Mountains as pegs

The ayah in tafsir

Awtad are tent-pegs: most of the peg is in the ground. Rawasi are anchors that hold. The fear named is that the earth would mida — sway — with its people. Al-Razi and others spoke of mountains as weights that still the land. The image is pastoral and geological at once.

What later eyes saw

A mountain is not a pile sitting on a table. Its roots run into the crust; the crust floats on denser rock; ranges have isostatic “keels.” Earthquakes and plates still move, yet the great belts stabilize regions over long ages. The peg that is mostly unseen is a fair picture of what later geology drew in cross-section.

Where we stop

The Quran is not a plate-tectonics manual. Mountains also rise and fall. The sign is the peg and the stilling, not a denial of tremors Allah also named.