Al-hayyiz denotes the appurtenances adjoining a house, and every distinct area is a hayyiz. Its root originally contains the letter wāw (w). Hayz is a shortened pronunciation of hayyiz, just as hayn is of hayyin (‘easy’), and layn of layyin (‘soft’). Its plural is ahyāz. Al-hawzah means an area. Inhāza ‘anhu means ‘he turned aside from it.’ When people are said to have inhāzū, they have left their position for another. Of one’s allies, one says that they ‘withdrew from the enemy’ or ‘turned aside’; of enemies, that they ‘were routed’ and ‘turned their backs in flight.’ When two parties in battle are said to have tahāwazā, each has withdrawn from the other.”
These statements by the lexicographers concerning this word and its root imply that tahayyuz, inhiyāz, tahawwuz, and similar expressions involve moving from one location to another. This is narrower than merely being contained by something that exists. Thus, in the meaning of hawz, they take into account movement from one quarter to another. Hence they say, “Huztu al-māl” (I gathered the wealth into my possession) and “Huztu al-ibil” (I drove the camels together). This involves moving them from one quarter to another. They therefore do not call something fixed in its position—such as a mountain, the sun, or the moon—mutahayyiz, “occupying space.”
A broader sense is to understand “occupying space” as being surrounded by an actually existing spatial region. Anything surrounded by something else would then be described as occupying space. On this understanding, whatever lies between heaven and earth occupies space. Indeed, everything in the universe occupies space except the universe’s surface, which nothing surrounds: that does not occupy space. Likewise, the universe as a whole does not occupy space in this sense, since it is not within another universe surrounding it.
The speculative theologians, however, intend something broader by “occupying space.” For them, a spatial region is broader than a place: the entire universe is in a spatial region, but it is not in a place.