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	usages once more. The Holy Qur'an gives high compliments to glassware and praises its utility for man's benefits and needs. Also Beruni describes a variety of specimens, beads, hardware, utensils, pottery objects and ceramics of all kinds during his visit to the cities of Rayy and Isfahan which he found to be most entertaining, elegant and useful, selected because of its excellent craftsmanship. For tiles, parquets and mosaics, the decorating processes involve small bits of coloured stones or glass arranged by inlaying them in picturesque designs and patterns in mortar mixtures of sands and lime They are often impregnated with gold and silver leafings on floors and walls in mansions and palaces, or halls of temples and houses of worship. These artistic works were widely known and utilized during the Roman-Byzantine periods and later on to the modern times. In the preIslamic eras, I personally examined such works of art not only in Tunisia and Libya in North Africa, but also in various cities of Syrian region (Bilad al-Sham) such as Damascus, Gerasa (Jerash), Madaba and its environs. Fortunately, some of these rare mosaics were found recently in tact under the debris — an outstanding legacy of its citizenry. The Second Maqalah on Metals and Minerals This second treatise or part of the Kitab al-Jamahir is devoted by Beruni specifically to the discussions on minerals and metallurgy. The minerals kingdom, with its more than one thousand different species, caught man's attention and curiosity for millennia. In the inconceivable depths of the earth's interior, the melting and cooling processes of its fiery liquids formed igneous rocks and other sedimentary alluvia. In time these were isolated, channelled and concentrated surging towards the surface forming layer after layer of deposits. All tell the story of our planet's past, forming clues to its future. In the introduction of this part, the author begins with the nonmetallic chemical element, sulphur. He reiterates that when the sulphur is in its pure state, it has a soft, pale-yellow colour and that it burns and ignites with a blue flame and stifling odour. By Muslim "naturalists'" and others, it was considered as the foremost among the easily melted non-metals, existing by itself on the earth's crust in certain mineral deposits. Nonetheless, it is often combined with antimony in the form of a bright, silvery soft compound (the stibnite with the formula Sb₂ S₃). Another combination is the pyrite (FeS₂) which when mined, chemically treated and released, represents one of the major natural sources of sulphur, A twin non-metal of sulphur is mercury, which was accurately defined and widely used in Arabic medical and technical literature.

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