(In this sermon he describes the beginning of the creation of the heavens and the earth and the creation of Adam.) All praise is for Allah, whose essence the tongues of speakers can never reach, whose blessings those who count can never enumerate, whose right those who strive can never fully discharge. Lofty ambitions cannot attain Him, nor can the depths of intellect fathom Him. There is no defined limit to the perfection of His essence: no wording can encompass His praise, no beginning can be assigned to Him to be numbered, and no end-point to His duration that can be reached. He brought forth the creatures by His power, set the winds in motion by His mercy, and fixed the shaking earth with the pegs of mountains. The beginning of religion is knowledge of Him; the perfection of knowledge is to affirm Him; the perfection of affirmation is tawḥīd (His oneness); the perfection of tawḥīd is to declare Him free of all attributes and to be sincere to Him; and the perfection of tanzīh and ikhlāṣ is to negate attributes from Him. For every attribute testifies that it is other than the One described, and every described thing testifies that it is other than the attribute. Thus, whoever asserts attributes besides His essence has in fact taken another with Him; whoever takes another with Him has divided Him; whoever divides Him has made Him composite; whoever holds Him to be composite is ignorant of Him; whoever is ignorant of Him points towards Him; and whoever points towards Him limits Him; and whoever limits Him numbers Him among other things. He is, yet not as something that came to be after non‑existence. He is with everything, not through physical contact; and He is apart from everything, not through spatial separation. He is an agent, but not through motions and instruments. He was seeing even when there was nothing in creation to be seen. He is One, not in the sense that He needs a companion with whom He may be intimate and from whose loss He would be distressed. Then he describes how Allah created the vast expanse of air and space, the surging waters, the violent winds, and from the foam of the seething ocean He fashioned the seven heavens: the lowest like a restrained wave, the highest as a protected roof, adorned with stars and shining lamps and the radiant moon. He speaks of the angels in prostration and in bowing, who never tire; who are not overtaken by sleep, forgetfulness, or weariness; the bearers of the Throne whose shoulders are aligned with its pillars, whose wings are folded beneath it, veiled from creation by curtains of might and veils of power. Then he turns to the creation of Adam: how Allah gathered soil from hard and soft, sweet and salty ground; moistened it until it became pure and refined; kneaded it until it became sticky clay; shaped from it a form with joints and limbs; left it until it hardened and rang like earthenware; then breathed into it His spirit, and it stood a human being endowed with powers of intellect, able to distinguish truth from falsehood, and to perceive diverse tastes, smells, colours and natures. He mentions Adam’s trial, the command to the angels to prostrate, Iblīs’ arrogance and refusal, his being granted respite as a means of completing the test of mankind, Adam’s dwelling in the Garden, the deception of Shayṭān, Adam’s slip, his repentance and Allah’s teaching him words, then his descent to the abode of trial and propagation of offspring. Finally he recounts the sending of successive prophets, the renewal of the covenant of fiṭrah, the mission of Muḥammad (ﷺ) to fulfill the covenant and complete prophethood, the perfection and explanation of the Qur’an with its lawful and unlawful, its firm and ambiguous, its abrogating and abrogated, and he concludes with the obligation of Ḥajj to the Sacred House, its role as the qiblah of the people, a symbol of their humility before His majesty and of their acknowledgment of His greatness.