The argument identifies a real feature of the Quran: it often uses cultivated landscapes, flowing water, and the ruins of earlier peoples as signs. But these images do not require a Levantine place of composition. They fit a Meccan audience that knew surrounding regions through travel, trade, and inherited religious knowledge.
Why the objection has force
Critics reasonably observe that olives, vineyards, grain, dense gardens, and streams are more naturally associated with settled Mediterranean agriculture than with Mecca's dry valley. The reference to passing by the towns of Lot "morning and evening" seems especially striking if those ruins are located near the Dead Sea. On this reading, the Quran sounds like a text produced among people who lived close to such landscapes, rather than in western Arabia.
That is a serious observation, but it assumes that every scene described is the immediate environment of the first audience. The Quran does not make that assumption.
What the verses actually say
And it is He who sends down rain from the sky, and We produce thereby the growth of all things. We produce from it greenery, from which We produce grains arranged in layers. And from the palm trees - of its emerging fruit are clusters hanging low. And [We produce] gardens of grapevines and olives and pomegranates, similar yet different. Look at its fruit when it yields and its ripening. Indeed in that are signs for a people who believe.
Quran 6:99
This is not presented as a claim that all these crops grow in Mecca. It is a reflection on God's provision across the world familiar to the audience, including through travel and trade. The Quran also describes Mecca's setting in distinctly arid terms: Abraham calls it a "valley without cultivation" (Quran 14:37). That detail is difficult to explain if the text was simply projecting a lush local environment.
And We caused to grow within it grain, and grapes and herbage, and olive and palm trees, and gardens of dense shrubbery, and fruits and grass - as enjoyment for you and your grazing livestock.
Quran 80:27-32
Here the passage describes the range of God's agricultural provision, not necessarily a single landscape surrounding the speaker. Such language also naturally forms part of descriptions of resurrection and paradise, where gardens and streams are familiar signs of blessing.
The route to Lot's towns
And indeed, you pass by them in the morning, and at night. Then will you not use reason?
Quran 37:137-138
The classical understanding is that the audience passed near the ruins associated with Lot while travelling north toward Syria. Meccan commerce included journeys in that direction, and the Quran itself refers to the Quraysh's seasonal journeys. The wording therefore supports familiarity with the sites, not residence beside them. A traveller can pass a ruin regularly without it being near his home.
What this argument establishes
At most, the evidence shows that the Quran speaks to people who knew more than Mecca's immediate ecology and could recognize Levantine landscapes and ruins. It does not establish that the text originated in the Levant. Geography can supply imagery through travel, oral reports, and reflection on God's signs. The verses remain fully compatible with a Meccan origin and, in places, explicitly preserve awareness of Mecca's own aridity.