that the celestial sphere cannot be cleft asunder; yet the falsity of this notion is established both by reason and by transmitted revelation, and it has come down through recurrent reports from the prophets that they foretold the rending of the heavens. The reply to such thinkers is clarified by noting that when they affirm that every motion must have a direction and a delimiter that sets those directions, their evidence proves only the need for something belonging to the genus of delimiters; it does not prove the necessity of any one specific delimiter. Thus, if it is posited that beyond the first delimiter another delimiter is created, and the aim is achieved by piercing the first, the argument still stands. Most of their proofs are of this sort: they demonstrate a matter in the abstract but then specify it without evidence and thereby err in the specification—just as they do when arguing for the eternity of agency, or of motion, or of its duration. Such arguments do not establish celestial motion, nor do they prove that time is merely the measure of motion.

Rather, when Allah created the heavens, the earth, and all that is between them in six days—as the messengers have related—those very days in which He created the heavens and the earth were not determined by the sun’s movement, for the sun itself was among the things brought into being during those days. Indeed, Allah, exalted is He, has declared that His Throne was upon the water before He created the heavens and the earth, and He has informed us that He fashioned the heavens from smoke, which is the vapor rising from water. Therefore, if, prior to these observable motions, there were other motions belonging to bodies different from the ones we now observe, this in no way contradicts the conclusions of sound reason.