1. Establishment of a glossary

To this end, he prefaces the discussion on whether the world has a beginning or not with an introductory partFootnote ¹⁶ in which he gives the definitions of several words used by the theoricians. To constitute his glossary, al-Miklātī uses two sources: al-Fārābī's Book of Letters (Kitāb al-Ḥurūf) on the one hand, and Averroes' Epitome on Metaphysics on the other. Many questions will arise from the way al-Miklātī uses these two sources. In order to render these choices more visible, I will reproduce the lists of the terms defined in each of these three works:

Three remarks may be made. First, regarding the choice of the terms defined, al-Miklātī follows Averroes' list with very few exceptions.Footnote ²⁰ Second, for the first five terms he defines, which are the only ones that figure in both al-Fārābī's and Averroes' lists, al-Miklātī chooses to copy al-Fārābī's Book of Letters rather than Averroes' Epitome. Third, the order in which the terms are defined is much closer to Averroes' than to al-Fārābī's, though again some differences can be observed concerning the first five terms. A more thorough study of the details of these differences will be pursued in my PhD thesis, but I can already raise a few hypotheses to start drawing a portrait of al-Miklātī and defining the exact nature of his project.

2. Between al-Fārābī and Averroes: the meaning of al-Miklātī's choices

That al-Miklātī's list of terms is almost identical to Averroes' may be accounted for by the fact that he comes only one generation after AverroesFootnote ²¹ and is – as shall be shown in the second part of this article – a close reader of the Tahāfut al-Tahāfut.Footnote ²² It does not therefore seem surprising that the terms of the debate should be those of Averroes. Yet, when it comes to choosing the definitions of these terms, al-Fārābī is sometimes preferred to Averroes. What can explain such a preference? It may be due to al-Fārābī's perspective: if al-Miklātī is not interested in the linguistic complexities of the translation from Greek into Syriac and again into Arabic,Footnote ²³ he might however agree with the project of deriving the technical sense of words from their prosaic meaning. For, although al-Miklātī is refuting philosophers, his book does not solely address the philosophers but is intended for a larger readership which must nevertheless be of fine intelligence and high education.Footnote ²⁴ In his Epitome, Averroes also gives the meaning of the word for the masses but, whereas it is the starting point of al-Fārābī's definitions, it appears only secondarily in the Epitome, after the word has been defined in its technical sense or senses, and Averroes does not seem to attach much importance to this perspective.Footnote ²⁵ This does not prevent al-Miklātī from resorting to Averroes when he finds the latter's formulation more satisfying: he does so for the definition of the accident, inserting a sentence from the Epitome in al-Fārābī's definition.Footnote ²⁶ Al-Miklātī seems therefore to be an active reader who does not merely and passively copy the definitions that are offered to him but compares various definitions and chooses the ones he finds more accurate and clear. This is confirmed by his reorganisation of the order of the terms. If the term “existent” (mawğūd) is – both in Averroes and in al-Miklātī – the first term to be explained, it is caught in two completely different conceptual complexes. In the first introductory section, al-Miklātī explains that:

Whereas in the Epitome the term “existent” is followed by and thought in connection with the terms “substance” and “accident”, it is immediately followed in the Quintessence by the terms “thing” (šayʾ) and “essence” (ḏāt). We can find an explanation for this at the beginning of the definitions of each of these terms. Before giving their meaning for the philosophers, al-Miklātī reminds the reader of the disagreement there is between the Ašʿarites and the Muʿtazilites on this matter:

With this reorganisation of the order of the terms, we go from an Aristotelian framework to a theological one. One may also notice that if this order moves al-Miklātī away from Averroes, it moves him nearer to Avicenna. In the first book of the Ilāhiyyāt of his Šifāʾ, Avicenna notoriously devotes the fifth chapter to the study of “the existent, the thing and their first division” and concludes by saying that it is now clear in which way “‘the thing’ differs from what is understood by ‘the existent’ and ‘the realised’ [al-ḥāṣil] and that, despite this difference, the two [that is, ‘the thing’ and ‘the existent’] are necessary concomitants”.Footnote ²⁹ It seems therefore that we may have been a little too prompt in asserting that the terms of the debate were those of Averroes. If the latter is clearly present in this debate and most certainly plays a part in it, the exact nature of this part is yet to be determined.

3. A logical refutation that makes no compromises

By first establishingFootnote ³⁰ this glossary, al-Miklātī makes sure his refutation will attain its target and not be merely rhetorical. He does not want the discussion to be about words but about concepts. In accordance with his intention of confronting the philosophers with their own weapons, al-Miklātī submits both his argumentation and his refutation to the strictest logical rigour. Following in the steps of al-Ġazālī, who recommended the use of logic to defeat the philosophers, he goes even further by casting all his arguments into the form of syllogisms, specifying the type of syllogism (hypothetical or predicative, continuous or not) and the premise on which there is contention (the major, the minor, or the inference). Though, as a theologian, he does not share many of the philosophers' premises, he admits them for the sake of discussion (ğadalan) and refutes them on a logical level – by pointing out a logical mistake in the argumentation – or by showing their contradiction with another of the philosophers' doctrines.Footnote ³¹ If he merely rejected the premises, there would be no possible discussion with the philosophers and his refutation would not affect their argumentations. Moreover he just as vehemently rejects rhetorical arguments presented by theologians, be they Ašʿarites. An example can be found in the section where he establishes the impossibility of an infinite number of adventice things (ḥawādiṯ). He starts by saying that “theologians have [written] a lot on this matter” and he intends to “present the fallacies [that corrupt] their proofs and show how to refute them” before giving his demonstration of this impossibility.Footnote ³² The refutation here is aimed at the Qāḍī Abū Bakr al-Baqillānī and his followers. He shows that their proofs are erroneous because based either on a confusion between judgements that apply to the whole and judgements that apply to the partsFootnote ³³ or on a petitio principii. One last element can be noted, al-Miklātī appears to have some knowledge – whether directly or indirectly has yet to be establishedFootnote ³⁴ – of Aristotle's Organon. In the second introductory section, he explains that every speculative science includes subject-matters, questions and principles, which he defines by referring to the Posterior Analytics, and he recalls the Aristotelian rule that the first principles of a science cannot be demonstrated in this science.Footnote ³⁵

The picture we get from these first indications is that of an uncommon theologian, with no equivalent in the Muslim West that we know of: a highly demanding refuter, who will not be content with a sophistic or rhetorically brilliant refutation, and a sharp logical mind, which makes him a true disciple of al-Ġazālī.

