These people are worse than those who asked Moses, “Does your Lord sleep?” Allah gave them an illustration with two glass vessels. After Moses had remained awake for several nights, He commanded him to hold the two vessels. When he held them, sleep overcame him, and they shattered. Allah thus showed him that, were drowsiness or sleep to overtake Him, the world would collapse. Yet according to these people’s view, were drowsiness or sleep to overtake Him, what already endures would not cease to exist.

Some of them, however, say that an enduring thing depends upon accidents being brought into existence in succession, since, in their view, an accident does not persist for two successive moments. It is on this basis that such a person argues that, were drowsiness or sleep to overtake Him, the accidents through which bodies persist would not come into existence—not because, in his view, bodies themselves depend upon Him while they continue to exist.

Likewise, they say that the divine will does not pertain to what is beginningless or to what continues to exist. In their view, power likewise does not pertain to what continues to exist. Nor, according to them, can incapacity properly be spoken of with respect to what continues to exist or is beginningless, since they hold that incapacity can only concern something over which power is possible.

These people say that the reason for dependence upon the Creator is simply having come into existence. Others among the philosophers say that it is simply contingency, and claim that something beginningless and eternal, which has always existed and will always exist, depends upon the Maker. Thus the former claims that an enduring thing which came into existence has no such dependence, while the latter claims that an enduring, beginningless thing does have such dependence. Both views are