beauty contest between the earth and the sky and a competition between them. Its field is this: it's as though just as the earth is adorned with its mountains clothed in white garments of snow and ice and with its colourful gardens; so too as though competing with it, the sky appears veiled, attired in the broken clouds like towering mountains and hills and valleys, and tinted with various colours like the earth's gardens. Were those towering, billowing clouds to be likened to mountains, ships, gardens, valleys, and caravans of camels, there would be no error in the simile. The thunder acts as shepherd to those itinerent bodies of the atmosphere, whisking the lightning around their heads like a whip. The floating clouds travelling through the oceans of the skies recall mountains crumbling on doomsday. As though the sky summons to arms with the thunder the molecules of water vapour, which, having later received the order to retire, return to their places and are hidden.

Indeed, very often the clouds wear the dress of the mountains, assume their forms, together with the whiteness of snow and ice and their moisture and coldness. The two are thus friends and neighbours and are compelled to exchange what they have. This brotherhood and mutual exchange of forms and dress is found in many places in the Qur'an. The Revelation testifies to their shaking hands as they converse and embrace each other on many lines of the page of the earth in the book of the world. For we see the clouds resting on the mountain making the mountain like a dock or anchorage for the ships of the clouds.

The second verse: "The sun runs its course to its point of rest"(36:38). Here, just as "runs its course" (tajrī) indicates a style, so "to its point of rest (li-mustaqarrin) hints at a truth. That is to say, it is permissible that with the former it indicates that, like a gilded ironclad ship with a golden anchor, the sun voyages through the oceans of the sky, which are known as "waves held back." The molten golden sun is at anchor in its point of rest, yet is in motion. But its motion is accidental and secondary, and is presented visually as a concession and to facilitate understanding. In reality it has two motions, but even if this were not the case, it would not be impor-