valid. Abū al-Barakāt challenged what Ibn Sīnā had stated, showing the invalidity of the distinction between a constitutive essential attribute and an inseparable accidental attribute.

Since Abū al-Barakāt examined what the leading Peripatetics had said, neither blindly following them nor taking their side as others such as Ibn Sīnā did, he pointed out that neither the validity nor the usefulness of what Aristotle and his followers had stated on this matter had been established.

Others besides Abū al-Barakāt demonstrated its invalidity and inconsistency and wrote works refuting the logicians, as did Abū Hāshim, Ibn al-Nawbakhtī, Judge Abū Bakr ibn al-Tayyib, and others.

These Kullābīs, who distinguish between essential and qualitative attributes, reason more soundly than these logicians. They reject the distinction proposed by the logicians, so their own distinction does not amount to that of the logicians. Rather, it rests on their own assertion that essential attributes are those whose absence cannot be conceived while conceiving the essence, whereas qualitative attributes are those whose absence can be conceived while conceiving the essence, such as life, knowledge, and power. For the essence can be conceived while these attributes are denied, but it cannot be conceived while its being self-subsisting and existent is denied. Likewise, according to most of them, it cannot be conceived while its being eternal without beginning is denied.

Ibn Kullāb and al-Ashʿarī, in one of the latter’s two positions, treated beginninglessness like knowledge and power. As for everlastingness, there is disagreement between al-Ashʿarī and those who followed him, such as Abū ʿAlī ibn