1. Al-Miklātī's Quintessence, a Tahāfut “Tahāfut al-Tahāfut”?Footnote ³⁸

One would indeed expect that a work of the nature of al-Miklātī's would only be justified because something (or one should probably say someone) has happened since the TF that renders it insufficient, and that would be Averroes' TT. In this perspective, al-Miklātī's Quintessence would appear to be a TTT where Averroes has replaced Avicenna as the major representative of philosophers and the main target. Some elements seem in fact to corroborate this expectation.

When copying al-Ġazālī's presentation of Avicenna's arguments and his objections to them, al-Miklātī inserts objections made by Averroes and undertakes to refute them. Many examples can be found but I will limit myself to one. In the chapter pages 126 to 153, al-Miklātī criticises the philosophers' conception of the human soul as “a self-subsistentFootnote ³⁹ substance, that is not situated [in any place],Footnote ⁴⁰ is neither a body [ğism] nor impressed on a body, is neither continuous with the body [al-badan] nor separated from it, just as God the Blessed and Sublime is neither outside the world nor inside the world”. This corresponds to the eighteenth discussion of the TF (and the second discussion about the natural sciences in the TT, pp. 543 sq.). Al-Miklātī is discussing the validity of the following inference: “everything that inheres in something divisible is necessarily [yalzimu an yakūna] divisible”. He refers to “some of the latest Peripatetic philosophers”, i.e. Averroes, who justifies this inference. He quotes two paragraphs of the TT Footnote ⁴¹ where Averroes distinguishes two types of division, and affirms that “everything that is susceptible to division in [either of] these two kinds of division inheres in a body of some sort”.Footnote ⁴² He then adds that the converse is also evident, i.e. that “everything that is in a body is susceptible to division in one of these two kinds of division”. If this is verified, then – he concludes – the converse of its opposite, i.e. “what is not susceptible to division in any of these two sorts does not inhere in a body”, is also true. Al-Miklātī admits that, if a premise is true, then the converse of its opposite is also true. But he denies the validity of the premise for it has not been demonstrated. Indeed the converse of a universal premise is true only particularly and not universally so that it is not valid to admit that, because this premise, i.e. “everything that is susceptible to division in [either of] these two kinds of division inheres in a body of some sort”, is evident,Footnote ⁴³ its converse, i.e. “everything that is in a body is susceptible to division in one of these two kinds of division”, is evident too. This is what al-Miklātī writes:

Thus, he rejects Averroes' justification on logical grounds.

Another example of al-Miklātī's use of Averroes could also lead to the interpretation mentioned above. At the beginning of the chapter I have just quoted, al-Miklātī, who is once again quoting al-Ġazālī, surreptitiously replaces Avicenna's doctrine by Averroes'. Al-Ġazālī starts by saying that “the discussion of this question demands the exposition of [the philosophers'] theory about the animal and human faculties”.Footnote ⁴⁵ Al-Miklātī expresses the same demand and copies al-Ġazālī's exposition. Averroes remarks that the doctrine al-Ġazālī presents is that of Avicenna “who distinguished himself from the rest of the philosophers” on a number of points which Averroes enunciates. As we learn from al-Ġazālī's account, Avicenna distinguishes three internal senses: the representative faculty, the estimative faculty and the imaginative/cogitative faculty.Footnote ⁴⁶ But because “one thing does not retain another through the faculty by which it receives it”,Footnote ⁴⁷ each of the first two faculties has a corresponding faculty that retains the forms and intentions that they respectively receive, these are the retentive faculty and the memorative faculty, which brings the number of internal senses to five. Al-Miklātī appears to faithfully copy al-Ġazālī for he literally transcribes the latter's account of Avicenna's doctrine, but while doing so, he introduces emendations and actually replaces Avicenna's conception of internal senses with that of Averroes. Indeed, Averroes rejects Avicenna's estimative for he considers it superfluous: animals do not need another faculty in addition to the imaginative, it is the imaginative faculty in the animal that “determines that the wolf should be an enemy of the sheep and that the sheep should be a friend of the lamb”.Footnote ⁴⁸ Al-Miklātī replaces the term “estimative” in al-Ġazālī's account by “imaginative” and adds this precision: “Avicenna said that the perception [idrāk] of concord [muwāfaqa] and discord [muḫālafa] happens through another faculty, additional to the imaginative, and he names it the estimative. But, on this point, he is in disagreement with all Peripatetic philosophers.”Footnote ⁴⁹ Moreover, Averroes considers that the retentive and the memorative faculties can both be located in the posterior part of the brain for “retaining and memory are two in function [bi-al-fiʿl], but one in their substratum”.Footnote ⁵⁰ Therefore, there are, according to him, four internal senses: the common sense, the imaginative or formative (al-mutaṣawwira), the cogitative (al-mufakkira) and the retentive or memorative. Consequently, where al-Ġazālī wrote that there were first three then five internal senses according to philosophers, al-Miklātī writes that there are four. Averroes does not expose his complete theory of the internal senses and refers to his De Sensu et sensato for more detail. He does not mention here the cogitative faculty so that it is not clear if al-Miklātī enumerates four faculties because he knows the theory of the De Sensu et sensato or if he distinguishes the retentive and memorative as two distinct faculties.

But though these two elements seem to corroborate the hypothesis of a TTT, a closer look at the text will show that this is not the case. Indeed, the refutation is always limited and selective and neither Averroes' doctrine as a whole nor any major doctrinal points are refuted or even discussed. Moreover, the rectification I have presented concerns an aspect which is minor from al-Miklātī's point of view and represents no major issue for him. Thus, the status of al-Miklātī's work still needs to be determined.

