For this reason he said:

“Since Pharaoh held the position of authority, being the ruler of his time and the caliph by the sword—even if he was unjust according to the conventions of religious law—he therefore said:

‘I am your lord, the Most High.’

“That is: even if all are lords in some respect, I am the highest among them by virtue of the outward authority over you that I have been given. When the sorcerers recognized the truth of what he said, they did not deny it, but acknowledged it. They said to him:

‘So decree whatever you are to decree. You can only decree for this worldly life.’

“Sovereignty belongs to you. Thus Pharaoh’s statement, ‘I am your lord, the Most High,’ was correct, even if he was identical with the Real.”

He said:

“Among His Most Beautiful Names is the Most High. Above whom, when there is none but Him? And above what, when He is none other than Himself?”

He continued, eventually saying:

“Whoever understands what we have established concerning numbers, and that negating them is identical with affirming them, knows that the Real, declared free of all likeness, is creation, described in terms of likeness. Thus the one who commands—the Creator—is the created, and the created command is the Creator. All this comes from one essence; indeed, it is that one essence.”

He also said:

“Do you not see that the Real manifests Himself through the attributes of creation? All the attributes of the Real truly belong to it, just as the attributes of things brought into existence truly belong to the Creator.”

Statements of this kind abound in his writings. This man follows a progression in his spiritual path similar to that of the heretical Qarmatians. What first appears is the belief of the Mu'tazilites of the Kullābiyyah, who deny the divine attributes known through revelation while affirming the seven or eight attributes. Then comes the belief of the philosophers, who deny the attributes and affirm an abstract necessary existence from which contingent beings emanated.