He said:

“Allah’s Throne was upon the water, and He had created nothing of what He later brought into being before the water.(1) When He willed to create the creatures, He drew forth from the water a vapor that rose above it and ascended high, so He called it ‘heaven.’ Next He dried the water and made it a single landmass; then He split it, turning it into seven earths in two days,(2) Sunday and Monday. He placed the earth upon a great fish—the nūn mentioned in Allah’s words, ‘Nūn. By the Pen…’ (al-Qalam 68:1).(3) The fish is in the water, the water is upon a flat rock,(4) the rock is on the back of an angel, the angel is upon a boulder, and the boulder is in the wind. This is the boulder of which Luqmān spoke: it is neither in the heavens nor on the earth. The fish stirred and thrashed about,(5) whereupon the earth quaked; so Allah anchored it with the mountains and it became stable.(6)

On Tuesday Allah created the mountains and the benefits they contain, and on Wednesday He created the trees, the water, the cities, the inhabited regions, and the desolate tracts. The heaven had been a single mass,(7) so He split it and made it seven heavens on Thursday and Friday; Friday was called Jumuʿah because on it the creation of the heavens and the earth was gathered together. ‘And He revealed in each heaven its command.’ (Fussilat 41:12)

He said: In every heaven He created what He willed of angels [and the beings therein],(8) the seas, the mountains of hail, and that of which none but He has knowledge.(9) Then He adorned the lowest heaven with the stars, making them an adornment and a protection against the devils. When He had completed the creation of what He desired, He rose over the Throne.

This chain of transmission contains from al-Suddī many peculiar reports, much of which seems to have been taken from the Isrā’īliyyāt. When Kaʿb al-Aḥbār accepted Islam during the caliphate of ʿUmar, he would sit before ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb—may Allah be pleased with him—and relate matters from the learning of the People of the Book. ʿUmar would listen, arranging what he heard and marveling at how much of it agreed with the truth that the purified Sacred Law had brought. For this reason, and because permission had been granted to narrate from the Children of Israel,(11) many people considered it acceptable to transmit what Kaʿb al-Aḥbār reported. Yet errors often occur in what is narrated from him; these do not originate with Kaʿb himself, but stem from the books he quoted, for they had been affected by considerable mistakes and distortions.