nor so hard that they could derive no benefit from it; rather, Allah—glorified and exalted be He—has made it pliant, level, and outspread so that people may utilise its surface through the beneficial means He has graciously provided.

This same outspread earth is also spherical: it is like a ball, rounded on every side, though it is slightly flattened along the north–south axis, at the two poles. Thus, were someone to board an aircraft and fly due west in a straight line, he would eventually return to the very place from which the plane had taken off. This demonstrates that the earth is round, for one can connect one of its ends to the other.

The point is likewise affirmed by Allah’s words: “When the sky is split apart (1) and obeys its Lord, as it must (2); and when the earth is stretched out (3) and casts out whatever is within it and is emptied (4)” (al-Inshiqaq 84:1-4). All of this will occur on the Day of Resurrection. His statement “and when the earth is stretched out” indicates that at present it is not stretched out; rather, it is spread like a surface. Because of its vast size, the curvature proper to a sphere is not perceptible.

Accordingly, in regard to these four signs—“Do they not look at the camels, how they were created; at the sky, how it was raised; at the mountains, how they were set firm; and at the earth, how it was spread out” (al-Ghashiyah 88:17-20)—Allah urges us to reflect upon them with both the eye of sight and the eye of insight: with the physical eye, which apprehends through the senses, and with the inward eye, which apprehends through reason, so that we may infer from them the signs of Allah’s power, knowledge, mercy, wisdom, and the like.

As for His saying, “Have they not travelled through the land and observed…,” the author did not complete the verse,