Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn said:

“Mahabbah is the same as hubb: love. One may say either ahabbahu or habbahu (‘he loved him’), using either hubb or mahabbah as the verbal noun. There is no difference; both are verbal nouns.”

Ibn al-Murahhal said:

“And I say that if they are verbal nouns, neither has positive existence.”

Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn said to him:

“Once a discussion reaches self-evident premises, it has reached its conclusion and is complete. That love and hatred have positive existence is self-evident. Everyone knows that when a living being is devoid of love, this absence is a negative attribute. When he becomes loving, the subject has changed and acquired a positive attribute beyond what he possessed before love came to subsist in him. Anyone who experiences this within himself perceives it just as he perceives his desire and aversion, his contentment and anger, his pleasure and pain.

“The proof is that you say: ‘He loved; he loves; love.’ The contradictory of ‘he loved’ is ‘he did not love.’ ‘He did not love’ expresses a negative attribute, and the contradictory of nonexistence is positive existence.”

Ibn al-Murahhal said:

“This is refuted by the expressions ‘it was impossible’ and ‘it is impossible.’ The contradictory of impossibility is ‘no impossibility,’ yet impossibility is a negative attribute.”

Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn said:

“Impossibility is a matter of mental conception. What is impossible has no external existence in which an attribute could subsist. It is known only to the intellect.