by a given interval—say, a year—the sun is eclipsed, for example; and that this eclipse affects the whole of it, a third of it, or half of it, and lasts an hour or two. The same applies to all the eclipse’s conditions and incidental features: nothing escapes His knowledge.

Yet His knowledge of this before the eclipse, during it, and after it clears remains uniform: it neither varies nor entails any change in His essence. The same applies to His knowledge of all events. They occur only through causes, and those causes have further causes, until they ultimately lead back to the circular motion of the heavens. The cause of this circular motion is the soul of the heavens.

What moves the soul to impart motion is its longing to resemble Allah and the angels brought near to Him. All of this is known to Him—that is, it is disclosed to Him in a single, coherent disclosure unaffected by time.

Nevertheless, during the eclipse, it cannot be said that He knows that the eclipse exists now; nor, afterward, does He know that it has now cleared. And anything for which it is necessary, in