The pre-First Dynasty Chinese, the Jomaran Japanese, the Sumerians, the Phoneticians, the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom to name a few all knew the Earth was round.
It was only the Europeans, locked in the Dark Ages, who were willfully ignorant that the Earth is a sphere. Whatever knowledge they might have inherited from the Greeks, they burned.
Thousands of years before Christ was, various cultures were aware of the Earth’s shape. Minister Fikri is either behind on his history or, like the Europeans of the Dark Ages, willfully ignorant. Then again, maybe it is taqiyya for the muslim masses.
You subscribe to the myth that the Europeans thought the earth was flat.It is not necessary to assume that in order to reject the idea of sailing West to reach the Orient. It is only necessary to have a good estimate of the radius of the earth, and to not assume that there is land West of Spain until you reach the Orient. Try looking at a globe, assume away the Americas, and see if you would sail West to reach the Orient. You wouldn’t; the Great Circle path between Spain and, say, Japan goes pretty much North from Spain.
That’s for starters. If you did sail straight West from Spain, assuming you didn’t find previously undiscovered land in between, what would your chances be of sailing a boat across, not just the Atlantic, but the entire Pacific Ocean without provisioning???