the method based on composition, which they likewise stole from the discourse of the Mu'tazila. Apart from this, Aristotle’s discourse on metaphysics is exceedingly sparse, despite the many errors it contains. Ibn Sīnā and others like him, however, expanded it and discussed metaphysics, prophethood, the mysteries of the divine signs, the stations of the knowers, and even the return of souls—using discourse not found among those earlier thinkers. Wherever their discourse was correct, they proceeded according to the way of the prophets; wherever it was mistaken, they built upon the corrupt principles of their predecessors.

For this reason, Ibn Rushd and other adherents of philosophy would say:

What Ibn Sīnā wrote concerning revelation, dreams, the means of knowing future events, and similar matters originated with him; his Peripatetic predecessors had never said it before him.

[Ibn Malka and His Followers’ Refutation of Their Philosophical Predecessors]

As for Abū al-Barakāt, author of al-Mu'tabar, and others like him, their refusal to imitate those thinkers, their pursuit of rational inquiry without uncritical imitation, and the illumination they received from the light of the prophetic messages led them to hold sounder views on this subject than either group. Abū al-Barakāt therefore affirmed (1) the Lord’s knowledge of particulars and offered a sound refutation of his predecessors. He likewise affirmed the Lord’s attributes and acts, exposed what he did concerning the erring thinkers among his predecessors (2), and recognized the falsity of their position regarding the causes of temporal events. He consequently departed from it and affirmed that volitions necessitating temporal events subsist in the Lord. Their position is discussed at length elsewhere.

These thinkers maintain:

Events came into being (3), one after another, because of the causes subsisting in the Lord’s essence that necessitate them. They therefore do not affirm diverse, ever-renewed things