2. Averroes: an ally in spite of himself

Let us examine the other ways in which al-Miklātī uses the TT to try to better understand his relation to Averroes. More than once, al-Miklātī rectifies al-Ġazālī's presentation of Avicenna's doctrine by taking into consideration Averroes' remarks or criticisms. I will focus on one example.Footnote ⁵¹ In the second discussion about the natural sciences page 552 of his TT, Averroes criticises al-Ġazālī's restitution of Avicenna: “al-Ġazālī has not adduced the argument in the manner in which Avicenna brought it out”.Footnote ⁵² He then rectifies it by giving what he considers a more faithful account of the argument:

In his presentation of the philosophers' proof of the indivisibility of the human soul, al-Miklātī begins by giving (a) his own formulation of the philosophers' proof, then he integrates (b) Averroes' formulation of Avicenna's argument to prove the major premise of his syllogism, and finally invokes (c) al-Ġazālī's reformulation of the argument in support of Averroes' restitution. I quote:

This is representative of the way al-Miklātī proceeds: he rarely innovates in the arguments he uses in the sense that he takes the material of his criticism from different sources, but he reorganises this material, this stock of arguments that are at his disposal, in such a way that the argumentation he construes is new and original, and often more effective, for his selective mind leaves no place for digressions and reduces the argumentations to the bare essential. It also gives one first example of how the TT almost serves as a commentary of the TF that helps al-Miklātī correct some of its deficiencies.

Al-Miklātī makes another use of Averroes which seems to confirm this point: when criticising a common opponent, he uses Averroes' arguments and objections. In the second discussion, in the course of the refutation of the incorruptibility of the world, al-Ġazālī first dismisses the solutions adopted before him by various groups of theologians, beginning with the Muʿtazilites. Following al-Ġazālī, al-Miklātī presents the philosophers' argumentation.Footnote ⁵⁵ The world, according to them, cannot be annihilated for, if its annihilation was possible, it could only happen through an instantiator (muḫaṣṣiṣ)Footnote ⁵⁶ that would be the cause of the passage of the world from existence to non-existence. This instantiator would have to be either an [agent] endowed with choice (muḫtār) or the occurrence of a contrary (ṭarayān ḍidd) or the absence of a condition (intifāʾ šarṭ). But, contrary to what theologians claim, it cannot be a choosing agent without implying a change in the will and consequently in the agent possessing the will. To avoid this inadmissible consequence, the Muʿtazilites said that the instantiator was in fact the occurrence of a contrary (ṭarayān ḍidd): in this case, nothingness (al-fanāʾ). They believe that God creates it in no place of inherence (fī ġayr maḥall) and that it provokes the non-existence of the world at one and the same moment (fī dufʿatin wāḥidatin). They add that nothingness disappears by itself, thus avoiding a regression ad infinitum, each nothingness needing another nothingness in order to stop existing. To criticise this position, al-Miklātī interlocks al-Ġazālī's objections and Averroes', constructing thereby his own refutation.Footnote ⁵⁷ He begins by saying that what the Muʿtazilites mention is false and weak because “nothingness and non-existence are synonymous” which is a strict quotation of Averroes. He then raises a possible counter-objection of the Muʿtazilites who would say that nothingness is not non-existence but an existent which is an accident contrary to substance and which does not persist for two moments. To refute it, he uses one of al-Ġazālī's argumentsFootnote ⁵⁸ which he reformulates as follows: “the Sublime Creator either creates [nothingness] in the world's essence or creates it in no place of inherence. And if he creates it in the world's essence, then it is not a contrary for it co-exists [li-iğtimāʿihi] with the world”. To reject the second branch of the alternative, this time he uses one of Averroes' objections (“the existence of an accident in no place of inherence is impossible”) and writes: “if he creates it in no place of inherence, its reality would be transformed [inqalabat] because it belongs to the accident's reality [min ḥaqīqat al-ʿaraḍ] to be in need of a place of inherence”. Finally, he invokes one last argument ad absurdum which he finds in al-Ġazālī: “It follows from this that God the Sublime does not have the power to annihilate part of the world without [annihilating] the whole”. But this is absurd for it contradicts God's omnipotence.

This use of Averroes, in favour of al-Miklātī's own goal, making him almost an ally, is even more spectacular when directed against Avicenna. One example is particularly interesting for it appears twice in the text and each time at key moments of the argumentation: first, in pages 67 to 69, in the course of the consolidation of al-Miklātī's proof of the adventicity of the world,Footnote ⁵⁹ then, in pages 162 and 163, following the proof by which he establishes the existence of a producer.Footnote ⁶⁰ In both cases, Avicenna's objection rejects the claim that positing eternity prevents from positing an instantiator and therefore does not allow philosophers respectively to prove the adventicity of the world in the first occurrence and to establish a producer in the second. This is how – according to al-Ġazālī's account – Avicenna's argument goes: when the agent advents, what proceeds from Him and is connected to Him is either pure existence or pure non-existence or both. It cannot be the precedent non-existence, for the agent has no influence whatsoever on non-existence. It cannot either be both. It must then be pure existence. If so, the more permanent the existence, the more permanent the connection, and consequently the more influential and the better the agent. In other words, and this is indeed what can be read in the Ilāhiyyāt of Avicenna's Šifāʾ,Footnote ⁶¹ the conception of an eternal world not only does not contradict the idea of a producer but is even a better conception of it, a conception that implies a more powerful God, i.e. a truly powerful one. Al-Miklātī literally quotes al-Ġazālī's presentation of the Avicennian argument and adds one sentence by Averroes that synthesises Avicenna's argument: “advention is nothing more than the connection of the act to existence, I mean that the act of the agent is an existentiation [īğād], and in this matter, existence preceded by non-existence and existence not preceded by non-existence are equivalent”.Footnote ⁶² To refute this argument, al-Miklātī uses Averroes' objectionFootnote ⁶³ rather than al-Ġazālī's. This is what he writes:

So, on two major questions (the adventicity of the world and the establishment of a producer of the world) and at an absolute key moment of his argumentation (the impossibility of holding together the belief in eternity and the belief in the existence of an instantiatorFootnote ⁶⁵), al-Miklātī invokes an objection that he finds in Averroes' TT.Footnote ⁶⁶

Thus the TT appears to be a tool used by al-Miklātī to improve the TF and Averroes seems to be almost as much an ally as an opponent. Therefore the Quintessence cannot be considered as a TTT, which would imply a change in the target, but is rather a sort of update of the TF, which takes into account some of the objections and new data supplied by the TT.

3. Averroes does not replace Avicenna as the principal target of the criticism of philosophers

I would like to bring the reader's attention to one more passage where it appears that Avicenna remains the true target of the criticism against philosophers, and that, although Averroes must also be ousted, it is only as an additional representative of Peripatetism and not as the author of a specific philosophical system. On the contrary, the criticism directed against Avicenna aims at destroying his whole doctrine.

