The Concept of Knowledge According to al-Kirmānī

Excerpt:
The non-physical existents by their nature are bāṭin, or hidden, and they cannot be perceived by the senses, rather their knowledge is acquired through the intellect and therefore, they are intelligibles. Since their grasp or comprehension does not depend on perception which is common among people, but on the intellectual capacity of people in which they differ according to their individual acquisition of knowledge, therefore, there is a difference between people in their grasp of knowledge. Al-Kirmānī thus stresses that in the comprehension of the physical or external things, people are equal in their means, but in non-physical or internal things, they differ according to their acquisition. Al-Kirmānī, in order to illustrate this, uses the example of the utterance ‘Bism Allāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm’. He says that when the uvulae and tongues are moved to pronounce it and the voice is raised, because the voice is perceptible, all those who have sound senses can participate equally in hearing it, but as for its meaning, i.e. the exegesis and taʾwīl, because it is imperceptible, it cannot be participated in equally by all those who have sound senses, since the comprehension of the meaning is the prerogative of those who have acquired knowledge or the hidden aspect of things.

This excerpt has been taken from page 8.