and His knowledge exist together, neither preceding the other. Knowledge depends on life as a condition. Likewise, the essence and its inseparable attributes do not exist one before the other; rather, they are mutually concomitant, and neither exists without the other.

A condition may precede that which depends on it, as with accidents, which exist only in a substrate: the substrate may exist before the accidents do. Likewise, Allah’s acts that occur in time depend on the existence of His essence, and His essence precedes them.

As for the account given by certain philosophers and speculative theologians in discussing whether the world has a beginning and other questions: they divide precedence into precedence by essence and causality—the first may be called precedence by causality, and the second precedence by essence—as exemplified by a cause preceding its effect; and precedence by nature, as exemplified by one preceding two. They distinguish between the two by saying that, in the first, what precedes is the agent producing what follows, whereas in the second it is a condition for it.

They illustrate the first with the precedence of the movement of the hand over the movement of the ring and sleeve. You say, “My hand moved, so the ring on it moved.” Both movements occur at the same time, although the first is known to precede the second. Precedence is also divided into precedence in time and precedence in order, whether perceptible to the senses or apprehended by the intellect.

A group, including al-Shahrastānī, al-Rāzī, and their followers, added another kind of precedence, in respect of existence as such, and classified the precedence of some parts of time over others