Metals · a Light

We sent down iron, and what that verb does elsewhere

Surah al-Hadid says that We sent down iron, in it great strength and benefits for people. The same verb, anzala, is used in the Qur'an for cattle and for clothing, and classical commentators read it in the sense of bestowal from above rather than as a statement about where the metal came from physically. Astrophysics does say that all the iron in the earth was forged inside stars and scattered by their deaths, long before the planet gathered. Iron also arrived more directly on occasion: the dagger buried with Tutankhamun was analysed in 2016 and its nickel content shows the blade was made from a meteorite, worked centuries before anyone in Egypt could smelt iron ore.

Surah al-Hadid 57:25

Source · Qur'an 57:25