For theologians, to conceive of God in terms of light has some undeniable advantages, allowing a middle-of-the road position between the two extremes of thinking about God in terms of a purely disembodied, unfathomable, unsensible being, and of crediting Him with a body, possibly even a human(oid) body. This paper first reviews the reasons why God, in early medieval Islam, was never fully theorized in terms of light. It then proceeds to discuss light-related narratives in two major, late-medieval compilations of hadiths about the afterlife, by al-Suyuti (Ash’ari, Egypt, d. 1505) and al-Majlisi (Persia, d. 1699), suggesting that eschatology was the area in which God’s light continued to shine in Islam, and the backdoor through which a theology of light, in the thought of al-Suhrawardi (Syria, d. 1191) and his followers, made a triumphant re-entry into Islamic thought.

对于神学家来说，从光的角度来理解上帝有一些不可否认的优势，这允许在两个极端之间以纯粹的无形，深不可测，不明智的存在来思考上帝，并相信上帝给他以极端的态度介于两者之间。身体，甚至可能是人体。本文首先回顾了为什么在中世纪早期的伊斯兰教中，上帝从未从光的角度完全被理论化的原因。然后，它由al-Suyuti（埃及的Ash'ari，卒于1505年）和al-Majlisi（波斯的卒于1699年）在关于来世的圣训的两个主要的中世纪晚期汇编中讨论了与光有关的叙述，暗示末世论是神的光在伊斯兰教中继续发光的领域，也是al-Suhrawardi（叙利亚，1191年卒）和他的追随者思想中光学的后门，