that His essence produces those intelligible forms and that His essence also receives them. Thus, the simple entity here is both an agent and a recipient.

The second is their well-known position that Allah has no attributes other than negations and relations. Here, however, he acknowledged that Allah has a multiplicity of relational and non-relational concomitants, and a multiplicity of negations. He thus affirmed non-relational positive attributes for Allah. How could he fail to recognize this? He holds that Allah knows quiddities, and that knowledge of things consists in a form being present in the knower. Such a form is not merely relational, for his position is that the form present in the intellect corresponds to the quiddity of the object apprehended. How, then, can that which corresponds to substances, quantities, and qualities in the entirety of their quiddities be merely relational?

It is therefore clear that the philosophers cannot claim that Allah is free of real attributes.”

[Al-Āmidī’s remarks]

Likewise, al-Āmidī said:

“Know that any philosopher who affirms knowledge for the Necessary Existent and explains knowledge as the imprinting of the form of the known object upon the soul has thereby affirmed a positive attribute for the Necessary Existent additional to His essence, and has contradicted his own principle of denying positive attributes additional to the essence of the Necessary Existent