The Flat Earth in the Qur’an and Early Islamic Tradition: A Historical and Cosmographical Critique
Introduction
The question of the Earth’s shape in the Qur’an and early Islamic tradition is often framed in an unnecessarily narrow way. The discussion is frequently reduced to the modern question, “Does the Qur’an explicitly say that the Earth is flat?” That formulation misses the more historically significant issue.
The more appropriate question is:
What kind of cosmographical world does the Qur’an and the earliest Islamic tradition presuppose when their descriptions are read in their original linguistic and historical context?
When the Qur’anic descriptions of the Earth are considered together rather than in isolation, and when they are read alongside the cosmography preserved in early hadith and traditionalist literature, a remarkably coherent picture emerges. The Earth is repeatedly described as something spread out, extended, levelled, and made into a resting surface; the heavens are portrayed as a structured, elevated realm above it; seven heavens are placed over seven earths; and the Sun is described in a cosmological narrative in which it travels to a resting place beneath or at the Throne.
This is not merely a collection of ambiguous metaphors. Taken cumulatively, these passages belong naturally to an ancient cosmographical framework in which the inhabited Earth is conceived as a broad terrestrial surface beneath a structured heaven.
Omar Anchassi’s “Against Ptolemy? Cosmography in Early Kalām” is particularly important here. His study demonstrates that early Muslim theologians were divided between two competing cosmographical paradigms: the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic model, with a spherical Earth at the center of celestial spheres, and a traditionalist cosmography involving a flat Earth, additional earths beneath it, seven heavens above it, and God’s Throne above the heavens. Anchassi also notes that a plain-sense reading of Qur’anic cosmographical passages renders the Earth flat.
The historical argument, therefore, is not that every Muslim throughout history believed the Earth was flat. That would be demonstrably false. The argument is more specific and historically defensible:
> The Qur’anic and early traditionalist cosmographical framework is best understood as belonging to a flat-Earth cosmography, and the later adoption of spherical-Earth astronomy represents the accommodation of a competing Greco-Ptolemaic model rather than the original cosmographical framework of the Qur’an and early tradition.
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- The Central Problem: Reading the Qur’an as Cosmography
Modern apologetic interpretations frequently isolate individual Qur’anic expressions and reinterpret them through the lens of modern astronomy.
Thus, firāsh (“spread,” “resting place”), bisāṭ (“carpet,” “spread-out surface”), mad (“to extend”), daḥā (“to spread out”), and saṭaḥa (“to flatten or spread out”) are sometimes treated merely as descriptions of how the Earth appears to human observers.
Historically, however, this is not the only—and often not the most straightforward—way these expressions were understood.
The Qur’an repeatedly uses spatial imagery that presents the Earth as a spread-out terrestrial surface:
> الذي جعل لكم الأرض فراشًا
Alladhī jaʿala lakum al-arḍa firāshan
“Who made the Earth a spread-out resting place.” — Qur’an 2:22
> وهو الذي مد الأرض
Wa-huwa alladhī madda al-arḍ
“And He is the One who spread out the Earth.” — Qur’an 13:3
> والأرض مددناها
Wa-al-arḍa madadnāhā
“And the Earth We spread out.” — Qur’an 15:19
> الذي جعل لكم الأرض مهدًا
Alladhī jaʿala lakum al-arḍa mahdan
“Who made the Earth a cradle/resting place for you.” — Qur’an 20:53
> والأرض مددناها وألقينا فيها رواسي
Wa-al-arḍa madadnāhā wa-alqaynā fīhā rawāsiya
“And the Earth We spread out, and We placed firm mountains upon it.” — Qur’an 50:7
> والله جعل لكم الأرض بساطًا
Wa-Allāhu jaʿala lakum al-arḍa bisāṭan
“And Allah made the Earth for you a spread-out surface.” — Qur’an 71:19
And most importantly:
> وإلى الأرض كيف سطحت
Wa-ilā al-arḍi kayfa suṭiḥat
“And at the Earth—how it was spread out/flattened.” — Qur’an 88:20
These expressions are not scattered randomly through the text. They constitute a recurring lexical pattern.