In the chapter establishing the existence of a producer of the world (pp. 154–68), al-Miklātī exposes the views of the philosophers on this question: all philosophers admit the possibility that an existent proceeds from something other than God on the condition that it can be assigned to another existent and this one to another and so on until it ends in a necessary existent by itself, which is God. On the other hand, they do not agree on whether it is possible or not that more than one proceed from Him. Al-Miklātī enumerates the different positions, but the only one he presents thoroughly is Avicenna's emanationist conception.Footnote ⁶⁷ Moreover, in the course of the refutation, Avicenna receives the same kind of special treatment: as I have said in the previous part, al-Miklātī first presents his proof establishing a producer, then consolidates it by proving separately each of the premises and inferences. He then concludes that the philosophers, because they believe in the eternity of the world, cannot establish a producer and, according to their principles, the world cannot be said to be the act of God, for “it is a condition of the act that it be preceded by non-existence and that it brings [a thing] from non-existence to existence, but this is impossible in the case of the eternal”.Footnote ⁶⁸ He then evokes two ways in which the philosophers have tried to get around this consequence. He begins with that of “some philosophers”, which designates Averroes most of the time. Indeed he quotes a passage from the TT:

Al-Miklātī quite abruptly rejects this distinction: Averroes, according to him, shifts the problem to the question of movement, which is a merely sophistic move “for the talk is not about the movement that is composed of parts which are adventice, but is about the celestial bodies and the separate intellects and the totalities of the four elements according to their principles, for all these existents have been characterised by eternity and the negation of a beginning [nafy al-awwaliyya] according to their principles. It is therefore impossible according to their principles that they are the act of God the Sublime, as we have shown.”Footnote ⁷⁰ Al-Miklātī accuses Averroes of feigning to resolve the problem of the contradiction between the affirmation of the eternity of the world and the establishment of a producer of this same world by slipping from the question of the existence of the world to that of the movement of the world, i.e. from the eternity of its existence to that of its movement.Footnote ⁷¹ Al-Miklātī then exposes Avicenna's way of resolving the contradictionFootnote ⁷² and this corresponds to the second occurrence of the argument I have presented above: advention is nothing more than the relation of the act of the agent to existence, so that the supposition of a perpetual advention does not contradict the idea of an agent but rather implies an eternal and perfect agent. Against this argument, al-Miklātī opposes the objection we have already examined, which he finds in Averroes' TT, and, just as in the case of Averroes, Avicenna's argument is said of be sophistic. Al-Miklātī then concludes: “it has been made clear by this that it is impossible for those who profess eternity to establish a producer, according to their principle, and this is necessarily implied for all Peripatetic philosophers who profess eternity”. At this stage it seems that al-Miklātī has reached his goal, and Averroes and Avicenna have received a similar treatment, both dismissed for being sophistic. But he does not stop here: al-Miklātī adds one paragraph where he characterises Avicenna's method and compares it with Aristotle's. He then “succinctly” presents the whole of Avicenna's argumentation, and criticises it. I will take a closer look at this restitution and criticism in the next part but what I wanted to show here is the discrepancy there is between the treatment of Avicenna and Averroes. If some of the latter's objections are no doubt refuted, this refutation bears no comparison with the systematic refutation aimed at the former. The reasons behind such a difference can only be the object of speculation and so this does not need to concern us here. But what now appears clearly is that Avicenna remains the main target.Footnote ⁷³

There is still a lot to say concerning al-Miklātī's relation to the TT and the various uses he makes of it. But this is something I will treat in the commentary of my translation of this work. In the rest of the present article, I would like to focus on a different aspect which shows another way in which this work can be a precious source of information.

1. Aristotle and Avicenna face to face: the nature and purpose of this confrontation

As announced in the previous part of this article, I would like to draw to the reader's attention one particular passage of al-Miklātī's work which corresponds to the end of the first section of the chapter establishing a producer (page 163 to page 168). To begin with, let us focus on the first paragraph. This is what al-Miklātī writes:

What exactly is the point of this comparison? This paragraph is composed of four elements which go in pairs, each pair made up of an opposition between Avicenna and Aristotle. First, the method is compared, then the science in which the proof must take place. Avicenna is said to base his proof on common or general premises. What this means seems to be made explicit by the end of the sentence: these premises are “ suitable in view of existent qua existent”. They do not concern a particular kind of existent, nor existent considered from one particular aspect – existent qua moved or existent qua quantity –, but rather concern existent qua existent. In other words, they are metaphysical premises. At first sight, this may appear as an objective characterisation of Avicenna's proof, for he himself writes in his Išārāt that his proof consists in “examining nothing but existence itself”, by considering “the state [ḥāl] of existence”, and that it has “existence qua existence testify to the [first cause]”.Footnote ⁷⁵ This “metaphysical” method which deals with existent qua existent and uses general premises is contrasted with Aristotle's which, because it is based on the phenomenon of motion, is physical and concerns existent qua moved, i.e. the physical existent. This too could be endorsed by Avicenna as, when thus describing his proof in the Išārāt, he opposes it precisely to a proof that would be established on the examination, not of existent qua existent, but of existent insofar as it is created, in the case of the mutakallimūn, and moved, in the case of the physicists. Indeed, in both cases, the proof proceeds from the effect to the cause, which Avicenna considers a less noble path.Footnote ⁷⁶ In The Provenance and Destination,Footnote ⁷⁷ he presents the two kinds of proofs, and in the Appendices,Footnote ⁷⁸ he distinguishes between the way the Physicists establish the First Mover and the way the Theologians establish it. In the Fair Judgement,Footnote ⁷⁹ he even goes so far as to reject the method from motion as nonsensical and unworthy of its object. Then the consequences of this divergence in the method are stated by al-Miklātī: Aristotle could only show the existence of a producer in physics so that, when he examined it in metaphysics, he did not prove its existence there but accepted it from physics. Avicenna, on the contrary, claimed to show its existence in metaphysics. Now, his opposition to Aristotle on this point is never asserted in such an explicit way. In the first chapter of the Ilāhiyyāt of the Šifāʾ, he shows that the proof of God's existence can take place in no other science than metaphysics, and that what appears in physics aims only at giving “a fleeting idea” of His existence.Footnote ⁸⁰ However, it seems that Avicenna did not believe that it was Aristotle's true belief that the proof from motion was the appropriate proof of the existence of God. According to Gutas, Avicenna considered this to be “only the apparent sense of the Metaphysics; its innermost meaning and implicit doctrine was, in fact, to establish the First Truth by means of the Theological way”.Footnote ⁸¹ This appears in the Memoirs from a Disciple from Rayy and in the Discussions. Footnote ⁸²

From this perspective, the opposition made between Avicenna and Aristotle looks less like an objective comparison and more like a criticism of Avicenna's non Aristotelianism. By construing a proof from the necessary, Avicenna contravenes the Aristotelian method. But because he is a Peripatetic – and considered so by al-MiklātīFootnote ⁸³ –, when he contravenes Aristotle's rules, he in a way contradicts himself. If this is so, then the adjective ʿāmma must be understood as having a pejorative connotation: the premises are not said to be general merely because of the generality of their subject (existence qua existence) but are said to be common premises as opposed to appropriate premises, i.e. premises that are proper to their subject. But, in the Posterior Analytics,Footnote ⁸⁴ Aristotle writes that there can be a demonstration only from principles proper to the subject, not from common ones. Because his premises are common, Avicenna's proof of the existence of God cannot be demonstrative.

