and the like.

But when speculative thinkers began discussing this subject, they said that one describes it as dhāt ʿilm wa-qudra (“possessing knowledge and power”). They then detached this word from the genitive construction and made it definite, saying “al-dhāt” (“the essence”). This is a later coinage, not an expression belonging to pristine Arabic. For this reason, a group of scholars, including Abū al-Fath ibn Burhān, Ibn al-Dahhān, and others, objected to it, saying, “This word is not Arabic.” Others, including al-Qādī, Ibn ʿAqīl, and others, rebutted them.

(The decisive answer is that it does not belong to pristine Arabic, but is a later coinage, like the terms al-mawjūd (“the existent”), al-māhiyya (“quiddity”), al-kayfiyya (“modality”), and the like. This word therefore implies the existence of attributes to which dhāt is joined in a genitive construction: one says “possessing knowledge,” “possessing power,” and “possessing speech.” The underlying meaning is likewise so: nothing self-subsisting can exist in external reality without any positive attribute whatsoever. Indeed, positing such a thing in external reality is like positing an accident that subsists in itself rather than in something else. Thus, positing a self-subsisting accident that has no attribute is like positing an attribute that does not subsist in something else; both are impossible. Whatever subsists in itself must have an attribute, and whatever is an attribute must have something self-subsisting that is characterized by it.

For this reason, the disputants concede that they know of nothing self-subsisting that has no attribute, whether they call it a substance, a body, or something else. They say: “The existence of a substance stripped of all