Lit. ‘light,’ a term used for God, defined as light in the Qur’an in the so-called ‘verse of light’ (āyat al-nūr) Q. 24:35: ‘God is the light of the heavens and the earth…’). In Shi‘ism, the term is taken to mean the light that is believed to have emanated through Adam, via Muhammad into the family of ʿAlī and his successors, the Imams.
