conceiving the question nor in conceiving its proof. They define self-evident knowledge as that which presents itself immediately to a person, even if it results from reflection he is compelled to undertake without any deliberate effort on his part. For a person may be brought involuntarily to the causes of knowledge, or he may choose to acquire them.

This applies to sense perception and other forms of knowledge alike: someone may unexpectedly see or hear something without intending to see or hear it, while another person may seek to see something or listen to it. The former does not fall within the scope of commands and prohibitions; the latter does.

Furthermore, some people say that necessary and self-evident knowledge is shared by rational people generally, and exclude from this category whatever is particular to some of them.

Others call all knowledge that a person cannot but know and that presents itself immediately to him necessary and self-evident, even if it is confined to a particular class of people, such as knowledge particular to the prophets, the friends of Allah, and those endowed with discernment and inspiration.

Accordingly, knowledge attained through Allah’s enabling, guidance, and inspiration, which He places in a person’s heart without inference, is called necessary knowledge by the latter group. Even if Ibn Hazm and others like him do not call it necessary, this is a merely verbal dispute.

Anyone who defines necessary knowledge as knowledge that binds a person’s soul so inescapably that he cannot free himself from it regards all of this as necessary knowledge.

Likewise, many shaykhs possessed of spiritual knowledge say to many practitioners of rational inquiry, “Our knowledge is necessary,” as in the well-known account related by Abū al-Abbās Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Khalaf al-Maqdisī