within them anything comparable to what the children of Shem possessed—prophets such as Hud, Salih, and the like—nor what arose among the offspring of Abraham al-Khalīl (the Close Friend), to whom Allah promised that He would place prophethood and the Scripture in his lineage so that knowledge of prophethood might be widely known among them. From the time of that Close Friend onward, Allah—exalted is He—did, in fact, establish prophethood and the Scripture among his descendants, as He declares in the Quran; yet the Greeks were neither of that lineage nor acquainted with the condition of Abraham’s progeny. Even so, a number of later writers—among them Muhammad b. Yusuf al-ʿĀmirī and Ṣāʿid b. Ṣāʿid al-Andalusī—have recorded that the principal pillars of their philosophical tradition are five