is acquired, and these people say (1): “Prophethood consists of three qualities, and whoever possesses them is a prophet: he must possess a sacred intuitive faculty by which he acquires knowledge without instruction; his soul must be powerful and able to affect the world’s underlying matter; and he must possess an imaginative faculty by which he imagines what he apprehends intellectually as something visible within himself and audible within himself.”

This is Ibn Sīnā’s and his peers’ account of prophethood. Al-Ghazālī took it from him in his writings “Withheld from Those Unfit to Receive Them.”

The degree they describe is found in many individuals, among ordinary people and among believers. Yet that does not even make such a person one of the best of the general body of believers, much less a prophet, as has been explained at length elsewhere.

These people said this when they found it necessary to discuss (2) prophethood on the basis of the principles of their eternalist forebears, who held that the celestial spheres are beginningless and eternal, not brought into being by an Agent through His power and choice. They also denied His knowledge of particulars and upheld other similar corrupt principles. Accordingly, these people discussed prophethood on the basis of their predecessors’ principles.

As for the ancients—Aristotle and his peers—they have no substantive account of prophethood. An individual (3) among these people seeks to become a prophet, just as al-Suhrawardī, who was put to death, sought to become a prophet. He had combined speculative inquiry with devotion, followed a path akin to that of the esotericists, combined Persian and Greek philosophy, exalted the doctrine of lights, and promoted the original religion of the Magians. This system was a replica of Ismaili esotericism, and he possessed