The Bee
IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE[16:15]
And He has placed firm mountains on earth, lest it sway with you, and rivers and paths, so that you might find your way,

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* v.15 : This is apparently an allusion to the fact that the mountains owe their rise to the gradual balancing process to which the solid crust of the earth is subject – a process which, in its turn, is the result of stresses and disturbances due to the cooling and hardening, progressing from the surface towards the centre, of the presumably molten or perhaps even gaseous matter of which the earth’s interior seems to be composed. It appears that part of this interior is kept solid only by the enormous pressure of the overlaying material, of which the mountains are the most vivid evidence: and this explains the Qur’anic reference (in 78:7) to mountains as “pegs” (awtād), i.e., symbols of the firmness and relative equilibrium which the surface of the earth has gradually achieved in the course of its geological history. Notwithstanding the fact that this equilibrium is not absolute (as is evidenced by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions), it is the solidity of the earth’s crust – as contrasted with its possibly fluid but certainly very unstable interior – which makes life on earth possible: and this, to my mind, is the meaning of the phrase “lest it sway with you” (or “with them”) occurring in the above verse as well as in 21:31 and 31:10.