In their writings one finds that whatever subsists in itself is called a jawhar (substance).

It has been said that they chose this term because the jawhar of a thing is its root, and what subsists by itself is likewise the root.

They may even describe an ʿaraḍ (accident) that inheres in something else as a jawhar.

Another explanation is that the word jawhar follows the morphological pattern fawʿal and is derived from the root jahr, which denotes manifestness and clarity; what subsists in itself is manifest and recognized before the accidents that inhere in it become known.

People are unanimously agreed on affirming the self-subsistent entities that are called jawāhir (substances) or ajsām (bodies). They have differed, however, over the reality of the accidents that exist within them; yet the more exacting among them regard the dispute as purely verbal, for no rational person denies that a body moves after having been at rest.

Some therefore say that its motion is not something added to its essence, while others hold that it is.

This mirrors their debate over the divine attributes: are they additional to the essence or not?

The sound position is that when the term “human being” is used without qualification, it includes his attributes; but when a distinction is required, one speaks of the essence and the attributes.

Some restrict the word ʿaraḍ to those characteristics that are not inseparable from the subject, calling the inseparable ones “essential, substantial attributes.”

Others confine the term ʿaraḍ