They do not negate His attributes, nor do they liken them to the attributes of created beings. Ibn Taymiyyah explains in Bayaan Talbis al-Jahmiyyah, 1/464: “This statement which Imam Ahmad quoted from them—namely their saying, ‘You will never be true monotheists until you affirm that God existed when nothing else existed’—is ambiguous. What they really mean is that nothing existed together with Him that could be called one of His attributes, for in their view affirming attributes necessarily entails composition and partition: either a quantitative composition, like the one they imagine in a body made up of parts, or a conceptual composition, the combination of attributes, as when they say a species is composed of genus and specific difference. They also believe it entails similarity and corporeality. By the first (similarity) they mean the existence of a peer; by the second (corporeality) they mean divisibility. They thus interpret al-wahid (the One) and al-tawhid (monotheism) in a sense that is foreign to the Qur’an and the Sunnah and unlike the monotheism for which God sent down His Books and dispatched His messengers. Knowing this foundational issue is essential. He further says in Minhaaj al-Sunnah al-Nabawiyyah, 2/485–486: “What Imam Ahmad mentioned here contains the keys to these questions. It clarifies the difference between the affirmative doctrine brought by the messengers—which accords with plain reason—and the claims of the Jahmiyyah, and it shows that God’s attributes are encompassed within the very meaning of His names.”