They invoke this when denying Allah’s exaltedness above the Throne and advancing similar falsehoods.

The point here is that their early representatives did not mention premises received from the prophets, whereas their later representatives structured it on that basis. They did so either through the approach of the Sabians who mingled pure monotheism with Sabianism, such as Ibn Sīnā and others like him, or through the approach of the speculative theologians who thought well of what the logicians had presented and argued that it could establish knowledge of what the prophetic revelations entail.

As for the former, he classified the prophets’ knowledge as intuitive knowledge, owing to the exceptional clarity and purity of those holy souls, and held that souls’ intuitive powers have no fixed limit.

The world must have an order established by someone wise. Thus, the souls granted support are endowed with the power to know through intuition what others do not know. Speech and angels appear to them inwardly, so that they hear and see within themselves what others do not hear. They also possess a practical power, through which the prime matter of the world obeys them, that others do not possess. These extraordinary capacities in the faculties of knowledge, hearing and sight, and in practical power and ability, constitute prophethood in their view.

Yet it is well known that intuition rests on analogical reasoning, as explained previously. As for what a person hears and sees within himself, it is of the same kind as dreams. Experiences of this kind occur to many ordinary people and unbelievers, let alone Allah’s allies and prophets. How, then, can this be regarded as the utmost extent of prophethood? Even if what they attribute to the prophets is more perfect and nobler, it is like one king being more powerful than another.

For this reason, they came to say that prophethood can be acquired, and they did not affirm the descent of