الأشباح (حرفيًا: "الهياكل")، وفيها تحدث علي عن خلق الكون

[3] The eloquence with which Amīr al-mu’minīn has thrown on Allāh’s attributes of knowledge and the sublime words in which he has pictured the allengrossing quality of His knowledge cannot but impress the mind of the most die-hard opponent. Thus, Ibn Abi’l-Ḥadīd has written : If Aristotle, who believed that Allāh is only aware of the universe and not of its particulars, had heard this speech, his heart too would have inclined, his hair would have stood on end and his thinking would have undergone a dramatic change. Do you not see the brightness, force, vehemence, sublimity, glory, seriousness and ripeness of this speech? Besides these qualities, there is sweetness, colourfulness, delicacy and smoothness in it. I have not found any utterance similar to it. Of course, if there is any utterance matching it, that can be the word of Allāh only. And there is no wonder in it, because he is an off-shoot of the same tree (of the Prophet Ibrahim, who set up the Unity of Allāh), a diversion of the same river and a reflection of the same light. (Sharḥ Nahj al-balāghah, vol.7, pp.23-24) Those who regard Allāh to possess only over-all knowledge argue that since details undergo changes, to believe Him to have knowledge of the changing details would necessitate changes in His knowledge but since knowledge is the same as His Being, His Being would have to be regarded as the object of change the result of which would be that He would have to be taken as having come into existence. In this way He would lose the attribute of being from ever. This is a very deceptive fallacy because changes in the object of knowledge can lead to changes in the knower only when it is assumed that the knower does not already possess knowledge of these changes. But since all the forms of change and alteration are crystal clear before Him there is no reason that with the changes in the objects of knowledge He too should be regarded changeable, although really this change is confined to the object of knowledge and does not affect knowledge in itself.