that exist in the mind, not in external reality, just as Plato’s followers posited “abstract Platonic Forms.” They posited matter abstracted from form, and abstract duration and void. Their most accomplished thinkers acknowledged that these exist only in the mind, not in external reality.

When their later followers, such as Ibn Sīnā, sought to establish prophethood on their corrupt principles, they claimed that prophethood has three distinctive characteristics, and that whoever possesses them is a prophet.

The first is that he possesses an intellectual faculty, which they call the “sacred faculty,” through which he acquires knowledge without instruction.

The second is that he possesses an imaginative faculty that presents to him in images what he apprehends intellectually within himself. Thus, he sees forms within himself or hears sounds within himself, just as a sleeper sees and hears, although these have no external existence. They claimed that those forms are Allah’s angels and those sounds are the speech of Allah Most High.

The third is that he possesses an active faculty through which he influences the matter of the world. They reduced the miracles of the prophets, the extraordinary gifts bestowed upon Allah’s righteous servants, and the extraordinary feats of sorcerers to powers of the soul. Thus, they acknowledged those that accorded with their principles, such as turning a staff into a serpent, but not the splitting of the moon and the like, for they deny that such things occurred.