understanding, although light is not a body—this is contradictory in two respects:

First, whatever people perceive through their senses is either a body or an accident inhering in a body.

Second, the light they know is likewise either a body or an accident inhering in a body, as with the light of lamps and the like. If what is meant is the light itself issuing from the lamp’s wick, that is fire, and fire is a body. If what is meant is the illumination falling upon the ground, walls, and air that it encounters, that is an accident inhering in something else.

The same applies to the sun and moon. If “light” means the very substance of either, as in His saying:

“He made the sun a radiant light and the moon a light” [Yūnus: 5],

then the moon is a body. If “light” means the illumination they cast upon the earth and air, that is an accident. People know no light beyond these two kinds.

Moreover, if asking “What is it?” is natural to human beings, something they cannot escape, and if, once the existence of what is being asked about has been acknowledged, saying “It has no essence” cannot provide a satisfactory answer—because what has no essence has no being—then an answer that does not correspond to reality cannot be satisfactory either. On the assumption that He is not Himself light, the answer would not correspond to reality.

In that case, an answer that accords with the truth while refraining from stating the actual essence would be better than this. This is how some people explain Moses’ answer to Pharaoh when he asked him:

“What is the Lord of all worlds? * He said: The Lord of the heavens