al-Mursalāt 77:27

Wa jaʿalnā fīhā rawāsiya shāmikhātin wa asqaynākum māʾan furātā "And We set in it firm, lofty mountains, and gave you sweet water to drink."

The second verse of the third proof section. The earth's gathering has been told; now two properties of that earth: its fixity and its water.

Root: ر-س-و. Its concrete sense: the fixing of a thing, its settling into place so that it does not move.

• رَسَا — it stood fixed, it cast anchor.
• مَرْسَى — the place where a ship casts anchor, a harbour. And in the Qurʾān it is used of the time of the Hour: "They ask you about the Hour: when will it cast anchor?" (al-Aʿrāf 7/187; al-Nāziʿāt 79/42) — ayyāna mursāhā.
• رَاسِيَات — those standing fixed. "And great cauldrons fixed in place" (Sabaʾ 34/13) — wa qudūrin rāsiyāt.
• رَوَاسِى — firm mountains that do not move. Regularly used of mountains in the Qurʾān.

The word's most instructive side is the field of seafaring. Marsā is the place where a ship casts anchor; irsāʾ is the casting of anchor. That is, the root tells of the fixing of something that moves.

Used of mountains, this yields an image: the mountains are told of not as weights laid upon the earth but as anchors that fix it.

And the Qurʾān says this plainly:

"He set firm mountains on the earth, lest it shake with you." (al-Naḥl 16/15) — wa alqā fi'l-arḍi rawāsiya an tamīda bikum.

The verb here is أَلْقَى — the verb of the fifth verse of this sūra (al-mulqiyāt). The same verb with two different objects: one delivers a dhikr, the other a mountain. I record this as a shared wording.

A limit must be set. The expression that the mountains "fix" the earth stands in the verse as the statement of a function. To look for a counterpart to this expression in modern earth science runs against the method of this commentary and I do not do it. The qualification recorded for suṭiḥat (the spreading out of the earth) in the section on al-Ghāshiya holds here too: the verse is not framed in order to answer a question about the physical structure of the earth or of the mountains. The addressee of the verse is a person who sees with his own eyes that a mountain does not shake, and the verse uses that observation.

Root: ش-م-خ. To rise, to be upright and high.

• شَامِخ — high, upright.
• شَمَخَ بِأَنْفِهِ — he lifted his nose in the air, that is, he grew proud. This is the Arabic idiom for pride.

The relation between the root's two branches is striking: the same word names both the height of a mountain and the pride of a human being. The difference lies in what the height rests on: a mountain rises with its root in the ground (rāsī — anchored); a proud human being merely lifts his head.

The verse sets these two words side by side: رَوَاسِىَ شَامِخَاتٍ — both fixed and lofty. That is, height is named together with fixity.

I record this as my own reading; the two senses of the root are the lexicographers' datum.

Note: the fixity of the mountains is taken up again with another word in Sūrat al-Nāziʿāt (wa'l-jibāla arsāhā). I give no reference to that section, since it is not yet complete; because the word is from the same root I confine myself to recording it here.

Root: س-ق-ي. Saqā — he gave water, he gave to drink. أَسْقَى (ifʿāl) — he gave to drink, he assigned water for irrigation.

The lexicographers record a difference between saqā and asqā: saqā is to give to drink directly (like handing someone a cup), whereas asqā is to assign water permanently — to provide a source of water, to give the means of irrigation. I transmit this distinction as a nicety the lexicographers record; I do not claim that it is applied strictly everywhere.

In the verse we have asqaynākum — that is, not a single act of giving to drink but a continuous provision of water.

Root: ف-ر-ت. Furāt — sweet water that quenches thirst. The word does not merely mean "unsalted"; it means water that satisfies when drunk, pleasant and clean.

The Qurʾān uses this word in two places together with its opposite:

"It is He who has let the two seas flow: one sweet and thirst-quenching, the other salt and bitter." (al-Furqān 25/53) — hādhā ʿadhbun furātun wa hādhā milḥun ujāj. "The two seas are not alike: one is sweet, thirst-quenching, pleasant to drink; the other salt and bitter." (Fāṭir 35/12)

In both verses its opposite is given as أُجَاج (salt and bitter).

Why does the choice of word matter? Because most of the water on the earth cannot be drunk. The verse does not say "We gave you water"; it says "We gave you sweet water to drink". What is given is not water but drinkable water.

This makes visible the condition beneath a favour that looks ordinary: there is water, but its being drinkable is another matter.

Now let us read 25-27 together:

1. The earth is a vessel: it gathers the living and the dead. (25-26) 2. In that earth there are firm, lofty mountains. (27a) 3. And We gave you sweet water to drink. (27b)

Three elements: gathering, fixity, water. That is, the three conditions of a place of settlement — shelter, firmness of ground, drinking water.

And note: the section is describing a house. This is the short form of what is done in more detail in Sūrat al-Nabaʾ; there the earth is called mihād (a bed), the mountains awtād (pegs), and an eleven-verse tableau is set up.

Al-Mursalāt does it in three verses. And its argument is the same: a place that has been built has a builder, and a builder has an expectation of the one who dwells there.

But with a difference. In al-Nabaʾ the tableau is only for the living. In al-Mursalāt the first verse counts the dead as well: aḥyāʾan wa amwātā. That is, the grave too enters the description of the house.

This is the tightest link in the sūra's argument, and I record it as my own reading: the earth is named in a single sentence as both cradle and grave. In the counting of the favour, death too is counted as part of the favour — because the vessel that gathers gathers them both.