encompassed all that He has created and knows its nature and condition, without being inside anything He has created.”

This too is a rational analogy employing a fortiori reasoning, through which he established that knowledge is possible without intermingling. He explained that when a servant makes something, such as a house he builds, he knows its dimensions and the number of its rooms without being inside it, because he built it. Is not Allah, who created everything, more deserving of knowing His creatures, their dimensions and their attributes, even if He is not within them, occupying the same space as them? This is one of the rational proofs.

Of these two analogies, the first concerns His encompassing His creation: all creation is in His grasp, and He encompasses them, and His sight encompasses them. The second concerns His knowledge of them, because He is the Creator, as He, glorified is He, says:

“Does He who created not know, when He is the Most Subtle, the All-Aware?” {14}

[al-Mulk 14]

These Jahmiyyah, who deny the divine attributes, frequently combine their denial of His exaltedness and His being above the world with doubt concerning His knowledge. Many of them doubt His knowledge, especially those among them who have embraced philosophy. At times they say that He has no knowledge; at other times they say that He knows only Himself; and at still other times