To speak of both “existence” and “fixedness” (thubūt) while asserting that each is found outside the mind is a grave mistake—just as it is a mistake to distinguish between existence and quiddity while maintaining that both are externally real.

The whole confusion arose because it became customary to call whatever is in the mind a “quiddity” and whatever is outside the mind “existence.” The term quiddity (māhiyyah) itself is derived from the interrogative expression “What is it?” (mā huwa), just as other terms—such as kayfiyyah (“how-ness”) and aynyiyyah (“where-ness”)—are derived from similar interrogative sentences. One may say māhiyyah or māiyyah; both are coined expressions that denote the answer to the question “What is it?”—that is, the mental representation that forms in the questioner’s mind.

Because quiddity is tied to the question “What is it?”—and the questioner, after all, seeks only a conceptual picture of the thing—the reply that satisfies him is precisely that mental depiction. Such depiction is something established in the mind whether or not the thing it represents actually exists outside. Hence, by convention, “quiddity” is most often applied to what is in the intellect, whereas “existence” is applied to what is found in external reality. The entire matter is therefore one of terminology.

If the term is qualified so that we speak of “mental existence,” this is none other than the quiddity that resides in the mind. Conversely, if we speak of “the quiddity of a thing in the external world,” this is identical to its very existence outside the mind.

Accordingly, the external existence of a thing is the selfsame as its external quiddity. On this point the leading investigators affiliated with Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jamāʿah—and, indeed, all affirmers among the theologians who uphold the divine attributes—are in agreement. This includes figures such as Abū Muḥammad b. Kullāb, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī, Abū ʿAbd Allāh b. Karrām and their followers, to say nothing of the great Salaf and the foremost imams of Ahl al-Sunnah.

They likewise concur that a nonexistent thing possesses no real entity outside the mind prior to its coming-to-be. As for what is in the intellect, the very quiddity found there is also its mental existence. Thus, if by “quiddity” one intends that which is in the mind and by “existence” that which is outside, then this quiddity is other