Twenty Chapters

The partially surviving Twenty Chapters (ʻIshrūn maqālāt) by al-Muqammiṣ is one of the earliest-known kalām (rationalist theology) treatises. It opens with a consideration of epistemology and then turns to creation, divine unity, and theodicy. The work, written in Judeo-Arabic, was often cited by Karaite and Rabbanite authors, although they do not appear to have had direct access to it. Very little of it is specifically Jewish in content. These excerpts consider two Aristotelian concepts: substance (the thing itself) and accident (an attribute of a thing). Based on “intuitive knowledge,” al-Muqammiṣ argues against those who deny that the universe is only substance and that accidents (in the Aristotelian sense) do not exist. This is important because elsewhere he argues that the world was created ex nihilo based in part on the existence of accidents, which are temporary states.