The Earth is spread, extended, laid out, made into a resting place, made into a carpet, and flattened/spread out.
The cumulative effect is significant.
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- Qur’an 88:20: Suṭiḥat and the Flat Earth
Among the strongest passages is Qur’an 88:20:
> وإلى الأرض كيف سطحت
Wa-ilā al-arḍi kayfa suṭiḥat.
The verb suṭiḥat comes from the root s-ṭ-ḥ, associated with a saṭḥ, a surface, roof, or flat expanse.
The importance of this verse is not merely lexical. It concerns the physical form of the Earth itself:
“And at the Earth—how it was spread out/flattened.”
The traditional exegetical treatment of this verse is especially important because later Muslim commentators did not uniformly understand it as a statement compatible with a spherical Earth.
Indeed, traditional tafsīr preserves explicit discussions of whether the apparent meaning of suṭiḥat entails a flat Earth, with some commentators distinguishing the apparent meaning of revelation from the claims of astronomers.
This is precisely the sort of evidence that prevents the argument from being reduced to a modern debate over translation.
The question is not simply:
> “Could suṭiḥat theoretically be compatible with a sphere?”
The historical question is:
> How was suṭiḥat actually understood within the Islamic exegetical tradition?
And the answer is that it was repeatedly associated with the Earth being spread out or flat.
Anchassi specifically identifies Qur’an 88:20 as an example where a plain-sense reading of the Qur’an renders the Earth flat.
That is crucial because it establishes that the flat-Earth reading is not a modern polemical invention imposed upon the text from outside. It existed within the historical Islamic interpretive tradition itself.
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- Firāsh and Bisāṭ: The Earth as a Spread-Out Surface
Qur’an 2:22 describes the Earth as:
> فراشًا
firāshan
while Qur’an 71:19 states:
> والله جعل لكم الأرض بساطًا
Wa-Allāhu jaʿala lakum al-arḍa bisāṭan.
The semantic field is important.
A firāsh is something spread out as a surface on which one rests.
A bisāṭ is something spread out, extended, or laid flat.
The imagery is therefore terrestrial and horizontal: the Earth is presented as the surface upon which human beings live, not as a spherical body floating in a geometrical cosmos.
This does not by itself mathematically demonstrate flatness. A spherical planet can of course have locally “spread-out” surfaces. But that observation is beside the historical point.
The question is what cosmographical picture the language naturally contributes to.
And here the language consistently belongs to the imagery of a level, extended terrestrial surface.
Damien Janos’s study of Qur’anic cosmography is particularly relevant because it examines precisely the formation of the Qur’anic and later Islamic cosmographical worldview rather than treating individual verses independently. His research places the Qur’anic seven-heaven/seven-earth model within the history of ancient cosmological traditions.
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- Daḥāhā: “He Spread It Out”
Another important passage is Qur’an 79:30:
> والأرض بعد ذلك دحاها
Wa-al-arḍa baʿda dhālika daḥāhā.
The verb daḥā carries the meaning of spreading out, extending, or making something broad.
The significance of this verb becomes even more interesting when considered alongside early Arabic material.
A poem attributed to Zayd ibn ʿAmr ibn Nufayl, an early/pre-Islamic figure, contains the lines:
> دحاها فلما رآها استوتْ
Daḥāhā fa-lammā raʾāhā istawat
> على الماء أرسى عليها الجبالا
ʿAlā al-māʾi arsā ʿalayhā al-jibālā.
The sense is approximately:
> “He spread it out, and when it had become level upon the water, He firmly established the mountains upon it.”
This is striking because the same conceptual vocabulary—daḥā / spreading out—is explicitly associated in this early Arabic poetic material with an Earth that is spread out and established upon water, with mountains placed upon it.
The poem should not be treated as proof that all pre-Islamic Arabs believed in a flat Earth. That conclusion would go beyond the evidence.
