for this doctrine by groups of Sunni theologians—they nevertheless acknowledge that Allah created these things’ existence, and do not say that their very existence is the very existence of the Real.

The author of al-Fusūs and his followers, however, say:

“Their very existence is the very existence of the Real. Thus, they are distinct through their essences, which are established in nonexistence, but united through the existence of the Real that subsists in them.”

Most of his discourse rests on this, as anyone who carefully considers and understands it will recognize. If Ibn ʿArabī holds individual identities to be established, it follows that every possible thing must exist. This is not the position of the Muʿtazilah, so this is a third distinction.

Those who maintain that a nonexistent thing has an established reality in nonexistence—whether they say that these things’ existence is created by Allah or that it is Allah—say that essences and individual identities are neither made nor created, and that the existence of each thing is something additional to its essence. They may also say that existence is an attribute of the existent thing.

Although this position resembles that of those who maintain the eternity of the world, or the eternity of the world’s matter and its material substrate as distinct from its form, it is not identical to it, even though the two share something in common. For these newly originated forms—animals, plants, and minerals—are not eternal, as all rational people agree; rather, they have come into existence after not existing. Likewise, the attributes and accidents that subsist in the heavenly bodies, and the transformations that occur in the elements, including the movements of the planets, the sun, the moon, and the clouds,