He said: Some maintained that what speakers of the language call a body is that which has length, breadth, and depth. They did not specify a number of particles for it, although the particles of a body have a determinate number.

He said: Hishām ibn al-Hakam maintained that to call something a body means that it exists. He used to say: “By calling it a body, I mean only that it exists, that it is a thing, and that it subsists in itself.”

He said: Al-Nazzām maintained that a body is that which has length, breadth, and depth; that its parts have no ascertainable number; and that there is no half that does not itself have a half, nor any part that does not itself have a part.

He said: The philosophers defined a body as that which has breadth and depth.

He said: ʿAbbād ibn Sulaymān said: