All praise is due to Allah, and may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon the Messenger of Allah. To proceed:
What is authentically established from the Prophet ﷺ is that the angels were created from light, without specifying the nature or description of that light. As for the report attributed to Abdullah ibn Amr (may Allah be pleased with him and his father), stating that the angels were created “from the light of the arms and the chest,” it is a mawquf report, meaning that it stops at Abdullah ibn Amr and was not attributed by him to the Prophet ﷺ. A number of scholars held that it may have been taken from the reports of the People of the Book. Therefore, it cannot be relied upon to establish this particular detail regarding the creation of the angels.
Muslim narrated from Aishah (may Allah be pleased with her) that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:
“The angels were created from light, the jinn were created from a smokeless flame of fire, and Adam was created from that which has been described to you.”
[Reported by Muslim]
This is an authentic and explicit hadith establishing that the angels were created from light.
However, the Prophet ﷺ did not specify in this hadith the type or source of that light. Therefore, we stop at what has been authentically established:
The angels were created from light.
It has been narrated from Abdullah ibn Amr (may Allah be pleased with him and his father) that he said:
“Allah, the Mighty and Majestic, created the angels from the light of the arms and the chest.”
It was narrated by Abdullah, the son of Imam Ahmad, in As-Sunnah, and by others.
The narrators in its chain leading to Abdullah ibn Amr are trustworthy. However, the issue is not with that; rather, the issue is that the report is mawquf upon Abdullah ibn Amr, meaning that it is his statement, and he did not say: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said.”
This raises the question: Can it be given the ruling of a marfu‘ hadith—one attributed to the Prophet ﷺ—because it concerns a matter of the unseen?
Scholars of hadith and Islamic legal theory have stated that when a Companion reports something concerning the unseen in which there is no room for personal opinion or independent reasoning, his statement may be given the ruling of a marfu‘ report, because ordinarily he could not have known such a matter on his own.
However, this is subject to certain conditions. One of the most important is that the Companion should not be known for consulting and narrating reports from the People of the Book.
Shaykh Muhammad al-Amin al-Shinqiti (may Allah have mercy on him) summarized this principle by explaining that a Companion’s statement concerning something in which there is no room for personal opinion is treated as marfu‘ provided that the Companion was not known to take reports from Isra’iliyyat.
This point has a direct bearing on the report of Abdullah ibn Amr (may Allah be pleased with him and his father).
Abdullah ibn Amr (may Allah be pleased with him and his father) was known to have had access to some reports of the People of the Book and to narrate some of them.
Al-Dhahabi (may Allah have mercy on him) mentioned that he narrated from a number of the Companions as well as from the People of the Book, and that he “devoted himself to examining their books and took great interest in that.”
Therefore, it cannot be stated with certainty that every report concerning the unseen that is mawquf upon him was received from the Prophet ﷺ, since some of it may have come from what he encountered in the books of the People of the Book.
This possibility is particularly relevant to reports concerning the beginning of creation and its details.
The Prophet ﷺ permitted narrating from the Children of Israel, but this does not mean that everything narrated from them should be believed.
The Prophet ﷺ said:
“Do not believe the People of the Book, nor disbelieve them.”
[Reported by al-Bukhari]
Accordingly, scholars divided the reports of the Children of Israel into three categories:
Therefore, the mere presence of a report in some of the books of the People of the Book does not make it part of Islamic creed.
Al-Bayhaqi (may Allah have mercy on him) pointed to this possibility when commenting on the report. He stated that Abdullah ibn Amr used to consult the books of earlier peoples, so anything he narrated without attributing it to the Prophet ﷺ may have been something he found in those books.
Shaykh al-Albani (may Allah have mercy on him) went further and regarded the report:
“Allah created the angels from the light of the arms and the chest”
as one of the Isra’iliyyat reports that cannot be relied upon in this matter, because it has not been authentically established from the Prophet ﷺ.
Shaykh Abd al-Rahman al-Barrak also rejected this report.
We affirm what is stated in the authentic hadith:
“The angels were created from light.”
As for the questions: What exactly was this light? From which light were the angels created? What was its nature?
We do not go beyond the authentic text concerning these matters.
The world of the angels belongs to the unseen, and its details cannot be established through possibilities or reports that have not been authentically transmitted from the Prophet ﷺ.
It is authentically established in Sahih Muslim that the angels were created from light, and this is what we can affirm with certainty.
As for the statement of Abdullah ibn Amr (may Allah be pleased with him and his father):
“Allah created the angels from the light of the arms and the chest,”
it is a mawquf report attributed to him and has not been authentically established as a marfu‘ report from the Prophet ﷺ.
Since Abdullah ibn Amr was known to have consulted some reports of the People of the Book, a number of scholars held that this report may be from the Isra’iliyyat. Therefore, it cannot be relied upon to establish the manner or source of the light from which the angels were created.
And Allah knows best.