As for someone who says that He can only be individually identified through transmitted revelation, he may say that whatever knowledge hearts have acquired of His individual identity has come through transmitted revelation.

People disagree over His being above the world: is this among the attributes that can be known through reason, as most of the early generations and leading scholars held? This was also the position of Ibn Kullāb and Ibn Karrām, and the later of Judge Abū Yaʿlā’s two positions. Or is it among the attributes known only through transmitted revelation, as many of al-Ashʿarī’s followers held? This was the earlier of Judge Abū Yaʿlā’s two positions, also held by a group who agreed with him.

Ibn Abī Mūsā and others like him may hold this view and say, “We came to know this only through transmitted revelation.” They say, “It is only through transmitted revelation that it is known that He is above heaven.” His statement, however, is broader than that.

Their statements are valid if understood as referring to forms of individual identification known only through transmitted revelation, such as the attributes known through scriptural reports. They are also valid if understood to mean that transmitted revelation guides the intellect to that by which individual identification becomes possible, and that without its guidance this would not be known; or that by individual identification he meant knowing the names and attributes expressed in words by which Allah is described; or that he meant that many people—or most of them—acquire no knowledge that individually identifies Him except through transmitted revelation.

Many who maintain that rational inquiry is obligatory and is the first obligation—or that knowledge is the first obligation—nevertheless say that knowledge can only be acquired through revelation, as stated by Abū Faraj al-Maqdisī, his son ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, and Ibn