in the form of property, and the obligations he had acknowledged—such testimony against that very individual would be accepted, despite the transformation of his body over this long period. No rational person would say, “This testimony concerns someone like him, or someone else.”

Even if the particular thing in question were an animal or a plant, and someone testified that this person had received this animal from that person, and that this person had handed this tree over to that person, such statements would be intelligible despite the transformation.

Since transformation does not affect identity, anyone who says, “He will restore it in the condition it was in at the time of death, or when it was fat or thin, or in some other condition,” speaks out of ignorance. For the condition of that second creation is not comparable to the condition of this present creation, such that one could say that the change concerns the attributes. There is no transformation there, no emptying or filling, and no fatness or thinness. This is especially true of the people of Paradise when they enter it: they will enter in the form of their father Adam, each sixty cubits tall, as is established in the two Sahīh collections and elsewhere. It is also reported that each will be seven cubits wide. They will neither urinate nor defecate, neither spit nor blow their noses.

Nor is that constitution composed of opposing humours whose separation from one another is inevitable, as in this present constitution. Neither their food nor their drink is produced through the transformation of earth, water, and air, as their foods are in this present creation. For this reason, Allah preserved the food and drink of the man who passed by a town for a hundred years without their changing. Through this, He, glorified is He, demonstrated His power to us. Thus, if food can endure in this realm of generation and corruption—food that