57 Preface وَظَلَّلنا عَلَيكُمُ الغَمامَ وَأَنزَلنا عَلَيكُمُ المَنَّ وَالسَّلوىٰ ۖ كُلوا مِن طَيِّباتِ ما رَزَقناكُم ۖ وَما ظَلَمونا وَلٰكِن كانوا أَنفُسَهُم يَظلِمونَYusuf AliAnd We gave you the shade of clouds and sent down to you Manna1 and quails, saying: “Eat of the good things We have provided for you:” (But they rebelled); to us they did no harm, but they harmed their own souls.Manna= Hebrew, Man-hu: Arabic Mahuwa? = What is it? In Exod. 16:14 it is described as “a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground”. (Cf. 7:160). It usually rotted if left over till next day; it melted in the hot sun; the amount necessary for each man was about an Omer, a Hebrew measure of capacity equal to about 2 1/2 quarts. This is the Hebrew account, probably distorted by traditional exaggeration. The actual Manna found to this day in the Sinai region is a gummy saccharine secretion found on a species of Tamarisk. It is produced by the puncture of a species of insect like the cochineal, just as lac is produced by the puncture of the lac insect on certain trees in India. As to quails, large flights of them are driven by winds in the Eastern Mediterranean in certain seasons of the year, as was witnessed during the Great War of 1914-1918 by many Indian officers who campaigned between Egypt and Palestine. (Cf. n. 2602).