limits and before letters.’” He said: “This is an explicit statement by al-Shiblī, may Allah be pleased with him, that the Eternal has no limit to His essence and no letters in His speech.”

I say: This statement requires qualification in several respects.

First, the one who said that He, exalted is He, was known before limits and before letters did not mean that created beings knew Him before that, for before creation there were no created beings to know Him. Rather, he meant that He is known to have existed before limits and before letters. Thus, the adverbial expression “before” relates to the pronoun implicit in “known,” not to the act of knowing itself—unless, of course, he meant that He knew Himself before limits and before letters, in which case He is both the knower and the known. This is a sound meaning that the wording can bear. The point is that He existed before these things.

It is well known that the definite article indicates something specified. Thus, in saying that He existed before limits and before letters, he meant only the limits known to us and the letters known to us: those things before which He existed, namely, the limits and letters belonging to created beings. There is no doubt that Allah existed before the limits of created beings and before His servants’ voices and ink. But this wording does not explicitly entail that Allah has not spoken with letters, or that He has no reality in His essence by which He is distinguished from His creatures. Had he intended that, he would have said, “The One who is exalted above limits and letters,” rather than “before limits and letters.” For whatever was