a body. The Lord’s attributes, however, are inseparable from Him and everlasting; they are not of the same kind as the accidents inhering in bodies.

These theologians who affirmed the divine attributes and relied on rational argument differed in many respects from those innovating Sabaeans who denied the attributes. They affirmed attributes for which rational arguments could be advanced, such as the seven attributes: life, knowledge, power, will, hearing, sight and speech. They disagreed over whether hearing, sight and speech are attributes established by reason or attributes known through prophetic reports and revelation. They also differed concerning everlastingness, beginninglessness and perception—that is, the perception of smells, tastes and tangible things.

They likewise differed concerning attributes conveyed through revelation in the Quran, such as the face and the hand. Most, if not all, of their early scholars affirmed these, whereas many of their later scholars did not. As for attributes mentioned only in hadith, most of them did not affirm them. Some then diverted the texts from their meanings because of rational arguments they considered to conflict with them, while others consigned their meaning to Allah. The purpose here is not to detail people’s positions concerning all the other attributes. Rather, the intended subject is

“Allah’s message and His speech,”

which His messengers conveyed. These people thus had a measure in common with the heirs of the prophetic tradition, alongside the Sabaean methods they followed concerning the Creator, His names and His attributes.

Their doctrine concerning the divine message therefore became a synthesis of the two legacies: they mingled the truth held by the heirs of the prophets with the falsehood held by the heirs of the Sabaeans’ followers. Similarly, the doctrine of those who espoused purely innovated speculative theology, such as the Mu‘tazilah, contained a synthesis, though not one between the prophetic legacy and the Sabaean legacy;