is al-musmad (the solid One), who is a single entity, because of the close relationship between the roots s-m-d and s-m-t. Samd means ‘aim,’ and one speaks of ‘drawing attention to the simāt of something,’ meaning its intended sense, because the letters tā and dāl are interchangeable, each being substituted for the other.”

Ibn al-Hassār said: “Al-Samad is the One who cannot be divided. The Quran commentators and lexicographers expressed this indirectly as ‘the One who has no hollow interior.’ This means nothing other than the negation of composition and the complete absence of divisibility. As already noted, composition may arise through the combination of substances, or may be understood in terms of the combination of