They affirmed five eternal principles and adopted some of the worst and most corrupt doctrines. Others affirm prophethood while maintaining that the world is eternal, such as Ibn Sīnā and those like him. Yet they place the prophet on the level of a just king, treating prophethood in its entirety as the same kind of unveiling, influence, and imaginative experience that some righteous people attain. They identify “three things” as the prophet’s distinctive qualities: the faculty of sound intuition, which they call the sacred faculty; the faculty of exerting influence upon the world; and the sensory faculty through which he hears and sees intelligible realities represented within his own imagination. Thus, according to them, Allah’s speech consists of the sounds within his soul, and His angels are the forms and lights within their souls. These qualities are attained by most people who practise spiritual discipline and purification; hence, in their view, prophethood can be acquired.

Consequently, all who followed their path—such as al-Suhrawardī, who was put to death, Ibn Sabʿīn al-Maghribī, and others like them—sought prophethood and hoped to be told, “Arise and warn.” One says, “I shall not die until I am told: ‘Arise and warn.’” The other takes up residence in Mecca and makes his way to the Cave of Hirāʾ, seeking revelation to descend upon him there just as it descended upon the one who, like himself, was wrapped and cloaked. Each of these two, and others like them, pursues his aim through various forms of sīmiyā, which is a kind of magic, imagining that the prophets’ miracles were a form of sīmiyā magic.

Those unable to seek or claim prophethood—because they knew the saying of the truthful and trustworthy Prophet:

“There is no prophet after me,”

or for some other reason—such as Ibn ʿArabī and those like him, sought what they considered higher than prophethood. They maintained that the Seal of the Friends of Allah is greater than the Seal of the Prophets, and that a friend of Allah receives directly from Allah without an intermediary