But it does demonstrate something historically valuable:
The conceptual association between “spreading out the Earth,” water beneath it, and mountains fixed upon it existed within early Arabic cosmographical imagination.
That makes it much harder to treat Qur’an 79:30 as though its cosmographical imagery emerged in an intellectual vacuum.
The early Arabic material provides a cultural and linguistic environment in which “spreading out the Earth” naturally belonged to an older terrestrial cosmography.
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- Mountains and the Stability of the Earth
The Qur’anic picture becomes more coherent when mountains are added.
For example:
> والأرض مددناها وألقينا فيها رواسي
Wa-al-arḍa madadnāhā wa-alqaynā fīhā rawāsiya.
The Earth is spread out, and mountains are placed upon it as rawāsi, stabilizing structures.
The imagery repeatedly combines:
spread-out Earth + mountains + stability.
This is not the language of astronomical geography.
It is the language of cosmographical architecture.
The Earth is a terrestrial platform, and mountains are among the structures that stabilize it.
That picture becomes particularly important when compared with the broader ancient Near Eastern cosmographical environment, in which mountains, waters, earth, and heaven formed interconnected elements of a vertically structured cosmos.
Janos emphasizes that Qur’anic cosmography must be understood historically, particularly in relation to the genealogy of the seven-heaven/seven-earth model and its ancient precedents.
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- The Seven Earths
The Qur’an itself provides an important cosmographical framework in Qur’an 65:12:
> الله الذي خلق سبع سماوات ومن الأرض مثلهن
Allāhu alladhī khalaqa sabʿa samāwātin wa-mina al-arḍi mithlahunna.
The verse describes:
seven heavens and their like from the Earth.
This is not merely an isolated Qur’anic expression. The concept of seven earths became an established element of Islamic tradition.
For example, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī contains a chapter explicitly titled:
> باب ما جاء في سبع أرضين
“Chapter: What has been narrated concerning the seven earths.”
One hadith states that whoever unjustly takes even a span of land will have it encircle him through seven earths.
Another narration states:
> خُسِفَ بِهِ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ إِلَى سَبْعِ أَرَضِينَ
“He will sink with it on the Day of Resurrection down through the seven earths.”
Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim likewise preserves the concept of seven earths in connection with wrongful seizure of land.
The cosmographical significance is obvious.
The traditional model is not simply:
one spherical planet called Earth.
Instead, the traditional cosmography contains:
Earth → multiple earths beneath → seven heavens above → divine Throne above the heavens.
This is precisely the traditionalist cosmographical model identified and analyzed by Anchassi. He describes the traditionalist model as involving a flat Earth, six further earths beneath it, seven heavens above it, and the Throne above the heavens.
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- The Seven Heavens Are Not Merely “Outer Space”
The Qur’an repeatedly speaks of seven heavens:
> الذي خلق سبع سماوات طباقًا
Alladhī khalaqa sabʿa samāwātin ṭibāqan.
Qur’an 67:3
The word ṭibāq indicates something arranged in layers, tiers, or one above another.
This is therefore not simply an abstract statement that “there are seven dimensions.”
The Qur’anic imagery is vertically organized:
Earth below → heavens above.
And the heavens themselves are layered.
This is consistent with the ancient cosmographical tendency to imagine the cosmos as a hierarchy of superimposed regions rather than as the modern astronomical universe of galaxies, stars, planets, and empty space.
Janos specifically identifies the seven-heaven/seven-earth configuration as one of the central components of Qur’anic cosmography and investigates its relationship to earlier cosmological traditions.
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- The Sky as a Roof
The Qur’an goes further by describing the sky as a roof:
> وجعلنا السماء سقفًا محفوظًا
Wa-jaʿalnā al-samāʾa saqfan maḥfūẓan.
Qur’an 21:32.
The term saqf means a roof or covering.
This is significant because a roof is fundamentally conceived as a structure above a surface.
The same architectural imagery appears elsewhere.
