the Maqālāt of Abu ‘Isa al-Warraq, al-Nawbakhti, Abu al-Hasan al-Ash‘ari, Abu al-Qasim al-Ka‘bi, Abu al-Fath al-Shahrastani, Abu Muhammad Ibn Hazm, and others. The same discussion is found in the books of dialectical debate, for when the Jahmiyyah and the Mu‘tazilah—the leading exponents of this line of argument—maintained that knowledge of the world’s origination is established only through the origination of