So, too, a Muslim sage in his book on the technical expressions (اصطلاحات) used in the science of divinity (علم اْلفقه) writes thus:—

'By the "first self-manifestation" they mean the unit ¹ from which proceed oneness and unity; and it (i.e. the unit) is the first of the grades of the essence and the first of its connexions, and they are the first perception, because the relation of the outward and the inward is that of ya to waw. By the "first self-manifestation" is denoted the scientific (noetic?) essential relation, it being noticed that its differentiation from the essence is a relative and not a real differentiation. But, indeed, the unit is the first of the self-manifestations of the essence, since it is not right that beyond it aught but the unknown and the absolute should be conceived of. The "second self-manifestation" is the grade of the essence, that is to say the grade in which things become evident with a scientific evidence and differentiation; and therefore this court is called "the court of ideals". And this second self-manifestation is the image of the first self-manifestation, and that because in the first self-manifestation the negation of plurality and so of differentiation and variation is necessary, because the first manifestation is the true reality of the unit, negativing all that; although it (I mean the unit),

because it includes the relations and the connexions of the unity which are unending, has its self-manifestations eternal. Hence it is necessary that the self-manifestation which is capable of plurality (which plurality is the form of the adumbrations of the connexions included in the unit) should be a second self-manifestation to it. That, therefore, is the second self-manifestation undoubtedly. Accordingly all the divine names ( = attributes), which are finite in effect and action, and all the circumstances and connexions, are included in the unit; and are, therefore, an unique category; and indeed (the latter) is completed and differentiated in this second self-manifestation, which is styled the second degree: and this degree is styled the divine degree, and the merciful soul, and the world of ideals, and the court of conservation, and the court of eternal knowledge, and the court of blindness, and the reality of perfect humanity, and the court of contingency. This second self-manifestation, therefore, is all that, according to the stable connexions within it, together with the uniqueness itself. But its being styled the second degree is because it is the form of the first self-manifestation, which is the degree of the Most Holy Essence. Moreover, as to its being styled the divine degree, that is, when one distinguishes it from being the second unveiling, visibility. And in it is the source of all the divine names [= attributes], which the universal name embraces, and it is the name of God Most