what you are referring to. But do you have any way around what we know by necessity?”

He said: “What do you mean by this statement, and what are you alluding to?”

I said: “No one who knows Allah has ever said, ‘O my Lord!’ without an inward impulse arising before his tongue even moves, directing itself upward without turning right or left. Do you have any way around this irresistible impulse? Explain it to us so that we may rid ourselves of this upward orientation.”

I wept, and the people wept. He struck the couch with his sleeve, cried out in bewilderment, tore what he was wearing and cast it off. The mosque erupted in uproar. He abandoned the matter and gave me no answer except: “My dear friend—bewilderment! Dismay, dismay!”

Afterward, I heard his companions say: We heard him say, “Al-Hamdānī has bewildered me.”

That is why the jurist “Abū al-Fath Muhammad ibn Alī al-Tabarī” related this account about him, saying: I went in to see the imam and jurist “Abū al-Maālī al-Juwaynī” to visit him