Quranic cosmology is how the Quran views the nature of the cosmos, especially its origins, development, and structure. In the Quran, the cosmos originates in an act of creation by God of the heavens and the earth over the course of six days, with the earth being created first, and the heavens second. The layout of the cosmos includes a solid firmament (called the heaven), below it being a flat earth compared to a spread-out bed. A cosmic ocean is found both above the heaven and below the earth. The number of heavens is seven, with possibly seven earths as well, arranged like a stack of plates. Above the highest heaven is the Throne of God. In the Quran, cosmology is related to themes of purpose, divine will, and an emphasis on the ordering of the world to allow human beings to live on it.
Cosmography
Heaven and earth The most important and frequently referred to constitutive features of the Quranic cosmos are the heavens and the earth:The most substantial elements of the qurʾānic universe/cosmos are the (seven) heavens and the earth. The juxtaposition of the heavens (al-samāʾ; pl. al-samāwāt) and the earth (al-arḍ; not in the plural form in the Qurʾān) is seen in 222 qurʾānic verses. The heavens and the earth are the most vital elements on the scene—in terms of occurrence and emphasis—compared to which all other elements lose importance, and around which all others revolve. The same motif is used in the Bible as well.References to heavens and earth constitute a literary device known as a merism, where two opposites or contrasting terms are used to refer to the totality of something. In Arabic texts generally and in the Quran, the merism of "the heavens and the earth" is used to refer to the totality of creation. A similar merism in the Quran to describe the entire terrestrial space is "the dry land and the sea," al-barr wa-l-baḥr (Q 6:59, 63, 97; 10:22; 17:70; 27:63; 29:65; 30:41; 31:31–32). Contemporary and traditional interpretations have generally held in line with general biblical cosmology, with a flat Earth with skies stacked on top of each other, with some believing them to be domes and others flat circles.
Seven heavens
In eight different verses, the Quran exclaims that there are seven heavens (Q 2:29, 17:44, 23:86, 41:12, 65:12, 67:3, 71:15, 78:12). These heavens as arranged ṭibāqan (Q 67:3, 71:15), or "superimposed" over each other, apparently in a flat way, with one heaven layered above another. The Quran closely shares in its use of imagery, motif, and personification, in describing the heavens, as is particularly found in the Book of Psalms and the Book of Isaiah: God orders the heavens to assemble and they assent (Q 41:11/Ps 50:1–6/Is 48:13–14), the heavens are a witness to the glory of God (Q 17:44/Ps 148), and the injunction to cast one's sight upon the heavens as a testimony of God's creation (Q 67:3–4/Is 40:25–26). Multi-layered heavens had been in vogue in Middle Eastern cosmologies since the 3rd millennium BC. Absent from the Hebrew Bible, they first entered Jewish cosmology in the 3rd century BC and Christian cosmology in a later period. Rabbinic authors most commonly asserted the existence of seven (as opposed to a different number of) heavens, whereas East Syrian Christian authors rejected this figure.
Seven earths One passage in the Quran has produced some controversy as to whether, mirroring the heavens, there are also seven earths: "It (is) God who created seven heavens, and of the earth a similar (number) to them" [allāhu lladhī khalaqa sabʿa samāwātin wa-mina l-’arḍi mithla-hunna] (Q 65:12). The competing interpretations are either that God created seven earths to counterbalance the number (seven) of heavens, or, that God's creation of the earth was performed to counterbalance the creation of the heavens (irrespective of their number). The expression of seven earths is much less common than that of seven heavens in the ancient world, with only seemingly implicit references to it in much earlier Sumerian texts. However, the Talmud describes a presence of seven underworlds (to mirror the seven heavens), and other texts either describe multiple names for earth (without implying multiple earths) or that Gehenna is compartmentalized into seven areas. Towards the end of late antiquity, rabbinic (but not other) texts begin to outwardly describe there being seven earths, including Pesikta de-Rav Kahana, Leviticus Rabbah 29:11, Sefer Rabbah di-Bereshit, and others.
Shape of the earth The Quran assumes a flat earth, as the text frequently emphasizes the extensiveness or flatness of the earth and how it has been spread out. The earth is also frequently described as a site for human flourishing, and compared to comfortable pieces of flat furniture such as a carpet, bed, or couch. Scott Noegel and Brennan Wheeler write that the Quran shares the Biblical and Near Eastern cosmological conceptions of the world, including a male creator who fights Chaos (represented as water), divisions into upper and lower worldly realms, and a flat, spread out earth.
Firmament
The Quranic heaven(s), reflecting their near eastern and biblical cosmological contexts, are firmaments, referring to a solid structure (or barrier) in the sky whose function it is to separate the earth from the heavenly ocean above (visible as the blue sky), and more broadly, given its expanse, to separate the upper from the lower waters (which may correspond to the two sweet and salty seas, the baḥrān, referred to throughout the Quran like in Q 25:53, 27:61, 35:12, 55:19). There is some controversy over the shape of the Quranic firmament, namely, whether it is domed or flat, although most have understood the firmaments to be flat.
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