Nevertheless, the wording runs as follows:

“The first thing Allah created was the intellect. He said to it, ‘Advance,’ and it advanced; then He said, ‘Draw back,’ and it drew back. He then declared, ‘By My might, I have not created a creature more honored in My sight than you. Through you My servant takes and through you he gives; through you comes reward and through you comes punishment.’”

If the report were sound, it would in fact be evidence against them, because it states that Allah addressed the intellect at the very moment He created it, and that He had not created any creature more honored than it—something that necessarily implies He had already created other beings before it.

Moreover, in the language of the Messenger ﷺ, his Companions, and his community, “intellect” (ʿaql) denotes an attribute—an accidental quality—derived from the verb “to understand,” as in the Qur’anic passages:

“so that they may understand,”
“so that you may understand,”
“they have hearts with which they reason,”

and the like. It may also refer to the innate faculty found in a person; Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī, and others said, “The intellect is an inborn disposition.”

By contrast, in the terminology of the Greek philosophers the “intellect” is a self-subsistent substance. How far apart the two usages are! Hence the ḥadīth continues,

“Through you My servant takes and through you he gives; through you comes reward and through you comes punishment,”

which can only be said of the intellect possessed by the children of Adam.

Yet they maintain that the first entity to emanate from the Lord of all worlds is a self-subsistent substance that is the lord of the entire universe, and that the Tenth Intellect is the lord of all that lies beneath the lunar sphere, from whom the divine books were sent down to the prophets.