Where will Mountains Go?

The verse 20:104 beginning with ‘We know well…’ is a parenthetical statement aimed at dispelling any doubt that might arise in the minds of some of the addressees of this discourse. For people are wont to wonder how the Qur'an was narrating a conversation that will take place on the Day of Reckoning.

The succeeding verse is another parenthetical statement, one in response to a query put forth by someone in the audience. It would appear that when this Surah was being recited as a revealed discourse before a group of people, someone might mockingly have quipped: ‘This is what will happen on the Last Day! Everyone will be rushing along a levelled plain. One wonders where all these vast mountains will disappear to!’

The response from the Lord Almighty was that the mountains would be razed to the ground and would be reduced to tiny particles of sand, which would then be flattened and all its ups and downs removed. It would appear as a levelled floor without any curvature or depression. The shape the earth will assume on the Last Day is identified in several places in the Quran. If we consider these verses together, the image of the Last Day that is conjured up is one where the earth would be reshaped, the oceans filled up, the mountains razed, the unevenness that we see today removed, and the forests cleared away, reducing the earth to a levelled plain. It will be on this levelled earth that the Grand Assembly of the Hereafter, in which everyone will be called to account, will be held.