The scholar Abū al-Maʿālī said: “Our scholars say that the one is a thing that is not divided, or cannot be divided.”

Judge Abū Bakr said: “If one said, ‘The one is a thing,’ that would suffice, and the definition would involve no composition. Saying ‘a thing that is not divided’ involves a kind of composition.”

The scholar Abū al-Maʿālī said that the judge could be told: “Composition in definitions consists in the definer introducing an additional description that could be dispensed with; yet