whereas the prophet receives through the intermediary of an angel. This was founded on a principle held by the philosophers he followed. According to them, angels are the luminous, imaginary forms that take shape within the soul of a prophet or a friend of Allah. Thus, “angels,” in their view, are what he imagines within himself. The “prophet,” according to them, receives through this act of imagining, whereas the “friend of Allah” receives intellectual knowledge without it. There is no doubt that someone who receives knowledge without imagining is more perfect than someone who receives it through imagining.

Having adopted these would-be philosophers’ conception of prophethood, they began to say that friendship with Allah is greater than prophethood, just as many philosophers say that the philosopher is greater than the prophet. This is the position of al-Fārābī, Mubashshir ibn Fātik, and others. They say that prophethood is the highest attainment in the eyes of the masses, but not in those of the elite. They also say that the prophet’s distinctive quality is his skill in evoking images and forming them in his own imagination.

Then came those who cast philosophy in the mould of friendship with Allah, calling the practitioner of philosophy a friend of Allah. They took the philosophers’ ideas and presented them as spiritual unveiling and being addressed by Allah. They said that the friend of Allah is greater than the prophet because he receives abstract meanings from Allah without the intermediary of imagining anything within himself, whereas the prophet receives them through the forms and sounds he imagines within himself.

This falsehood did not satisfy them: they went so far as to claim that all the prophets and messengers draw their knowledge of Allah from the lamp-niche of the Seal of these friends of Allah—someone who is among the most ignorant of all creation concerning Allah and among those furthest removed from His religion. In their view, knowledge of Allah consists in knowing Him as “absolute existence” pervading all beings, so that the existence of every being is identical with the existence of the Necessary Existent. In reality, this doctrine is that of the naturalist eternalists, who deny that the world has