“It comes to me at times like the ringing of a bell—that is the hardest upon me. When it has left me I retain what it has said. And at times the angel assumes the form of a man, speaks to me, and I comprehend what he says.”

ʿĀʾishah—may Allah be pleased with her—added, “I saw revelation descend upon him on a bitterly cold day. When it lifted, beads of sweat were streaming from his forehead.”

Allah, the Exalted, says:

“Indeed, this is the word conveyed by a noble messenger,
endowed with power, secure in the presence of the Lord of the Throne,
obeyed there and trustworthy.
Your companion is not mad.
He certainly saw him on the clear horizon.
He is not stingy—or suspect—regarding the unseen.
It is not the word of an accursed devil.” (Q 81:19-25)

Most Qur’an reciters read the word as bi-ẓanīn, meaning “suspected/accused,” while another reading has bi-ḍanīn, meaning “niggardly.”

Some philosophers have claimed that the being described in this passage is the “Active Intellect,” arguing that its outpouring is perpetual. Yet Allah says: “It is the word of a noble messenger, endowed with power, secure in the presence of the Lord of the Throne….” Even if the Active Intellect were granted existence, it would, by their own account, exert influence only beneath the lunar sphere, not in that lofty realm—how much more so when the Active Intellect itself has no real existence at all.

In truth, the immaterial, separate entities they posit—other than the rational soul, such as the various intellects and souls—exist only in the mind, not in external reality, as has been detailed in Al-Ṣafadiyyah and elsewhere. Most of their purely rational observations in the natural sciences are sound, as is their treatment of abstract mathematics—number, magnitude, quantity, and quality. Any error in these matters arises from the individual’s own misunderstanding.

Ibn Sīnā and the Ismāʿīlī Fāṭimids

As for metaphysics, the discourse of Aristotle and his followers is very scant; and despite its brevity, much—indeed most—of it is erroneous. Ibn Sīnā, however, took what they had produced, added other elements from the principles of the scholastic theologians, and began to couch what he had borrowed in certain terms of the Sacred Law. He and those of