and it is” [al-Baqarah 2:117]? Created existence thus appeared through letters. For this reason al-Tirmidhi called it the science of the saints. For this reason, too, those who denied that a single letter could act did so: they saw that, despite divine power, no single letter alone came in the bringing into existence. Rather, there came three letters: one hidden letter and two manifest letters when what comes into being is one.
If there is more than one, three letters appear. These are the sciences of the men mentioned in this chapter. Most practitioners of this science constructed a table for it, but erred in it, and it was not correct. I do not know whether they did this deliberately, to leave people in blindness concerning this science, or whether they were ignorant of it and later practitioners followed the course of their predecessors. The pupil of Jaʿfar al-Sadiq and others held this view. This is the table concerning the natures of the letters.
Notes
Translator’s note TN762-1: The letter counts are preserved as stated, including the hidden letter and the change from one generated thing to more than one. No table follows the announcement in the supplied page text; the next page begins by describing its columns. A table has therefore not been reconstructed.