The Qur’an speaks of God having built the heaven:
> والسماء بنيناها بأيدٍ
Wa-al-samāʾa banaynāhā bi-ayd.
Qur’an 51:47.
It also speaks of the heaven being raised and of God holding the heavens so that they do not fall.
The resulting cosmographical image is architectural:
Earth below → elevated heavens above → a structured celestial covering.
This is precisely the type of cosmographical imagery characteristic of ancient Near Eastern and biblical traditions.
It is therefore misleading to treat the Qur’an's heaven simply as a poetic synonym for modern outer space.
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- The Hadith: The Sun Travels to Its Resting Place
The hadith tradition makes the cosmographical picture even more concrete.
One of the most important examples occurs in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim.
Abū Dharr reports that Muhammad asked him:
> “Do you know where the sun goes?”
He then explained that the Sun travels until it reaches its resting place beneath the Throne, prostrates itself, and then receives permission to rise again.
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī preserves the same basic narrative. Muhammad asks Abū Dharr where the Sun goes after setting, and explains that it goes to prostrate and is eventually commanded to return from where it came. The narration explicitly connects this with Qur’an 36:38, “The sun runs to its fixed course.”
This matters enormously for historical reconstruction.
The hadith is not merely saying:
> “The Sun appears to set.”
It presents a cosmological journey:
Sunset → movement to a resting place → prostration → permission to rise → sunrise.
The resting place is associated with the Throne.
This makes considerably more sense within an ancient vertically structured cosmos than within modern heliocentric astronomy.
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- The Sun’s “Setting” and the Qur’an’s Dhū al-Qarnayn Narrative
The Qur’an itself contains another striking cosmographical scene in the story of Dhū al-Qarnayn:
> حتى إذا بلغ مغرب الشمس وجدها تغرب في عين حمئة
Ḥattā idhā balagha maghriba al-shamsi wajadahā taghrubu fī ʿaynin ḥamiʾatin.
Qur’an 18:86.
Dhū al-Qarnayn reaches the place of the Sun’s setting and finds it setting in a muddy/dark spring.
The following verse then describes his encounter with a people there.
The important issue is not whether a modern reader can reinterpret this as merely describing an optical perspective. The important historical question is what sort of cosmographical scene the narrative depicts.
The narrative imagines a geographical journey reaching the place of sunset, where the Sun is encountered as an object associated with a terrestrial horizon and a specific western location.
This belongs naturally to the same broader cosmographical world as the hadith of the Sun traveling to its resting place.
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- The Ancient Near Eastern Background
The Qur’anic cosmography did not develop in isolation.
The ancient Near East possessed multiple cosmological traditions in which the world was organized vertically.
A simplified representation of one recurring pattern would be:
Heaven
↓
Earth
↓
Waters / lower regions
The details varied enormously from culture to culture, and one should not collapse Mesopotamian, biblical, Jewish, Christian, and Arabian cosmologies into a single system.
Nevertheless, the structural similarities are significant.
The Earth was often understood as a terrestrial realm beneath a structured heaven. Waters could appear beneath or around the terrestrial world. Mountains could function as cosmic landmarks. Heaven could be conceived as a solid or structured celestial realm.
Janos’s research specifically stresses the importance of situating Qur’anic cosmography within this historical genealogy rather than treating it as an entirely isolated system.
The crucial point is therefore not that the Qur’an simply “copied” one particular ancient cosmology.
Rather:
The Qur’an participates in an ancient cosmographical environment whose basic spatial assumptions differ fundamentally from those of modern astronomy.
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- Traditionalist Islam Preserved This Cosmography
The subsequent history of Islam provides particularly strong evidence.
If the Qur’an were naturally understood by its earliest interpreters as presenting a spherical Earth surrounded by celestial spheres, one would not expect a substantial traditionalist opposition to Ptolemaic cosmography.
Yet such opposition existed.
Anchassi’s study is especially valuable because it demonstrates that the traditionalist cosmography consisted of:
a flat Earth,
six additional earths beneath it,
seven heavens above,
and the divine Throne above the heavens.