If we reinsert this paragraph into al-Miklātī's general argumentation – which I have presented at the end of the second part of this article –, what al-Miklātī seems to be doing is actually playing off the Peripatetics. Indeed al-Miklātī reproaches Avicenna with the exact opposite of what he was reproaching Averroes: Averroes was said to be sophistic because, instead of talking about being and existence, he talked about motion; Avicenna, on the other hand, deals with existence, existence qua existence, but by doing so, his proof is said to be logically deficient because based on common and inappropriate premises. This however is not a contradiction on al-Miklātī's part. For it is precisely al-Miklātī's aim to show that philosophers – Peripatetic philosophers – can in no way establish the existence of the producer as long as they profess the eternity of the world: for either they remain faithful to their Master and use a proof from motion, but then, all they can establish is a mover not a producer, or they build a proof from existence itself, i.e. qua existence, but then, their premises are common and their proof therefore cannot be demonstrative.

2. The origin of this criticism

The next question that comes to mind is where al-Miklātī found this criticism. The characterisation of the proof as a proof from existence qua existence, the accusation raised against it for not being Aristotelian, the assertion that the science where the proof must take place is physics and not metaphysics where it is merely accepted from physics, all this reminds us of Averroes' criticism of Avicenna's proof. But even if we admit that al-Miklātī's source is Averroes, we still need to determine in which work or works he finds it. I have shown in the second part that al-Miklātī has a direct knowledge of the TT: what could he read there?

In the fourth discussion, page 276, Averroes writes:

Here we have the opposition between a method based on existent itself and a method based on its accidents. These accidents that are not named here are motion and time, as appears from another passage, where the expressions are even closer to those found in al-Miklātī's text. Indeed, in the tenth discussion, page 419, Averroes writes almost exactly the same remarks as in the fourth, only he is more explicit:

Like in our text, two kinds of proofs are opposed, although we can note two differences: Aristotle is not directly named but designated by “the ancients” and time is mentioned as well as motion. Finally, Averroes' criticism can be found in another passage of the TT, in the eighth discussion. After having formulated Avicenna's proof in such a way that it is “the nearest to demonstrative method [al-ṭarīqat al-burhāniyya]”, Averroes concludes, in pages 395–6, that “the demonstration [al-burhān] which Avicenna uses in dealing with the necessary existent, when this distinction and this indication are not made, is of the type of common dialectical statements [min ṭabīʿat al-aqāwīl al-ʿāmma al-ğadaliya]; when, however, the distinction is made, it is of the type of demonstrative statements [min ṭabīʿat al-aqāwīl al-burhāniyya]”.Footnote ⁸⁷ Averroes uses the same adjective as in our text here, although it is accompanied by the adjective “dialectical” which leaves no doubt as to the pejorative meaning of ʿāmma in this context, and more generally characterises Avicenna's statements (aqāwīl) and not his premises (muqaddimāt). Though these similarities confirm the idea that Averroes is al-Miklātī's source, the differences make it unlikely that he is quoting the TT. Indeed al-Miklātī – as appears from the glossary and from his use of the TT – tends to quote literally. More importantly, there is no trace in the TT of the last two elements of our paragraph: nowhere is it said that the science where Aristotle's proof takes place is physical science and that the metaphysician must admit it from there, and there are a fortiori no precise references to “Book VIII” and “Book Lām”, nor is it said that Avicenna on the contrary develops his proof in metaphysical science. The examination of another of Averroes' works we know was read by al-Miklātī, the Epitome on Metaphysics, turns out to be just as unfruitful: there is a criticism of the propositions Avicenna uses but no trace of the adjective ʿāmma;Footnote ⁸⁸ and we do find the idea – absent from the TT – that the metaphysician accepts the existence of the first principle from physics, but without the precise references to Physics VIII and Metaphysics Λ.Footnote ⁸⁹ In one passage of the Long Commentary of Physics, the opposition between Aristotle and Avicenna on this point is explicit but again the double reference is missing:

In the same way, similar elements can be found in other passages of the Long Commentary of Physics Footnote ⁹¹ and in the Long Commentary of the Posterior Analytics,Footnote ⁹² but they are never to be found together in the same text and the precise references are always absent. In the Long Commentary of Metaphysics,Footnote ⁹³ we find the reference to Book VIII of Physics as the place where physical science shows the existence of the eternal substance (al-ğawhar al-sarmadī)Footnote ⁹⁴ and the affirmation that “there is no other way to show the existence of the separate substance than through movement [min qibali al-ḥaraka]”.Footnote ⁹⁵ But here, in C5, he is criticising Alexander's interpretation and not Avicenna's, although he believes that the former's interpretation is the cause of the latter's error. When talking about Avicenna in the following lines, he writes that according to him “the metaphysician is the one who demonstrates their existence [i.e. the existence of the principles of sensible substances, both eternal and non eternal ones]”.Footnote ⁹⁶ However I do not believe that this is al-Miklātī's source for, as I already said, the confrontation is between Alexander and Aristotle – or rather Averroes in the name of Aristotle – so that Avicenna is not directly addressed. Furthermore the fact that it takes place in the commentary on Book Λ does not seem enough to explain the double reference in our text. And we do not find a characterisation of Avicenna's premises. It is moreover unlikely that al-Miklātī is a reader of Averroes' long commentaries.

Among his extant works, the text that gathers together the highest number of elements from our passage is the treatise On the Separation of the First Principle. Footnote ⁹⁷ Let us quote the beginning of the treatise:

In this text, we find almost all the elements present in our text with two exceptions however: the premises are not said to be common, and there is no specific reference to Book Λ.

