their arguments, and shown that a definition is intended only to distinguish the thing defined from everything else. This is achieved through distinctive properties coextensive with the thing defined, without needing to mention general attributes. Indeed, they disallowed including in a definition attributes shared with other things; most of them even rejected composite definitions, as explained at length elsewhere. The speculative theologians of various groups have written on this subject, including Abū Hāshim and other Muʿtazilites, Ibn al-Nawbakht and other Shiʿites, and Judge Abū Bakr and others who affirm the divine attributes.

As for Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī, although he agreed with the philosophers on the validity of their logical principles, he demonstrated the unsoundness of their theological doctrines in his book Tahāfut al-Falāsifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers) and other works, even while judging them by their own logical standards. In accepting those principles, he departed from the leading speculative thinkers, who were more thoroughly versed in rigorous reasoning about theology and related matters than the logicians. Those who followed his approach adopted his position, including al-Rāzī and those of his persuasion, and Abū Muhammad ibn al-Baghdādī, the associate of Ibn al-Muthannā, and those of his persuasion. He even demonstrated that, according to their own logical principles, they had no argument for denying corporeality, much less for denying attributes altogether. Yet at other times one may find statements in Abū Hāmid’s writings in which he agrees with them. And because of this