He further demonstrates that rationalist theologians (mutakallimūn) were divided over whether to accept this traditional cosmography or the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic model.
This is historically decisive for the argument.
It shows that the flat-Earth reading was not an isolated medieval eccentricity.
It belonged to a recognizable traditionalist cosmographical paradigm.
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- The Conflict with Ptolemy
The Greek-Ptolemaic model presented a radically different picture.
Its fundamental features included:
a spherical Earth
at the center of
concentric celestial spheres
with the heavens themselves understood as spherical and moving around the Earth.
Anchassi describes this Aristotelian-Ptolemaic model as one in which the Earth is an immobile sphere at the center of concentric celestial orbs.
The important historical development is that this model eventually became highly influential among Muslim astronomers, philosophers, and other learned communities.
But the traditionalists did not simply accept it.
They often regarded the Ptolemaic system as an imported form of foreign learning that conflicted with the cosmographical picture transmitted through scripture and tradition.
Janos likewise observes that the Ptolemaic model became dominant among philosophers and astronomers, while Muslim traditionalists developed a parallel cosmology based on the Qur’anic seven-earth/seven-heaven model.
This historical coexistence is precisely what modern discussions often erase.
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- The Key Historical Distinction: Revelation versus Later Astronomy
This brings us to the central historical distinction.
There are effectively two cosmographical systems in medieval Islamic intellectual history.
The traditional scriptural cosmography
Flat/spread-out Earth
↓
Multiple earths
↓
Seven heavens
↓
Divine Throne
The Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmography
Spherical Earth
↓
Concentric celestial spheres
↓
Planetary spheres
↓
Outer celestial sphere
These systems are not simply different descriptions of the same astronomical model.
They arise from different intellectual traditions.
The first is rooted primarily in scripture, hadith, traditionalist cosmography, and inherited Near Eastern cosmographical concepts.
The second is rooted primarily in Greek natural philosophy and mathematical astronomy.
Anchassi’s entire study is essentially an investigation of the struggle between these competing visions and the surprising diversity of positions among Muslim theologians.
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- The Apologetic “Local Flatness” Argument
A common modern response is that when the Qur’an says the Earth is spread out, this merely refers to the Earth’s appearance from the human perspective.
There is an obvious problem with making that explanation the default historical interpretation.
If firāsh, bisāṭ, mad, daḥā, and suṭiḥat were all simply statements about local human perception, then the repeated cosmographical pattern would be remarkably misleading.
More importantly, the traditional exegetical record demonstrates that Muslim scholars themselves sometimes understood these expressions as indicating actual flatness.
This is not a modern atheist interpretation imposed retrospectively.
It is an interpretation that existed inside the Islamic exegetical tradition.
And the existence of an explicit debate between traditionalists and astronomers confirms that the issue was historically understood as a genuine cosmographical disagreement.
The modern argument that these passages “obviously” meant only local appearance therefore cannot simply be projected backward onto the earliest interpreters.
It is, at least in many cases, a later harmonizing strategy.
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- The Problem of Retroactively Reading Ptolemy into the Qur’an
Another important issue is the tendency to reinterpret Qur’anic cosmography through medieval Islamic astronomy.
Once Muslim astronomers had accepted the spherical Earth, interpreters increasingly sought ways to reconcile the Qur’anic language with spherical geography.
This produced interpretations in which:
“spreading out” referred to human experience,
“flattening” referred to the apparent surface,
“seven heavens” were associated with planetary spheres,
and traditional cosmographical language was reinterpreted metaphorically.
But this creates a historical reversal.
The question is not whether a spherical Earth can be reconciled with the Qur’an.
It obviously can be, if one is willing to reinterpret the relevant vocabulary.
The historical question is:
Was that the original cosmographical framework?
The evidence suggests that it was not.