After this review of the texts that present similarities with our passage, there seems to be one last work where al-Miklātī could have found this criticism, but this work is unfortunately not extant: the lost treatise On the First Mover which Wolfson reconstituted from a refutation of the treatise by Moses ben Joseph al-Lāwī. This is not the same work as the precedent one, although they seem to share a same subject, and even though Wolfson, and Steel and Guldentops use the same references,Footnote ⁹⁹ as allusions to their respective treatise. It has been said that Averroes could not have written more than one treatise on the same subjectFootnote ¹⁰⁰ so that either the two treatises are in fact one and the same or one must not be authentic. Yet, as Steel and Guldentops note, the two works do not deal with the same questions: “In our text, for instance, Averroes does not claim that Avicenna's proof is not a scientific demonstration, nor does he discuss Avicenna's assumption that there is a First Cause beyond the Prime Mover. Also, the text reconstructed by Wolfson is far less cosmological and contains no reference to the so-called Oriental Philosophy.”Footnote ¹⁰¹ Moreover it seems to me that Averroes' motivations and intentions are completely different from one treatise to another. From what can be gathered from al- Lāwī's refutation, the treatise On the First Mover is clearly directed against Avicenna's proof in his claim both that it is metaphysical and demonstrative and against the conception, which motivates this “new” proof, that the First Principle is distinct from (and beyond) the First Mover. Avicenna is the direct target of this work. On the other hand, the treatise On the Separation of the First Principle is motivated by Averroes' encounter with an Avicennian who claimed that “Avicenna had never meant by the ‘necessary being’ something abstracted from the universe or separated from it, but rather he meant the whole universe” and that he consigned his true doctrine in his Oriental Philosophy. Averroes does not seem to believe that this is what Avicenna defended but he does see how his erroneous proof could lead to such an absurd theory.Footnote ¹⁰² Avicenna's theory is therefore criticised, not directly because of what Avicenna himself holds to be true – indeed Averroes writes that the “mistakes” Avicenna made in the methods he followed are dealt with “elsewhere” – but because of the erroneous and blasphemous theory it could lead to. Up until now, I have proceeded by elimination, but are there any positive elements that indicate that the lost treatise is al-Miklātī's source?

The presentation of Averroes' treatise by al-LāwīFootnote ¹⁰³ and by Averroes himself in his long commentaries on the Physics Footnote ¹⁰⁴ and the Posterior Analytics Footnote ¹⁰⁵ indicates that its object is the refutation of Avicenna's method and his claim to prove the existence of the first principle in metaphysics. We also learn from al-Lāwī that:

Moreover, al-Lāwī writes that:

We can assume that these adjectivesFootnote ¹⁰⁸ are not a simple gloss of al-Lāwī but were in the original text. Averroes' attribution of the origin of the proof to theologians is absent from al-Miklātī's text, which is not surprising as he intends to dismiss Avicenna's proof.

There is another place where we seem to find all the elements of our text, and that is the beginning of al-Lāwī's dissertation. At this point, he is not presenting Averroes' treatise but talking in his own name. He explains the two motives of his study: first the excellency of its object, second, the divergences amongst philosophers on these questions. To illustrate these divergences, he presents Aristotle's proof and method and compares them to those of later philosophers such as Alexander, Themistius, al-Fārābī and Avicenna. This presentation, which is too long for us to reproduce in its entirety here, begins thus: “Indeed, when, in Book VIII of his Physics, the Philosopher wanted to establish the existence of the First Mover […]”.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Follows the development of Aristotle's proof which ends in the establishment of a First Mover that is eternal and is neither a body nor a bodily force. This he establishes in his Physics and does not go any further. According to al-Lāwī, this would have been excusable had it been due to the science in which the examination took place, i.e. physical science. But, al-Lāwī adds, “however we note that not even in Book Λ of his Metaphysics, which was the most appropriate place to establish the existence of the First Cause, did [Aristotle] rise above the First Mover. Indeed, in this treatise, he considers as given the existence of the First Mover, demonstrated in Physics”.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Further on, about Avicenna, he writes: “When discussing the Necessary Being, i.e. the First Cause, Avicenna demonstrates, using general premises, drawn from the nature of being, that it is an existent through itself, not through another”.Footnote ¹¹¹ Almost all the elements of our text are present here: the general/common premises, the divergence between Aristotle and Avicenna on the science in which the proof must take place and most importantly the double reference to Book VIII of Physics and Book Λ of Metaphysics which was absent from Averroes' other works. Now al-Lāwī (second third of the thirteenth century) cannot be al-Miklātī's source and it is very unlikely that al-Miklātī is al-Lāwī's source, so al-Miklātī and al-Lāwī must have a common source which we do not dispose of: the treatise in question. Al-Lāwī holds Averroes in high esteem as appears from the laudatory remarks he makes of himFootnote ¹¹² and considers him as a genuine defender of Aristotle and therefore probably a faithful source on the Philosopher,Footnote ¹¹³ hence it is not surprising that he would use Averroes' words to describe Aristotle's method. Concerning Avicenna, as I have already noted, the characterisation of the premises as general can be taken as an objective description and is only a criticism for those who refuse the metaphysical nature of the proof.Footnote ¹¹⁴

Thus, although the treatise is not extant and therefore there can be no absolute certainty that this treatise is al-Miklātī's source, the similarities we have noticed strongly support this hypothesis. Moreover it is not unlikely that al-Miklātī would have been interested in the treatise On the Prime Mover both because of its subject – the proof of the existence of God – and because of its nature and size.

3. The restitution of Avicenna's doctrine: content and origin

Let us now examine what directly follows the paragraph where, if I am right, al-Miklātī – following Averroes' lost treatise – opposes Avicenna to Aristotle. It is a restitution of Avicenna's doctrine, which is then criticised by al-Miklātī. Al-Lāwī informs us that Averroes started his treatise by such a restitution: “In that treatise of his Averroes opens the discussion by reproducing some of Avicenna's words on this problem”.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Could this restitution be the one Averroes makes in the lost treatise? This is what al-Miklātī writes:

What is al-Miklātī's source for this account? That it is Averroes and not Avicenna himself or another intermediary is suggested by some differences between this account of Avicenna's doctrine and what he actually professes in his works, differences which correspond to Averroes' “misunderstanding”Footnote ¹²¹ of Avicenna's proof as it appears in his works.

