dependent on something else, and is therefore a composite body that bears accidents. For, in their view, the celestial sphere is necessary in itself, and it has these attributes. Their statements and the refutation of them have been discussed at length elsewhere, as have the errors made in reporting their doctrines and the way their followers came to present those doctrines in a more favorable light. Some of them make the First originate motion through a command. This is not their position, however, for in their view the First has no awareness of motion and no will. Rather, they hold that the celestial sphere moves in order to resemble it. Thus, it moves the sphere as an imam moves someone who follows him, or as a beloved moves his lover—not as someone issuing a command moves the person commanded, as Ibn Rushd and others claim.

Others say that, rather, it is an originating and efficient cause of the celestial spheres, as Ibn Sīnā and his followers maintain. This, too, is not their position.

But many of these later thinkers know nothing of the philosophers’ doctrines except what Ibn Sīnā and his followers have stated. This, too, is not their position.

But many of these later thinkers—such as Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī, al-Rāzī, al-Āmidī, and others—know nothing of the philosophers’ doctrines except what Ibn Sīnā has stated. They repeat the arguments Ibn Sīnā presented, as al-Āmidī does here, where he says:

“For a cause or agent to be a cause, prior nonexistence is not required, since the cause’s action upon its effect occurs only while the effect exists.”