they then shifted the debate to Allah’s inherent attributes—His life, knowledge, power and the like—asking whether these attributes are dhātiyyah (essential) or ʿaraḍiyyah (accidental).

If it is said: “They are dhātiyyah,” it would follow that His essence is preceded by constituent parts from which He is composed. But if they are necessary ʿaraḍiyyah, it would follow that He must both receive and effect them, for being fāʿil (active) is not the same as being qābil (receptive). Thus two aspects would have to exist within Him, which is precisely the kind of composition they claimed to repudiate. In either case composition is entailed—and this is composition out of essentials.

The falsity of this reasoning has been shown from many angles, among them the following:

1. The intelligible notion of composition is that of animals, plants, and minerals, which are put together from their parts and mixtures, and likewise the composition of buildings, garments, foods, and drinks from their respective components and blends.

2. As for saying that bodies are composed of jawāhir mufrada (indivisible atoms) or of mādda and ṣūra (matter and form), this is a point over which the majority of thinkers have disagreed. The same holds for the claim that a thing—whether necessarily existent or merely possible—is composed of wujūd (existence) and māhiyya (quiddity); this too is disputed by most rational people.

3. So also is the claim that something is composed of its shared and distinguishing essential attributes, which they term the jins (genus) and the faṣl (differentia).