وَٱلْجِبَالَ أَوْتَادًا
Root: و-ت-د. وَتِد (watid) — a peg, a nail, a pointed piece of wood or iron driven into the ground. Its plural is أَوْتَاد.
The word's principal use in Arab culture is for the tent peg. A tent stands by having its cloth fastened to the ground with pegs. Without the pegs the tent goes with the wind.
And this describes the peg's function exactly: a peg exists not for itself but for what it holds. The visible part of a peg is small; its work is done in the invisible part, inside the earth.
"…and Pharaoh, the lord of the pegs." (Ṣād 38/12)
"And with Pharaoh, the lord of the pegs [what did your Lord do]?" (al-Fajr 89/10)
| View | Explanation |
|---|---|
| The firmness of his rule | His army, his soldiers, his buildings; the power that held his dominion as firm as pegs driven into the ground. Among the Arabs the expression "he has many pegs" was used of one whose tent was large and settled |
| Instruments of torture | It is transmitted that he stretched those he punished to the ground with pegs |
In Sūrat al-Nabaʾ the mountains are God's pegs. In Sūrat al-Fajr and Sūrat Ṣād Pharaoh too has pegs. And the next sūra — al-Nāziʿāt — will show what became of Pharaoh's pegs: "So God seized him with the punishment of the hereafter and of this world" (79/25).
The difference between the two sets of pegs is this: one is still in place, the other has been pulled out. And the twentieth verse of the sūra will say a third thing: God's pegs too will be pulled out — but in their time and by His hand.
The data this reading rests on are in the text: the three occurrences of the word awtād, and al-Nāziʿāt's coming immediately after al-Nabaʾ. The one who makes the link is I.
This expression is one of the Qurʾānic expressions most strained in the modern period. The rule recorded in Method will be applied here: a verse is not forcibly dressed in modern knowledge.
First let us see what the verse says. The verse says nothing about the shape of mountains. It says nothing about their structure, their depth, their formation. The only thing it says is a function: mountains do for the earth what a peg does for a tent.
"And He placed firm mountains on the earth lest it shake with you." (al-Naḥl 16/15; a similar expression at al-Anbiyāʾ 21/31 and Luqmān 31/10)
The verb here is أَن تَمِيدَ بِكُمْ — mayd: to sway, to lurch (it is used of a ship's rolling at sea as well). The function of mountains, then, is related as stabilising.
Now let me say where the straining begins. To set out from these verses and say "the Qurʾān announced the underground roots of mountains and isostatic balance" carries three separate problems:
1. The verse does not say it. In the peg comparison, the peg's being sunk into the ground is already contained in the word; this is not a geological claim but the word's own picture. 2. It breaks the argument. As was recorded above, the function of verses six to sixteen is to enumerate things the addressee can verify. Something that cannot be verified cannot be used as a proof. 3. It makes the text dependent on science. If the truth of a verse is tied to today's scientific model, what becomes of the verse when the model changes? This method makes fragile the very thing it wants to defend.
The honest relation that can be made is this, and I write it with the note that it is one way of looking: that the distribution of the earth's mass has to do with the planet's rotation and balance is something known today. The "stabilising" function the verse states and this knowledge do not contradict one another.
But this is not to say "the verse announced this". The verse names a visible function; science investigates the mechanism of that function. The two are not speaking on the same plane.
A cradle moves; a peg fixes. Set side by side, what comes out of the two is a balance: neither wholly fixed nor wholly in motion.
And this stands in the words themselves. The use of a cradle is in its rocking — but on condition that it does not tip over. The use of a tent is in its being pitchable — but on condition that it does not blow away.