar eclipse, solar eclipse or impact events such as collision of comets, asteroids or stars are occurred. Its occurance (appearance of split, more correctly and not a real split) did happen but just as a sign for the Last Day from God. It means it just appeared so to people and the Prophet has just attracted the attention of people to this. So, it was not a miracle but an astronomical event.

Astronomical Event

Many scholars say that the moon was split in real. But it has not been proven so far since the scientific discoveries are made with the advancement of time and technology and we have not been able to examine it yet. Further, the images of split of moon circulating on social media are neither relevant nor a scientific evidence. That is why, it clearly appears that the split of the moon was not occurred in real. Instead, it seemed like so to the people or they saw it this way. Because if we take a look of the astronomical events of the world, we come to know that it is possible and it may occur.

So it can be said that it was an extraordinary cosmic event in which the moon appeared like it had been split in two parts. Today, we know that during certain conditions in certain areas, similar events do occur. These extraordinary events or scenes depend on the geographical conditions of the area. We have instances in the past wherein during such astronomical event or sun eclipse, the sun appeared in two parts like a split, in some parts of the world. 

Some example are as follows:-

Similarly, the moon might have been seen in two parts by Arabs as a natural phenomenon that might had been occurred during an eclipse or an event related to astronomy or weather.

Arab Astromy

At that time in Arab, the timing of the cosmic events were not known to people because it was not India or Greece who were experts in this. However, Indians and Greeks were even not as accurate then as we are today.  At that time, no astronomical laboratory was there in Mecca. The Meccans were not waiting for this to be happened. Since prophet had to show this split to the people at a particular time so that they might understand that such events were the signs of God, there may be who else except God to make this split scene occurred in that part of Arab at the right time.

India

It happened in a part of the night and was also seen in many parts of the world. 

Its is claimed that there is mention in Muslim and Hindu history texts about the Chera dynasty King Charanan Perusal (Kerala and Tamilnadu) seeing this event from his kingdom. When he got to know from Arab traders coming from Arab in India for trade that this was a miracle from their Prophet, he accpeted Islam and went to Arab to see Prophet Muhammad. Later, he sent a letter from there to his family to provide and help build a Mosque. That mosque is called today as Cherman mosque, Thrissur, Kerala and is considered as India's first mosque (However, Juni or Barwada Mosque, Bhavanagar, Gujrat is also cosnidered as the first mosque of India because it's direction is towards the Jerusalem).

Since the Malabar is also at the coastline, this incident might have been seen in other parts of the world also, but could not be recorded in written or the written records could not be secured further.

Ahadith

Some narrations say that the two parts of the moon were seen in two different parts of a mountain. Many companions of the Prophet had narrated this incident. 

But only 3 had witnessed it. These 3 never stated that this was done by the prophet on the demand of the people. 

There are only 2 narrations which say that prophet fingered at the moon to split it to show a sign for the prophethood. One is recorded by Imam Bayhaqi which is not considered a sound hadith by the scholars. The other hadith is reported by Hzrt Anas Bin Malik who was not the eyewitness for it and was a small child when this event took place in Mecca. Imam Ibn Hajar specified that this is the only group of the narratives with regard to this prophet miracle.