One first difference lies in the fact that, according to what al-Miklātī writes, Avicenna considers the primary distinction of beings to be a distinction between the uncaused and the caused. The distinction between ‘necessary’ and ‘possible’ comes second, and this division is presented as an equivalent, a different nomination, of that primary division. Two things can be noted: first, the order of the distinctions, second, the equivalence drawn between them.

Indeed, in most of Avicenna's works, things are presented the other way round: first, existents are divided into necessary existents and possible existents, or – as we shall see shortly – into a necessary existent through itself and necessary existents through another, and then, the necessary existent through itself is shown to have no cause, whereas the possible existent through itself, necessary through another, has a cause. For instance this is what can be read in his al-Ḥikma al-ʿarūḍiyya:

and in the Ilāhiyyāt of his Šifāʾ:

Moreover, what appears in our text to be obvious, i.e. the equivalence between the terms of the two distinctions, is not always presented in this way by Avicenna. As Wisnovsky remarks, “in some texts, such as the Mabdaʾ wa-maʿād, Avicenna felt that the link between being possible of existence and being caused was so intuitive that he did not need to appeal to an argument for compositeness to forge that link. In other texts, such as the Ḥikma ʿarūḍiyya and the Ilāhiyyāt of the Šifāʾ, he felt the need to buttress that intuition with an argument for compositeness.”Footnote ¹²⁴

One might argue that the distinction between the uncaused and the caused is the actual intention and meaning of Avicenna's division of beings into necessary and possible. But, even if this were true, the priority in the presentation is nevertheless paramount, for – as shown by the references to the mind and to the permissibility in the mind of making the distinction – the distinction between necessary and possible is for Avicenna a distinction between primary concepts that “are imprinted in the soul in a primary way”Footnote ¹²⁵ so that the distinction itself may seem primary to him, whereas this is not true of causality. That causedness and uncausedness can be the only clear meanings of possibility and necessity is however affirmed by al-Ġazālī: “The terms ‘possible’ and ‘necessary’ are obscure, unless one understands by ‘necessary’ that which has no cause for its existence and by ‘possible’ that which has a cause for its existence”Footnote ¹²⁶ and this is taken up by Averroes in his criticism of the body of the proof.Footnote ¹²⁷ Averroes will indeed object to the claim of evidence of the distinction between necessary and possible when understood as a distinction between what has no cause and what has a cause.Footnote ¹²⁸

There is however one text written by Avicenna which apparently contradicts what I have just said as the first distinction made in it is that between what has a cause and what has none. This is a short epistle on the affirmation of God's unity (al-tawḥīd), known as al-Risāla al-ʿaršiyya.Footnote ¹²⁹ Its first section establishes a Necessary Existent. This is how it begins:

One may wonder to what extent this epistle questions what has been deduced from the analysis of Avicenna's major works. The inversion of the order of the distinctions can perhaps be accounted for by the nature of the epistle and of the addressee. But this goes beyond the object of this article. What we need to establish is whether this text can be al-Miklātī's direct source. This seems very unlikely, for the rest of the epistle does not correspond to our text. Moreover, there is yet another difference between al-Miklātī's account and Avicenna's theory which points less ambiguously towards Averroes. That it might be one of Averroes' sources is a completely different question which again cannot be addressed here.

The second difference concerns Averroes' understanding of Avicenna's division of beings. Indeed Avicenna's distinction between necessary and possible when considered independently of concrete existence is a conceptual distinction between what cannot be thought not to exist without implying a contradiction and what can be thought to exist or not to exist without any contradiction following either of the suppositions.Footnote ¹³¹ When applied to existents outside the soul, the distinction is made more precise in two different ways: either the necessary is subdivided into necessary through itself and necessary through another, this latter is then shown to be possible through itselfFootnote ¹³²; or the precision “through itself” is added and the division is then between the necessary through itself and the possible through itself, whereupon it is specified that the possible through itself can exist in actual fact only when rendered necessary through another, namely its cause.Footnote ¹³³ In both cases, the result is a two-fold division of existents: the Necessary Existent through Himself which is God and the existents necessary through another, possible through themselves. The latter group includes all existents except God, i.e. both sublunary existents submitted to generation and corruption and eternal supralunary existents. Avicenna distinguishes inside this group between existents that are necessary through another perpetually (dāʾiman) and those that are necessary through another at one time and not at another.Footnote ¹³⁴ Thus, we end up with a three-fold division of existents: necessary through itself (God); possible through itself, necessary through another perpetually (supralunary beings); possible through itself, necessary through another at one time (sublunary beings). But the main separation is between God and the rest of existents. Averroes admits this three-fold division but, as an Aristotelian, cannot accept to place the main separation between God and the rest, for the main separation, for Averroes, is between the supralunary and the sublunary world.Footnote ¹³⁵ Averroes has a clear conception of Avicenna's division and of its implications but misunderstands or chooses to misunderstand Avicenna's formulations. He believes that, when Avicenna talks of the “necessary through another possible through itself”, he means the supralunary existents, as opposed to the possible existents which are not necessary through another: the sublunary existents.Footnote ¹³⁶ In the TT, the three-fold division is not stated in an explicit wayFootnote ¹³⁷ but it is clear that the necessary through another is understood by him as designating the heavens. In the eighth discussion, p. 394, he writes: “And the thing moved by this movement [i.e. the movement which is partly eternal, partly temporal] is what Avicenna calls ‘the existence necessary through another’, and this ‘necessary through another’ must be a body everlastingly moved” and a little further, p. 395: “What led Avicenna to this division was that he believed that the body of the heavens was essentially necessary through another, possible by itself”. We find the same idea in the tenth discussion, p. 418:

There is one text where the division of possible existents into those that are necessary through another and those that are possible through another, namely their agent, is stated by Averroes and attributed to Avicenna:

Let us come back to our text. What we have here is exactly this “erroneous” restitution of Avicenna's division of beings, exposed here in the most explicit way:

It makes no sense for Avicenna to talk of a concrete existent that is possible through another. That an existent is possible through itself means that, when it is considered in itself, independently from its relation to another, it can be thought either to exist or not to exist. When considered in relation to another – its cause –, the existent is either necessary when this other is present, or impossible when it is absent.

