When an internal excitement occurs, the earth breathes through the mountains and its anger and upset are calmed. That is to say, the mountains are means of its calm and tranquillity.
Thirdly: The earth is cultivated by means of human beings. And human life is perpetuated by human beings preserving water, earth and air, the sources of life, so that they may be profited from. And what ensures these three conditions of life are the mountains. For the mountains serve both as reservoirs for the water, and as combs for the air as they attract the moisture, and since they are the means of precipitating the harmful gases mixed with the air so purifying it, they also water the earth. So too they preserve the earth from the formation of muddy swamps and the encroachment of the sea.
Fourthly: The relevance and similitude [of the verse] according to eloquence is this: Suppose a man ascends high up in the balloon of his imagination, and looking down on the mountain ranges imagines them to be the haircloth shelters of nomads thrown over the poles of the layers of earth, and the individual mountains to be tents erected on poles. Would this be opposed to nature and imagination? If, in conversation with a nomad, you fancy and conceive of the face of the earth together with its mountain ranges and the mountains as tents pitched on it, you would not be far from the Arabs' imagination and styles. They would not condemn you if gazing from afar through the telescope of wisdom at the earth, man's cradle, and the skies, its lofty roof, you imagine the sky stretching from the wide horizons to the heavens as a tent-roof bound with the pegs of the mountains on the face of the earth. One or two more examples follow in the Reminder of the Eighth Matter.
The Seventh Matter
The Seventh Matter
In order to mislead people, certain literalists persistently cite verses like the following: "And the earth, moreover, hath He extended [to a wide expanse]"(79:30); "And at the earth, how it is spread out"(88:20); "And We have spread out the [spacious] earth: how excellently We do spread out!"(51:48); "He found it set in a spring of murky water"(18:86). There is no need for us to defend