Marvels of Creatures and Strange Things Existing (عجائب المخلوقات وغرائب الموجودات)
When God created the Earth, he saw it to be wobbly as a ship in a stormy sea. To support it he created an angel who held it by the east and west. But there was nothing below the angel, so he created a green gemstone rock with 7,000 perforations in it, from each of which issues a sea whose breadth God only knows, and the angel stood on the rock.
Then God created a great bull to support the rock. This bull is enormous beyond comprehension, having 40,000 eyes, 40,000 noses, 40,000 ears, 40,000 mouths, 40,000 tongues, and 40,000 legs. The distance between each of the bull’s pairs of legs would take 500 years to cover. The spread of his horns goes beyond the boundaries of the Earth. He breathes twice a day; as his nose is in the water, this causes the tides to ebb and flow. When he shifts he causes earthquakes.
The bull held the rock on his back and horns, and he stands on the back of a great dragon-like fish. The dragon is so large that all the seas would be like a grain of mustard in his nostril. Below the fish are varying combinations of water, earth, suffocating wind, sand, darkness, and mist, and that is as far as human knowledge goes.