11. Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Yahya al-`Attar said, on the authority of his father, on the authority of Ahmad ibn Muhammad, on the authority of al-Husayn ibn Sa`id, on the authority of alQasim ibn Muhammad, on the authority of `Abd al-Samad ibn Bashir, on the authority of Fudayl ibn Sukkarah that I asked Abu Ja`far al-Baqir : May I be taken as your ransom! I hope that you can tech me. Prior to creation, did Allah, may His Remembrance be Exalted, know that He was One? Your followers have a dispute regarding this issue. Some of them say: “The Blessed and Exalted surely knew that He was alone before He created anything from His Creation/” While others say: “Verily, the meaning of knowing is doing. Therefore, He knows today that there was no one other than Him before He created the thngs.” And they say: “If we prove that He has always known that ere was none but Him, then we have proved that there was other than Him in sempiternity [azaliyyah]. If you could be so kind, O my Master, to teach me whether the truth is other than this. Thus, he wrote: “Allah, the Exalted, has always been All-Knowing, Blessed and Exalted be His Remembrance.”