OCEANOLOGY
BARRIER BETWEEN SWEET AND SALT WATERS
مَرَجَ
الْبَحْرَيْنِ يَلْتَقِيَانِ 55:19بَيْنَهُمَا
بَرْزَخٌ لَّا يَبْغِيَانِ 55:20
“He has let free the two bodies
of flowing water, meeting together:
Between them is a Barrier
which they do not transgress.”
[Al-Qur’an 55:19-20]
In the Arabic text the word barzakh means a
barrier or a partition. This barrier, however, is not a
physical partition. The Arabic word maraja literally
means ‘they both meet and mix with each other’.
Early commentators of the Qur’an were unable to
explain the two opposite meanings for the two
bodies of water, i.e. they meet and mix, and at the
same time there is a barrier between them. Modern
Science has discovered that in the places where two
different seas meet, there is a barrier between
them. This barrier divides the two seas so that each
sea has its own temperature, salinity and density.1
Oceanologists are now in a better position to explain
this verse. There is a slanted unseen water barrier
between the two seas through which water from one
sea passes to the other.
But when the water from one sea enters the other
sea, it loses its distinctive characteristic and becomes homogenized with the other water. In a way
this barrier serves as a transitional homogenizing
area for the two waters.
*** Principles of Oceanography, Davis, pp. 92-93.
This phenomenon is also mentioned in the following
verse of the Qur'an:
وَجَعَلَ بَيْنَ
الْبَحْرَيْنِ حَاجِزًا
“And made a separating bar
between the two bodies
of flowing water?”
[Al-Qur’an 27:61]
This phenomenon occurs in several places, including
the divider between the Mediterranean and the
Atlantic Ocean at Gibralter. A white bar can also be
clearly seen at Cape Point, Cape Peninsula, South
Africa where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Indian
Ocean.
But when the Qur’an speaks about the divider
between fresh and salt water, it mentions the
existence of “a forbidding partition” with the barrier.
وَهُوَ الَّذِي
مَرَجَ الْبَحْرَيْنِ هَذَا عَذْبٌ فُرَاتٌ وَهَذَا مِلْحٌ أُجَاجٌ وَجَعَلَ
بَيْنَهُمَا بَرْزَخًا وَحِجْرًا مَّحْجُورًا
“It is He Who has
let free the two bodies
of flowing water:
one palatable and sweet,
and the other salty and bitter;
yet has He
made a barrier between them,
and a partition that is forbidden
to be passed.
[Al-Qur’an 25:53]
Modern science has discovered that in estuaries,
where fresh (sweet) and salt water meet, the
situation is somewhat different from that found in
places where two salt water seas meet. It has been
discovered that what distinguishes fresh water from
salt water in estuaries is a “pycnocline zone with a
marked density discontinuity separating the two
layers.”1 This partition (zone of separation) has a
salinity different from both the fresh water and the
salt water.
This phenomenon occurs in several places, including
Egypt, where the river Nile flows into the
Mediterranean Sea.
These scientific phenomena mentioned in the Qur’an
was also confirmed by Dr. William Hay, a well known
marine scientist and Professor of Geological
Sciences at the University of Colorado, U.S.A.
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