الرئيسية
Scientific Signs in the Qur’an
Examples from the Area of Earth Science – II
One wonders why the Qur’an comments on matters like these things that were not known to anyone at the time of revelation or even for centuries afterwards, unless Allah knows in His eternal knowledge that the time will come when man will then immediately realize that the Qur’an is the Word of Allah and that Muhammad (peace be upon him) is His last Messenger, stresses Prof. Zaghloul El-Naggar.
One of the main features of our planet is its fractured nature. These fractures allow enormous amount of molten rock to flow out and produce these mid-oceanic ridges. Unless the earth has these fractures that can communicate with the areas of high heat flow below the Earth’s crust, life on earth would have been virtually impossible. One wonders how the Prophet knew these facts since he never rode the sea. How would he know this unless he was informed by Allah, the Creator. And why does the Qur’an refer to such unknown facts at the time of its revelation and for centuries to follow unless Allah knows in His eternal knowledge that the time will come when scientists can discover these facts and immediately realize that the Qur’an is the Word of Allah and that Muhammad was the seal of His Prophets and His messengers.
The Sea Set on Fire
In Surah At-Tur (52:6), Allah swears an oath: Wal bahril masjur, “By the sea set on fire.” Water and fire are incompatible, water quenches fire and fire causes water to evaporate and it is virtually impossible to have water and fire in one place. Therefore, early commentators on Qur’an thought in the first instance that the verse probably is referring to Akhirah, the last hour, because there is another verse which says: Waithal-Biharu-sujjirat translated as: “When the seas will be set on fire.” But the context of the oath in Surah At-Tur is in relation to things that exist in our present day life. They immediately said that it could not refer to Akhirah, and has to refer to our worldly life. They then started looking for another meaning for the word masjur, other than “set to fire”. They found in the Arabic language that some of the meanings of sajjara means mala-a wa kaffaa (it has been filled with water and kept from transgressing on land). This is true because we have many instances in the history of our planet when the seas encroached more on land than they do today. We also know that the maximum amount of fresh water on land is stored in the form of ice caps in the two poles as well as at the peaks of high mountains.
This massive amount of fresh water does not need more than 4-5 degrees Celsius to melt and 4-5 degrees are nothing in the climatic changes of our planet. If these ice caps were made to melt, this can raise the water level of seas and ocean by 100 meters, or so and would be more than enough to drown most of the present day civilizations which lie very close to shore lines. The commentators thus said that the meaning of al bahril masjur is not “the sea set on fire” but “the sea that is filled with water and stopped from transgressing on land.” This is correct, but when the scientists went down to study the mid-oceanic ridges, they found that they are all composed of volcanic rocks. They also found that the network of fault lines that traverse the planet actually ooze magma at temperatures that exceed 1,000 degrees Celsius resulting in seas and oceans that are actually set on fire. Water boiling to superheated steam at temperatures of 200 degree Celsius or more. This is a fact that came to our knowledge only in the late 60’s of this century.
Mountains in the Qur’an
Another striking example in the Qur’an relates to mountains. The Qur’an speaks about mountains in 49 different verses. In one of these verses the Qur’an describes mountains as pegs or pickets. “And the mountains as pegs (awtaadaa) (78:7). If we take any scientific or linguistic dictionary of today and look for the meaning of mountain, we will find that scientists define mountains as high elevations on the surface of our planet.
Elevations that exceed 610 m in height are called mountains and anything below this is regarded as a hill. However, in many of the American references, elevations above 300 meters are considered mountains. The Qur’an that was revealed more than 14 centuries ago describes mountains as pegs or pickets. If we look at a tent’s peg, we find that most of its length, is buried in the ground, its smallest part crops out on the surface of the ground and its function is fixation.
Scientists have now come to realize that mountains are not just surface elevation into the ground, and these are called mountain roots. Mountain roots were never known to scientists before the turn of this century and they were highly debated until recently. A peak like Mount Everest, which is almost 9 km above the ground’s surface, has a root that develops for more than 125 km inside the Earth’s outer rocky layer.
Just as the peg or picket’s function is mainly to hold the tent solidly to the ground, so too is the exact same role of mountains. We have come to know that the outer rocky layer of the Earth is fractured by faults into plates that float on molten magma. With the earth’s rotation around its own axis, these floating plates would have been rapidly moving had it not been for the stabilizing influence of mountains. No soil could have accumulated, no water could have been stored in the soil, no plant could have germinated, no road constructed, no house could have been built, and life would have been impossible on our planet. For this reason Allah showered his bounties on man by fixing the earth with mountains. Mountains act like pegs or pickets that hold the continental masses down and stops them moving. Muhammad (peace be upon him) is quoted to have said in an authentic hadith that when Allah created the earth it started to shake and jerk, then Allah stabilized it with mountains.
In our Solar System
The source of iron (Fe), we read in the Qur’an: “Verily, We have sent down iron in which there is great might and uses for human beings.” (57:25) When the early commentators of the Qur’an tried to explain this verse, they explained that anzalnaa (we have sent down), was not a physical sending down but meant that iron was created with the qualities of strength and might. However, it has recently been proven that all iron, not only in our planet but in the entire solar system was obtained from outer space. This is because the temperature of the sun cannot generate iron. The sun has a surface temperature of 6000 degrees Celsius and a central temperature of about 20 million degrees Celsius. There exists much hotter stars which are known as novae or super novae where temperatures can reach 100s of billions of degrees Celsius and it is in these stars that iron is formed. When the percentage of iron reaches a certain proportion of the mass of the star it explodes and these exploded particles travel in space until they are captured by the gravitational fields of other heavenly bodies. This is how our solar system all obtained its iron and it is an established fact today that all the iron in our solar system was not generated or created within the system but has come to it from outer space.
One wonders why the Qur’an comments on matter like these things that were not known to anyone at the time of revelation or even for centuries afterwards, unless Allah knows in His eternal knowledge that the time will come when man will then immediately realize that the Qur’an is the Word of Allah and that Muhammad (peace be upon him) is His last Messenger. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(PROF. ZAGHLOUL EL-NAGGAR is Professor of Earth Sciences, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dahran, Saudi Arabia.)
