means the sense given by the attribute-affirming theologians who say that these are attributes of meaning—as held by al-Ash‘arī, al-Qalānisī, groups among the Karrāmiyyah and others, and also by groups among the Hanbalīs and others—or means that they are entities subsisting in themselves.

If he means the former, that is not the position he attributed to the Hanbalīs, for he said:

“As for the Hanbalīs who accept parts and portions, they too acknowledge that His essence differs from all other essences.”

He then goes on to say:

“Moreover, the mainstay of the Hanbalī position is that whenever they appeal to a verse or report whose apparent meaning suggests bodily parts or limbs, they explicitly state: ‘We affirm this meaning for Allah in a manner different from that in which it is affirmed of created beings.’ Thus, they affirm for Allah a face unlike the faces of created beings, and a hand unlike their hands. It is well known that the hand and face, in the sense they have described, cannot be conceived or imagined.”

Given that this is what he says, it is clear that the position he has reported is that of those who affirm these attributes in the sense that he himself calls “parts and portions.” These would therefore be attributes subsisting in themselves, just as they subsist in themselves in the observable realm, whereas knowledge and power subsist in something other than themselves, both in the unseen and in the observable realm. Yet these attributes do not admit of division or separation, just as His knowledge and power cannot cease to belong to His essence, even though a created being can be separated from that which