69 Preface قُلنا يا نارُ كوني بَردًا وَسَلامًا عَلىٰ إِبراهيمَYusuf AliWe said, “O Fire!1 be thou cool, and (a means of) safety for Abraham!”2The nature of fire, by all the physical laws of matter, is to be hot. The supremacy of mind over matter is a phrase much used, but the supremacy of the spiritual over the material is not so commonly understood. And yet it is the greatest factor in the estimate of Reality. The material is ephemeral and relative. The spiritual is eternal and absolute. Through all the fire of persecution and hatred Abraham remained unhurt. The fire became cool, and a means of safety for Abraham.Can we form any idea of the place where he passed through the furnace, and the stage in his career at which this happened? He was born in Ur of the Chaldees, a place on the lower reaches of the Euphrates, not a hundred miles from the Persian Gulf. This was the cradle, or one of the cradles, of human civilisation. Astronomy was studied here in very ancient times, and the worship of the sun, moon, and stars was the prevailing form of religion. Abraham revolted against this quite early in life, and his argument is referred to in 6:74-82. They also had idols in their temples, probably idols representing heavenly bodies and celestial winged creatures. He was still a youth (21:60) when he broke the idols. This was stage No. 2. After this he was marked down as a rebel and persecuted. Perhaps some years passed before the incident of his being thrown into the Fire (21:68-69) took place, or the incident may be only allegorical. Traditionally the Fire incident is referred to a king called Ninirud, about whom see n. 1565 to 11:69. If Nimrūd’s capital was in Assyria, near Nineveh (site near modern Mosul), we may suppose either that the king’s rule extended over the whole of Mesopotamia, or that Abraham wandered north through Babylonia to Assyria. Various stratagems were devised to get rid of him (21:70), but he was saved by the mercy of God. The final break came when he was probably a man of mature age and could speak to his father with some authority. This incident is referred to in 19:41-48. He now left his ancestral lands, and avoiding the Syrian desert, came to the fertile lands of Aram or Syria, and so south to Canaan, when the incident of 11:69-76 and the adventures of his nephew Lut took place. It is some years after this that we may suppose he built the Ka‘ba with Isma'il (2:124-129), and his prayer in 14:35-41 may be referred to the same time. His visit to Egypt (Gen. 12:10) is not referred to in the Qur-ān.