Abstract

Presented by Zia H Shah MD

Water is not a backdrop to human civilisation — it is its very substance. Every cell in every living body is a testament to a reality that the Quran states with breathtaking concision: from water, Allah made every living thing. This commentary undertakes a sustained meditation on three Quranic verses — 15:21, 15:22, and 67:30 — that together form one of the most complete, scientifically resonant, and spiritually instructive passages in all of divine revelation concerning water. In Surah Al-Hijr, Allah declares that the treasuries of all things rest with Him alone, and that He sends down water through the agency of fertilising winds — and that humanity is not the guardian of these stores. In Surah Al-Mulk, He poses the most searching of questions: if your water were to sink away into the earth, who but He could bring you flowing water in its place?

Drawing on classical tafsir from Ibn Kathir, Al-Tabari, Al-Qurtubi, the Jalalayn, and Ma’arif al-Quran, the commentary first roots the verses in the tradition of Quranic exegesis. It then opens into an extended scientific reflection on the hydrological cycle — the solar-powered planetary engine by which saltwater oceans are continuously desalinated and returned to the continents as life-giving freshwater. The remarkable separation of fresh from salt water is explored both as a Quranic sign (Quran 25:53) and as a feat of natural engineering that dwarfs anything human technology has produced. The commentary then confronts the origin of Earth’s water: arriving through cosmic processes across billions of years, fashioned long before humanity existed, stored in a quantity we neither created nor control. The story of Mars — a neighbouring planet that once harboured oceans and rivers but lost everything when its magnetic shield failed — provides a sobering planetary parable for the urgency of 67:30’s question. The commentary closes philosophically and theologically, drawing on Ibn Rushd’s argument from providence, the Islamic virtues of tawakkul and shukr, and the concept of water as amānah — a sacred trust from the Creator to His creation.

The central argument throughout is simple and devastating: we did not make the water, we do not store it, we cannot replace it — and the Quran knew this fourteen centuries before modern science confirmed it.

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