Yemen, accept the glad tidings, since Banū Tamīm have not accepted them.’ They replied, ‘We have accepted them, O Messenger of Allah.’ They said, ‘We have come to you to gain understanding of the religion and to ask you about the beginning of this affair.’ He replied, ‘Allah existed, and there was nothing before Him’—in another wording, ‘with Him,’ and in another, ‘other than Him’—‘and His Throne was upon the water. He wrote everything in the Record and created the heavens and the earth.’” In another wording: “Then He created the heavens and the earth.”

“Then a man came to me and said, ‘Go after your she-camel!’ I went, and there she was, beyond where the mirage ended. By Allah, I wished I had left her and not got up.”

His words, “He wrote in the Record,” refer to the Preserved Tablet, as Allah says:

“And We have already written in the Psalms, after the Record.”

That is, after the Preserved Tablet. What is written in the Record is called a record, just as that in which something is written is called a book, as in His words, Almighty and Majestic:

“Indeed, it is a noble Quran, in a well-guarded Book.”

There are two views concerning this hadith. Some say that its purpose is to explain that Allah existed alone and then began bringing all originated things into existence; that originated things, both as a whole and in their individual instances, have a beginning and are preceded by nonexistence; that time as a whole originated, though not within time; that motion and moving things, as entire categories, originated; and that Allah became an agent after having done nothing from eternity until the moment He began to act, nor had action even been possible.

Those who hold this view are themselves divided into two groups. Some say that He likewise began to speak after