al-Qāriʿa 101:5

Wa takūnu'l-jibālu ka'l-ʿihni'l-manfūsh "And the mountains will be like carded, coloured wool."

In the Qurʾān the mountain is the emblem of not moving from its place. It is named as what holds the earth steady:

• "He set firm mountains upon the earth, lest it shake with you." (al-Naḥl 16/15)
• "And the mountains as pegs [did We not make]?" (al-Nabaʾ 78/7)

So in the Qurʾān's own language the mountain is the nail of the earth. And in the scenes of the resurrection it is the thing most often transformed — because when what does not change changes, it shows that the change has no limit.

The resurrection images the Qurʾān uses for the mountains:

Two things in this list are worth noticing.

One. The مُنۢبَثًّا (blown abroad) of al-Wāqiʿa 56/6 is from the same root as the ٱلْمَبْثُوث of al-Qāriʿa's fourth verse. Al-Wāqiʿa uses the word of the mountains, al-Qāriʿa of people. In two sūras the same root is applied to two different subjects — and this is the sign that the two have become the same.

Two. Al-Maʿārij 70/9 and al-Qāriʿa 101/5 are almost identical: "and the mountains will be like wool." Al-Qāriʿa adds a single word: ٱلْمَنفُوش. What that word adds is what we shall take up below.

عِهْن — the definition the lexicographers give: wool, and according to the majority dyed wool in particular. Some lexicographers say the word means only "wool" and that no note of colour attaches to it; but the note "dyed" is widely transmitted.

There is a reason for taking the note about colour seriously, and it comes from within the Qurʾān itself:

"In the mountains too [We made] tracks, white and red, of differing colours, and others raven-black." (Fāṭir 35/27)

The Qurʾān records separately that the mountains are coloured: white veins, red veins, black rocks. A mountain is not a mass of a single colour.

Now set the two verses side by side. Fāṭir enumerates the colours of the mountains; al-Qāriʿa likens the mountains to coloured wool.

What the simile does is this: the colour stays, the weight goes. The mountain does not vanish, nor does it become unrecognisable — it stands there with its colours. The only thing that has changed is that it now carries nothing.

I record this as a reading I have drawn from comparing two verses; I do not present it as transmitted. But the description of ʿihn as "dyed wool" and the content of Fāṭir 35/27 are both present in the text.

Root: ن-ف-ش. Nafasha'l-ṣūfa — he teased the wool, separated its fibres from one another, made it fluff up.

This is the process carried out before wool is spun. Raw wool is a compressed, matted mass. When it is carded (teased apart) the fibres come away from one another and the wool puffs up: its volume grows, its weight stays the same, its density falls. Carded wool is almost entirely air.

The other occurrence of the root in the Qurʾān is interesting:

"When the sheep of a people strayed and spread by night into a field…" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/78)

The verb here is from the same root and means "to be left without a shepherd and scatter". The common core is again coming apart from one another, dispersing: the fibres of the wool come apart, the animals of the flock come apart.

The verse does not content itself with likening the mountain to wool; it likens it to carded wool. This is a fall in two stages:

1. Mountain → wool. From solid to soft, from heavy to light, from rock to fibre. 2. Wool → carded wool. From compressed to loose, from mass to fluff.

Al-Maʿārij 70/9 contented itself with the first stage. Al-Qāriʿa adds the second.

And the function of the second stage is this: wool too is a mass. A ball of wool has weight in your hand, it drops to the ground, it has to be carried. But carded wool is in the air; one breath scatters it.

That is, the sūra brings the mountain's weight to nothing in two steps.

Now let us read the fourth and fifth verses together:

The two similes are chosen from the two ends of the scale.

The moth stands where weight comes to its least among living things — when it settles on your hand you do not feel its weight. The mountain stands where weight is most gathered on the earth.

The sūra takes these two ends and makes them the same. The lightest is blown about; the heaviest is blown about too. The difference between the two is removed.

And the verb the two similes share lies in the passive participles by which they are both qualified: مبثوث and منفوش. Both mean "dispersed"; both are passive — not what disperses, but what is dispersed.

This sharing is no accident. The two verses are in identical grammar: ka + definite noun + definite passive participle. And their verse-endings rhyme as well: al-mabthūth / al-manfūsh. The two similes are matched in sound too.