1844.] Noticeofthe Ajaib-aLMuhhlukal. 651 



Formation of Mountains and Sand Dunes. 



Mountains were originally formed of water and earth, hardened by 

 the heat of the sun into rock, like clay into brick. The earth was 

 drifted into heaps by the wind, and thus converted into stone. 



Every 36,000 years the stars complete a revolution,* and a great 

 change takes place on the face of the globe. The North becomes South, 

 dry land becomes sea ; and sea, dry land ; mountains, plains ; and 

 plains, mountains. 



Mountains crumble by the solar heat into dust and sand, which are 

 carried by the winds into rivers, and by the rivers transported into the 

 bed of the ocean, and in lapse of time become piled up into hills ; in 

 which, when the bed of the sea again becomes dry land, we see bones 

 and shells. 



The reason of some rocks being piled up in layers, is, that they have 

 thus been deposited successively by water. Running water is conti- 

 nually transporting the earth of mountains and plains into lakes and 

 seas, in which it is accumulated in heaps, which become moun- 

 tains. 



When left dry by the sea, their surface is first covered with grass, 

 and shortly becomes inhabited by animals. 



Sometimes the water of the sea rises, and covers what was formerly 

 dry land.f 



The use of Mountains, (Fi-fuaid-al-jebal, JU-s 1 JoWi^J) 



Mountains were created as the foundations of the earth, that it should 

 not be moved ; they serve as barriers to the land against the sea, and as 

 repositories of minerals. The streams and springs which run down 



* On the theory of their advancing a degree East every century, they would com- 

 plete a great circle of 360° from W. to E. in 360 centuries. Ptolemy makes the pre- 

 cession at 36" per annum. Hipparchus, according to Le Gentil, 50". 



f Geologists of the present clay have hardly advanced further in their theories of the 

 formation of aqueous rocks, and the entombment of organic remains. 



The Arabian author, however, cannot lay any fair claim to originality, as these ideas 

 are as old as Pythagoras, or at least the edition of them given by Ovid. The theory of 

 the periodical catastrophe in which the world is supposed to be involved had its rise, 

 probably, with the Cosmogonists of Egypt, who believed that the world is successively 

 destroyed and re-produced at the return of each great year, " when the sun, moon and 

 planets are in the same sign of the Zodiac, from which they commenced their course." 

 The length of the great year of the world, according to Orpheus, is 120,000 common 

 years, according to Cassander 360,000, vide Note, page 20. 



4 T 