All these elements are significant clues in favour of the hypothesis that Averroes is al-Miklātī's source. However, Averroes and al-Miklātī could also have a common source, either direct – Avicenna himself – or indirect – an Avicennian or anti-Avicennian intermediary. The question of the reception of Avicenna's works and doctrines in the Andalusian world is very complex and calls for further study. In the present state of knowledge on the matter, such an alternative theory cannot be totally overruled. My intention in what precedes has been to produce some arguments in favour of the first explanation. If we admit – at least as a hypothesis – that Averroes is indeed al-Miklātī's source, we still need to determine if the work al-Miklātī is reading and copying is the lost treatise.

One first argument in favour of this hypothesis is a negative one: this restitution can be found nowhere in Averroes' extant works. We find nothing of the sort in the TT where Avicenna's proof is more alluded to or characterisedFootnote ¹⁴⁰ than exposed and developed at length and for itself. The same can be said of the Epitome on Metaphysics. Moreover, al-Miklātī introduces his presentation of Avicenna's doctrine with these words: “We shall now present, succinctly [ʿalā īğāz], what Avicenna says”. And, as quoted above, this is what, according to Wolfson's translation from the Hebrew, al-Lāwī writes about Averroes' treatise: “In that treatise of his Averroes opens the discussion by reproducing some of Avicenna's words on this problem”.Footnote ¹⁴¹ The French translation from the Arabic reads: “Abū al-Walīd commence son opuscule en résumant certains textes d'Abū ʿAlī sur la question”.Footnote ¹⁴² I was not able to check the Hebrew and the Arabic behind the translations “some of Avicenna's words” and “en résumant” but it is not unlikely that ʿalā īğāz refers to the same idea. Another sign can be seen in a remark made by al-Lāwī: “We do not consider that we can be content here with the usual speculative examination concerning this object of research. It is indeed [commonly] said that if these two existents have necessary existence in common, and yet differ at the same time on another point, [the result] is necessarily composition, which is absurd”.Footnote ¹⁴³ For this reason, he gives a different proof of the impossibility of two necessary existents. This “usual speculative examination” is very close to the argumentation attributed to Avicenna by al-Miklātī:

Al-Lāwī's remark might be an allusion to Averroes' restitution of Avicenna's proof. But this raises the following question: where does Averroes find such a formulation of the proof? For the proof of the uniqueness of God is not expressed in such a concise way in Avicenna's works.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ The closest to our text is its formulation in the Nağāt, although the reference to discourse does not appear in our text:

Other parts of our text also seem to find no strict equivalent in Avicenna's works though they do not contradict his doctrine.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ This seems to indicate either that Averroes possessed a text that has since been lost, or, on the contrary, that Averroes did not have the whole of Avicenna's works and therefore attempted to reconstruct a coherent argumentation from the different – possibly incomplete – texts or accounts he had of Avicenna's proof, supplying it with arguments when it seemed to lack consistency.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ What al-Lāwī says – from what can be read in the French translation – gives support to the second hypothesis: Averroes, according to him, summarized Avicenna's doctrine from various texts. Averroes might have wanted to give a unified and purified version of Avicenna's proof, regardless of the divergences he might have noticed between his different works, so as to enable him to make a univocal and consistent criticism.

This criticism can also offer an additional sign in favour of the identification of this text with Averroes' restitution in the treatise On the Prime Mover, for as al-Lāwī notes: this treatise is made up of two parts, the first one is devoted to the criticism of the proof, the second one to the refutation of Avicenna's motive for this special proof: his belief in the separation between the First Mover and the First Principle. To achieve this refutation, Averroes will show that the first principle – which he identifies with the first mover – is not an efficient cause but a formal and final cause: “In his endeavor to contradict this view and to prove that the First Principle is identical with the First Mover, Averroes starts out by showing that the First Principle is not the efficient cause of anything inferior to it but is its cause only by way of form”.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ In order to criticise this precise point one would first need to present Avicenna's doctrine which states that the Necessary Existent is an efficient cause, as is the case in our text. Al-Miklātī on the other hand does not deny the causal efficiency of God – although, according to him, God is a voluntary and not a necessary agent. For the purpose of his own refutation, al-Miklātī could have presented Avicenna's proof independently from the discussion of the causes. This point is not crucial in al-Miklātī's criticism, and he will simply deny that Avicenna is able to demonstrate such a point: “his assertion that the Necessary Existent through Himself cannot be a matter nor a form nor an end is false [kalām bāṭil] because, to deny each of these [eventualities], [Avicenna] confined himself to allegations devoid of demonstration”.Footnote ¹⁵⁰

About al-Miklātī's criticism, one final remark can be made. Al-Lāwī informs us that Averroes addresses two kinds of criticisms: a material one against the premisses of Avicenna's proof and a formal one which shows that, even if the premisses were admitted, the proof would not attain its goal for it is not demonstrative.Footnote ¹⁵¹ In a similar way, al-Miklātī criticises both the content and the form of Avicenna's proof. First he rejects Avicenna's premises: he denies the validity of the division of possible existents into existents that are possible through themselves, necessary through another, and existents that are possible both through themselves and through another. Indeed, this division enables Avicenna to reserve temporal adventicity to the second group of possible existents, the first group being eternal and therefore perpetually advented, whereas al-Miklātī believes he has demonstrated that all possible existents are adventice, which means – for the theologian that he is – that all possible existents come to existence from non-existence and in time. Then he restates some of Avicenna's affirmations and denies that he has produced a demonstration of them. Finally, in conclusion, he repeats what he had already concluded a few pages earlier (p.163): that even if, for the sake of discussion (ğadalan), he admitted that Avicenna had succeeded in establishing an agent necessarily existent through itself, this would still be incompatible with the philosopher's affirmation of the eternity of the world and of some of the existents that constitute it. Not surprisingly, Averroes and al-Miklātī's material criticisms have nothing in common for their aims are opposed. It is nevertheless interesting to note that Averroes and al-Miklātī are both encumbered by the group of existents that are said to be “possible through themselves, necessary through another” and which correspond – according to Averroes' interpretation – to the intermediary group of the eternal caused existents. But, whereas Averroes rejects the possible nature of these necessary existents,Footnote ¹⁵² al-Miklātī refuses the necessity – in the sense of eternity – of these possible existents, and shows that as long as they are held to be so, it cannot be proved that God is their producer.

All this put together seems to provide sufficient evidence to justify if not the certainty, at least the high probability of the hypothesis that Averroes' treatise On the Prime Mover is the source from which al-Miklātī derives this passage.