and the Mu‘tazilah and their followers when they speak of the world’s coming into being. They may also attribute this view to the followers of religious traditions. Yet this meaning is found neither in the Quran nor in any other book of the prophets—neither the Torah nor any other—nor in any established hadith from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Nor is it known from any of the Companions, may Allah be pleased with them all.

[The Third Meaning]

The third meaning was introduced by heretics such as Ibn Sīnā and others like him. They said:

“We say that the world has come into being, meaning that it is the effect of an eternal, beginningless cause that necessitated its existence, so that it has always existed alongside that cause.”

They called this “essential origination,” and the other kind “temporal origination.”

The use of the expression “coming into being” to convey this meaning is unknown among speakers of any language, whether Arabs or others, except among those who invented this meaning for the expression. The claim that the world has come into being only in this sense is not the teaching of any prophet or any of their followers, nor of any great nation or well-known group whose doctrines were widespread among the general public, such that the inhabitants of a city held this view. Only a few obscure groups among the people maintain it.

This view is known only among a group of philosophers affiliated with religious traditions, such as Ibn Sīnā and others like him. They may attribute this view to Aristotle, but what he states in his books is that the world is beginningless. Most philosophers before him disagreed with him and maintained that it had come into being. In his books, he did not establish for the world an agent whose essence necessitates the world’s existence; he established only a cause that the world moves in order to resemble. Then came those who