The story of the cosmos' creation is a chain of manifestations reaching from a single substance to endless colour. Through Samāʾ and Samāwāt, central concepts of Qur'anic cosmology, we will draw a layered map of existence: from Wāḥidiyya to Aḥadiyya, from union to distinction, from Light toward density.
Light — the Single, Homogeneous Source
At the beginning there is a oneness called Light: a substance interfused and without determination — unfixed by concepts, without drawn boundaries.
Lā taʿayyun is the highest degree of being, where the Divine Essence stands without appearing in any name, attribute or manifestation. This degree is sometimes called Aḥadiyya.
اَللّٰهُ نُورُ السَّمٰوَاتِ وَالْاَرْضِ مَثَلُ نُورِهِ كَمِشْكٰوةٍ فِيهَا مِصْبَاحٌ اَلْمِصْبَاحُ فِي زُجَاجَةٍ اَلزُّجَاجَةُ كَاَنَّهَا كَوْكَبٌ دُرِّيٌّ يُوقَدُ مِنْ شَجَرَةٍ مُبَارَكَةٍ زَيْتُونَةٍ لَا شَرْقِيَّةٍ وَلَا غَرْبِيَّةٍ يَكَادُ زَيْتُهَا يُضِٓيءُ وَلَوْ لَمْ تَمْسَسْهُ نَارٌ نُورٌ عَلٰى نُورٍ يَهْدِي اللّٰهُ لِنُورِهِ مَنْ يَشٓاءُ وَيَضْرِبُ اللّٰهُ الْاَمْثَالَ لِلنَّاسِ وَاللّٰهُ بِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ عَلِيمٌ
“God is the Light of the heavens and the earth.” — Al-Nūr 24:35
This highest presence is the degree at which absolute being subsists without relativity, relation, attribute or multiplicity. No name, act or relation has yet appeared. Nursî and the great Sufis call this the unseen of the unseen or the hidden treasure. Here even being has not taken a name, for there is no knowing and no determining.
From Samāʾ to Samāwāt — Quantisation
From this homogeneous Light the equally homogeneous al-Samāʾ is created; not yet subject to distinction, it is in union. Yet this Light is quantised within creation — divided into discrete forms:
هُوَ الَّذِي خَلَقَ لَكُمْ مَا فِي الْاَرْضِ جَمِيعاً ثُمَّ اسْتَوٰٓى اِلَى السَّمٓاءِ فَسَوّٰيهُنَّ سَبْعَ سَمٰوَاتٍ وَهُوَ بِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ عَلِيمٌ۟
“Then He turned to the heaven and fashioned it into seven heavens.” — Al-Baqara 2:29
وَهُوَ الَّذِي خَلَقَ السَّمٰوَاتِ وَالْاَرْضَ فِي سِتَّةِ اَيَّامٍ وَكَانَ عَرْشُهُ عَلَى الْمٓاءِ لِيَبْلُوَكُمْ اَيُّكُمْ اَحْسَنُ عَمَلاً وَلَئِنْ قُلْتَ اِنَّكُمْ مَبْعُوثُونَ مِنْ بَعْدِ الْمَوْتِ لَيَقُولَنَّ الَّذِينَ كَفَرٓوا اِنْ هٰذٓا اِلَّا سِحْرٌ مُبِينٌ
“He created the heavens and the earth in six days, and His Throne was upon the water…” — Hūd 11:7
The heaven is a sea whose waves have come to rest. — Nursî
This quantisation is the passage from indetermination to determination, and likewise from Aḥadiyya to Wāḥidiyya. The Light has now taken plurality under the name Samāwāt.
Samāwāt — Distinction and the Layered Structure
Samāwāt names a cosmic and metaphysical plurality beyond physical layers. Each heaven is earth relative to the layer above and heaven relative to the layer below.
اَللّٰهُ الَّذِي خَلَقَ سَبْعَ سَمٰوَاتٍ وَمِنَ الْاَرْضِ مِثْلَهُنَّ يَتَنَزَّلُ الْاَمْرُ بَيْنَهُنَّ لِتَعْلَمٓوا اَنَّ اللّٰهَ عَلٰى كُلِّ شَيْءٍ قَدِيرٌ وَاَنَّ اللّٰهَ قَدْ اَحَاطَ بِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ عِلْماً
“God created seven heavens, and of the earth their like.” — Al-Ṭalāq 65:12
This is an ontological, not merely spatial, plurality. Each heaven carries a command, a divine name, a wisdom. In his treatise on the Ascension, Nursî states the cosmos was created layer upon layer, and that in each heaven one name is sovereign, the others subordinate to it.
The Angels — Branches of the Tree of Being
The angels are the intermediary beings created from light within this quantised, discrete and functional cosmos.
God conveyed to each heaven a particular command, and had it carried out through the angels — a reading attributed to Ibn ʿArabī's cosmology in al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya.
This shows that in each celestial layer a divine name manifests as agent. The angels are the cosmic mediators who organise the differentiation of union into distinction.
The Station of “We” — the Divine Pronouns
اِذْ قَالَ رَبُّكَ لِلْمَلٰٓئِكَةِ اِنِّي خَالِقٌ بَشَراً مِنْ طِينٍ
Addressed to the angels — in the pronoun I.
وَلَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا الْاِنْسَانَ مِنْ سُلَالَةٍ مِنْ طِينٍ
Addressed to humankind — in the pronoun We.
Union and Distinction — the Cosmic Dialectic
Conclusion — From Light to the Heavens
The process reaching “from heaven to the heavens” is a metaphysics of manifestation. The Light is united as Heaven, then differentiated as the Heavens. Each being attains singularity by determination — yet all are in essence the place of manifestation of one and the same Light.
This eternal journey from Light to the Heavens, from unity to multiplicity, from the infinite to the countable — this ascension — is the deep memory of an existence continuing within us at every moment.