Janos explicitly warns against projecting later Ptolemaic interpretations back onto the earliest Qur’anic tradition. He notes that interpretations identifying the seven heavens with the planetary spheres arose only later, after the diffusion of Ptolemaic astronomy in the Islamic world.
That is a crucial chronological observation.
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- The Hadith and the Physical Architecture of the Cosmos
The hadith tradition strengthens the argument because it does not merely describe the Earth metaphorically.
It contains a physical hierarchy.
There are:
seven earths
and
seven heavens
and above them
the Throne.
The Sun itself has a destination associated with the Throne.
The Earth is therefore not an isolated astronomical body moving through an infinite universe.
It occupies a specific position within a layered cosmic architecture.
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī's own organization of the relevant material is telling: its “Beginning of Creation” section contains a chapter specifically devoted to the seven earths, while the hadith tradition also preserves the cosmography of the Sun's journey and prostration.
This is precisely the kind of cosmography expected in the ancient world.
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- The Evidence Is Cumulative, Not Dependent on One Verse
The strongest argument therefore does not depend on Qur’an 88:20 alone.
It is cumulative.
We have:
- Earth as firāsh
A spread-out resting surface.
- Earth as bisāṭ
A carpet or spread-out surface.
- Earth as madd
Something extended/spread out.
- Earth as daḥā
Something spread out or extended.
- Earth as suṭiḥat
Something flattened or spread out.
- Mountains placed upon the Earth
The Earth is treated as a terrestrial surface bearing stabilizing mountains.
- Seven earths
A vertically layered terrestrial cosmography.
- Seven heavens
Multiple heavens arranged above.
- Heaven as a roof
A structured covering above the Earth.
- The Sun traveling to a resting place beneath/at the Throne
A physical cosmographical narrative in the hadith.
- Early Arabic poetic material associating daḥā with an Earth spread upon water
Evidence for the wider pre-Islamic conceptual environment.
When all of these elements are considered together, the flat-Earth interpretation is not an arbitrary selection of isolated words.
It is a coherent reconstruction of the cosmographical system represented in the earliest Islamic sources.
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- What Changed in Medieval Islam?
The important historical development was not that Muslims suddenly “discovered” that the Earth was round.
The spherical Earth was already known in Greek astronomy long before Islam.
What changed was the transmission and increasing authority of Greek scientific astronomy within Islamic intellectual culture.
Muslim astronomers, philosophers, mathematicians, and geographers absorbed and developed the Ptolemaic model.
Eventually, many Muslim scholars accepted the spherical Earth as an established astronomical fact.
Figures such as al-Idrīsī belonged to this learned astronomical tradition.
But this development should not be projected backward onto the Qur’an and earliest Islamic tradition.
The historical sequence is more accurately represented as:
Ancient Near Eastern/scriptural cosmographical traditions
↓
Qur’anic cosmography
↓
Early traditionalist Islamic cosmography
↓
Encounter with Greek astronomy
↓
Conflict and debate
↓
Increasing acceptance of the spherical Ptolemaic model among learned Muslims
This sequence explains why medieval Islamic intellectual history contains both flat-Earth and spherical-Earth positions.
---
- The Existence of Muslim Spherical-Earth Scholars Does Not Refute the Earlier Cosmography
One might object:
> “But Muslim astronomers knew the Earth was spherical.”
Yes.
That is historically true.
But it does not answer the question being examined here.
The existence of Muslim astronomers who accepted a spherical Earth demonstrates that Islamic civilization eventually adopted and developed Greek astronomy.
It does not demonstrate that the Qur’an itself originated within that Ptolemaic framework.
Indeed, the very fact that Muslim theologians debated whether to accept Ptolemaic cosmography demonstrates that the spherical model was perceived as a competing intellectual system.
Anchassi’s conclusion is particularly important: cosmographical positions among mutakallimūn cannot simply be explained by sectarian affiliation. Their positions depended substantially on exposure to ancient learning, intellectual formation, and personal inclination.
In other words:
Islamic civilization eventually contained multiple cosmographies.
That does not mean the Qur’an contained multiple cosmographies from the beginning.
