its wording, if authentic, would constitute evidence against them. For it reads: “When Allah Most High first created the intellect, He said to it”—or, according to another version, “When Allah created the intellect, He said to it.” The report thus means that He addressed it at the very beginning of its creation, not that it was the first of all created things. The word awwal (“first”) is in the accusative as an adverb of time, corresponding to lammā (“when”) in the other wording.

The report continues: “I have created nothing more honoured in My sight than you.” This implies that He had created other things before it. He then said: “Through you I take, and through you I give. Yours is the reward, and upon you is the punishment.” Thus, He mentioned four kinds of accidents, whereas they maintain that all the substances of the upper and lower worlds emanated from that intellect. How far apart these two accounts are!

Their error arises because the word “intellect” in Muslim usage does not mean what it means in the usage of these Greeks. In Muslim usage, ʿaql (“reasoning”) is the verbal noun of ʿaqala, yaʿqilu (“to reason”), as in the Quran:

“And they will say, ‘If only we had listened or reasoned, we would not be among the companions of the Blaze.’”

“Indeed, in that are signs for people who reason.”

“Have they not travelled through the land, so that they may have hearts with which to reason, or ears with which to hear?”

“Intellect” also denotes the innate faculty Allah Most High has placed in human beings by which they reason. For those people, however, the intellect is a self-subsisting substance, like a being endowed with intellect. This does not accord with the language of the messengers and the Quran.

As Abū Hāmid relates, their “realm of creation” is the realm of bodies, while he calls the intellect and souls the “realm of command.” The intellect may also be called the realm of jabarūt (supreme power), souls the realm of malakūt (dominion), and bodies