the master Abū Bakr in his book al-Intisār that one of our companions said that Allah, glorified and exalted is He, possesses a quiddity. He then explained this as His attributes that distinguish Him from created beings: all-encompassing knowledge, perfect power, effectual will, and His transcendence of the marks of createdness, among other things.

Some of the Karrāmiyya affirm modality and quiddity for Allah. If by quiddity they mean what the judge and the master indicated—though I do not think this is what they intend—then the disagreement between us and them would be merely terminological. We say that quiddity entails a genus, while modality entails quantity and shape. Allah is exalted above all that, for He is neither a species belonging to a genus nor a genus comprising species. Rather, He is the One, the Self-Sufficient.