An intimation: the Necessary Being is knowing

So whenever there is not in an essence what requires a given attribute, it is not qualified by that attribute; otherwise it would follow that it is qualified by all attributes, and that there is preponderance without a determinant. And attributes (?) are either His essence itself or in His essence. The second is void, since there is no composition in Him; so their source is His essence, and thus He is perfect by His own essence — nay, He is perfection by His own essence. And the talk of an “other” is void and not to be heard, since there is no other save from Him; for how should the effect turn back upon its cause with causality?

An Influx (wāridah): the Necessary of Existence (wājib al-wujūd) is knowing

Since the lights of His existence have dawned in your heart — that He is the Real (al-Ḥaqq), that everything other than Him stands in need of Him in order to exist, and that everything is from the manifestation of His essence — it follows necessarily for you thereby to apprehend that He is knowing. And that is because of the masterly construction (iḥkām) and the ordering that you see, the attention to fine detail and the regard for benefits, as is witnessed in the universals of the world, and as you learn when you look into the science of the anatomy of animals and of plants and the strata of the earth, and much else whose exposition would run long; and in the ordering of effects upon their causes, so that each thing is given its due and set in its proper place: when the cause is diminished the effect is diminished, when it is complete the effect is complete, and when it ceases the effect ceases. So it does not befit you, while witnessing this masterly construction, to deny His knowledge. (And again) Has it not become clear to you in what preceded that the loci in which the contingents appear are the talisman (ṭilsam) of His essence and His attributes? Now the sciences are among the contingents that appear, and so they are a talisman of His real knowledge: your knowledge is a talisman and His knowledge is its inner reality, so He is the Knowing, and your knowledge is a witness to that; and He who knows what is other than Himself is all the more fit to know His own essence. (And again) Since the Real is existence in every respect, and ignorance is pure non-existence, ignorance is impossible for Him and knowledge is necessary for Him; so He is the Knower of His essence, by His essence, and of everything that arises from His essence.

An Influx

The imitators of the philosophers (ḥukamāʼ) have said — and it is the view their chief adopted — that the Creator's knowledge, exalted be He, of universals (kulliyyāt) is by the impression of forms (irtisām al-ṣuwar) in His essence. So we say: if you hold that the knowledge is those very forms, then (first) it follows that the Creator's knowledge, exalted be He, is something additional to His essence while being among His perfections, so that the Creator would be perfect by something other than His essence — and whatever is perfect by another is deficient in its own essence. (And secondly) it is not sound for a rational man, let alone a sage, to say that the mere presence of a form in a thing is that thing's knowledge of the form's owner; otherwise the wall