either knowledge of the complete cause does not entail knowledge of the effect, or else He does not have complete knowledge of the complete cause.

They concede the truth of both premises. How, then, can someone concede these two premises, upon which certain demonstration rests, yet dispute the conclusion that necessarily follows from them?! Is this anything but ignorance of what syllogistic demonstration entails in this matter—the very demonstration whose matter and form they constantly expound?!

[The fourth respect]

They say that all temporally originated events depend upon the movement of the celestial soul.

They also say that the celestial soul knows the particulars of the celestial sphere’s movements.

Indeed, Ibn Sīnā and his followers claimed that it knows all temporally originated events because it knows their causes: their cause is celestial motion, and the celestial soul knows this motion, so it knows the effects resulting from it.

They claimed that this soul is the Preserved Tablet of which the prophets spoke, and that the unveilings experienced by prophets and others, whether asleep or awake, result from their souls’ contact with this celestial soul.

Abū Hāmid expressed this view in agreement with them in a number of his books. A group of Sufis followed him in this and began claiming to draw from the Preserved Tablet.

Some of them understand what these people mean by the Preserved Tablet, while others do not. Such claims occur in the writings of a number of later Sufis who followed Abū Hāmid and the philosophers.

Yet celestial motion is not the complete cause of temporally originated events. Rather, such forms as emanate from the active intellect do so when their recipients become suitably disposed, in accordance with celestial motion.

Are these people’s statements concerning the Lord’s knowledge and the knowledge of the celestial soul, which they claim is the Preserved Tablet, not among the most