Surah 54:11–14:
So We opened the gates of heaven with rain pouring down and caused the earth to burst with springs, so the waters met for a matter already predestined. And We carried him on a of planks and nails, sailing before Our eyes as reward for he who had been denied.
When recounting the global flood of Noah, the text describes the mechanics of the deluge and the construction of the Ark using highly specific, localized physical descriptions.
The Fixed Canopy Ocean: Verse 11 states that God "opened the gates of heaven (abwāb al-samā') with rain pouring down." This phrasing directly preserves the Ancient Near Eastern and Hebrew cosmology of the firmament. It views the sky not as a vast spatial vacuum, but as a solid, physical dome or ceiling acting as a structural dam to keep out a primordial celestial ocean. To cause a flood, the deity simply unlocks literal "gates" or windows in the ceiling to let the upper water drop down.
The Sewn-Plank Anachronism: Verse 13 states that Noah was saved on a vessel made of "planks and nails/cords" (alwāḥin wa-dusur). Linguists and maritime historians note that the word dusur refers specifically to the fiber cords, wooden pegs, or iron spikes used to tightly stitch together the hulls of ships. This perfectly describes the exact sewn-plank shipbuilding technology of the 7th-century Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean (the classic dhow architecture utilized by Hijazi merchants). The text takes a localized, contemporary maritime engineering method familiar to Muhammad's audience and projects it thousands of years backward onto a Mesopotamian Bronze Age myth.