 When the theologians discussed the Return, they tried to prove the accuracy of the Koranic depictions of the Day of Resurrection, hell, and paradise, mainly by appealing to the authority of God’s word. They had little to say about the actual nature of the soul, the structure of the cosmos, or the ontological status of the posthumous realms. In contrast, both philosophers and Sufis were intensely interested in these issues, as well as in the complementary question of the Origin (mabda’). Origin and Return became major themes in both schools of thought, but, in contrast to the philosophers, Sufis highlighted the exemplary role of Muhammad. Thus, for example, they drew a favorite image from a Koranic verse related to the Prophet’s “night journey” (isrâ’, also called the mi‘râj or “ladder”), when he was taken up through and beyond the heavens to encounter God: “He was two-bows’-length away, or closer” (53:9). In Arabic the word qaws or bow, like Latin arcus, also means the arc of a circle, so the two bows can be understood as two arcs. These came to be called “the descending arc” (al-qaws al-nuzûlî), that is, the path of increasing delimitation and darkness that leads away from the Origin, and “the ascending arc” (al-qaws al-su‘ûdî), the ever-increasing disengagement (tajarrud) and luminosity of the soul on the path of the Return.