Likewise, works such as The Niche of Lights and The Books Withheld from the Uninitiated—and all who have adopted this same trajectory, such as the author of al-Biṭāqa, Ibn Ajlā, al-Shudhī, the author of Removing the Two Sandals, Ibn al-ʿArabī al-Ṭāʾī, Ibn Sabʿīn, and others—belong to this current. Many people, moreover, drift back and forth between the camp of the theologians and that of the philosophers; among them are Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, al-Āmidī, and the like.

I have already expanded elsewhere on the ḥadīth, “The first thing Allah created was the intellect,” and on the issues connected to it. I have also examined Ibn Sīnā’s discussion in The Healing regarding the Necessary Existent, together with the statements of Ibn Sabʿīn, Ibn al-ʿArabī, and others. That ḥadīth, however, is fabricated and unfounded according to the specialists in ḥadīth, as Abu Ḥātim al-Bustī, Abū al-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī, and others have affirmed. Yet even its wording is: “The first thing Allah created was the intellect; He said…”