---
- The Strongest Historical Formulation
The strongest academically defensible formulation is therefore not:
> “Every Muslim believed in a flat Earth.”
That is obviously false.
Nor is it:
> “The Qur’an contains a modern scientific description of a spherical Earth.”
The historical evidence does not support that either.
The stronger formulation is:
> The Qur’an and the earliest traditional Islamic cosmography operate within a cosmographical framework in which the Earth is conceived as a spread-out terrestrial surface beneath a structured, layered heaven. The traditionalist hadith corpus preserves and develops this framework through the concepts of seven earths, seven heavens, the divine Throne, and the Sun’s journey to its resting place. The spherical Earth of Aristotelian-Ptolemaic astronomy entered Islamic intellectual culture as a competing cosmographical model and was subsequently adopted by many Muslim astronomers, philosophers, and some theologians.
This formulation explains the historical evidence without forcing all Muslim intellectual history into a single position.
---
Conclusion
The evidence for a flat or spread-out Earth in the Qur’an and early Islamic tradition does not rest on one ambiguous verse, nor on a modern polemical reading.
It emerges from a coherent cosmographical pattern.
The Qur’an repeatedly depicts the Earth as firāsh, bisāṭ, madd, daḥā, and suṭiḥat—a spread-out, extended, level terrestrial surface. It places mountains upon that Earth and describes seven heavens above it. The Qur’anic expression concerning “seven earths” is developed explicitly in the hadith tradition, where multiple earths exist beneath the inhabited terrestrial realm.
The hadith literature then adds a remarkably concrete celestial geography: the Sun travels to its resting place beneath the Throne, prostrates, receives permission to rise, and eventually will be commanded to rise from the west. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim and Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī both preserve this tradition.
The broader historical environment strengthens the interpretation. Qur’anic cosmography belongs to the intellectual world of Late Antiquity, in which layered heavens, terrestrial waters, cosmic mountains, and structured celestial realms were familiar cosmographical concepts. Janos’s historical study emphasizes the ancient genealogy of the Qur’anic seven-heaven/seven-earth model, while Anchassi demonstrates that a traditionalist Islamic cosmography explicitly involving a flat Earth and multiple heavens and earths continued to compete with the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic model for centuries.
The later triumph of spherical-Earth astronomy within much of Islamic scholarship therefore represents an important historical development, not evidence that the original Qur’anic cosmography was already Ptolemaic.
The historical picture is consequently best reconstructed as follows:
The Qur’an presents a spread-out Earth beneath a structured heaven. Early Islamic tradition preserves and elaborates this cosmography. Traditionalist Muslims continued to defend it even after Greek astronomy entered the Islamic world. Muslim astronomers and philosophers subsequently adopted the spherical Earth of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic system, producing a prolonged intellectual conflict between two competing cosmographies.
That is why the question is not simply whether “Islam knew the Earth was round.”
The more historically revealing question is which cosmographical model is embedded in the Qur’an and the earliest Islamic tradition themselves.
And when those sources are read cumulatively, linguistically, exegetically, and within their Late Antique context, the evidence points strongly toward a flat, spread-out Earth beneath a structured and layered heaven rather than toward the spherical Earth of Ptolemaic astronomy.
Principal Academic References
Omar Anchassi, “Against Ptolemy? Cosmography in Early Kalām,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 142.4 (2022): 851–881. Anchassi explicitly examines the conflict between traditionalist and Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmographies and concludes that Muslim theologians remained divided over the Earth's shape into the sixth/twelfth century.
Damien Janos, “Qur’ānic Cosmography in its Historical Perspective: Some Notes on the Formation of a Religious Worldview,” Religion 42.2 (2012): 215–231. The article examines the formation of Qur’anic cosmography and especially the seven-heaven/seven-earth model in its historical context.
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, 3195–3198, on the seven earths.
Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 159a, on the Sun's journey to its resting place beneath the Throne.
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, 7424, on the Sun's prostration and return.
