it had been before, that would be ignorance, not knowledge.

If, while it was occurring, one took it to be nonexistent, one would be ignorant. Thus, these instances of knowledge cannot take one another’s place.

They therefore claimed that Allah Most High does not vary in His state across these three conditions, since that would entail change. Yet unless His state varies, it is inconceivable that He should know these three things. Knowledge follows what is known: when what is known changes, knowledge changes; and when knowledge changes, the knower necessarily changes. But change is impossible for Allah.

Despite this, he claimed that He knows the eclipse and all its attributes and incidental features, but through an unchanging knowledge that He possesses eternally, without beginning or end.

For example, He knows that the sun exists and that the moon exists, and that both came from Him through the mediation of the angels, which they call, in their terminology, “immaterial intellects.” He knows that it moves in circular motions, and that their two orbits intersect at two points: the head and the tail. He knows that they sometimes come together at the two nodes, causing the sun to be eclipsed, since the body of the moon comes between it and the observers’ eyes, hiding the sun from view; and that when it has passed the node, for example,