and similar names of Allah relating to place. For He—glory be to Him—is self-subsisting and distinct in His reality. He is intrinsically Great and Magnificent, whether anything else exists or not. Yet the intellect posits alongside Him endless empty spatial expanses. These are mental suppositions with no external existence according to most rational people, although some claim that they actually exist. This is how place is conceived.

This separateness and distinctness, and His being such that He can be pointed to, belong to Him whether anything else exists or not. Then, when something else exists, He is also distinct and separate from it. His separateness thus follows from His existence: He exists only with His own reality, by which He is distinct from everything else. He is the Magnificent, the Great. Nor can He be necessarily existent unless this separateness necessarily belongs to Him, since He alone possesses His particular reality, which entails His separateness from everything else. He is the Self-Sufficient Master, who cannot be subject to division, and He is the Great, the Magnificent.

Just as His existence through Himself entails His beginninglessness, it also entails His greatness and separateness, which surpass all greatness and separateness. It also entails His being One, the Self-Sufficient Master: nothing comes forth from Him such that He would be a father, nor does He come forth from anything such that He would be offspring, for His reality is distinct from everything.

For just as His necessary existence through Himself precludes His nonexistence—so that He cannot be originated, existing after not having existed, since He would then depend on another and would not exist through Himself—it also precludes His attachment to another and His involvement with it in such a way that He would need to touch it, intermingle with it, or the like