 In the ninth century, many mutakallimūn were persuaded by al-Ashʿarī (874–936) that Muʿtazilite accounts of human action incorrectly limit divine power. According to al-Ashʿarī, the doctrine of divine power requires that God be in complete control of the production of all atoms and accidents. For this reason, he rejected the Muʿtazilite view that human agents create or generate certain accidents. Al-Ashʿarī developed a rival position on human action, whose core doctrine is divine creation of the powers by which human beings perform their actions (Frank 1966). Suppose, again, that I intentionally strike you and that, as a result, you fall into a coma. As al-Ashʿarī sees it, this occurs by God creating in me a power through which I generate your falling into a coma. This power is a power for a specific action, namely, my striking you in a particular way at a particular time. It is an accident that belongs to me only temporarily. Though the power is in me, God is in complete control of what happens, since he elects to create the power. Al-Ashʿarī and his followers used the term kasb (acquisition) to designate this type of power. In his treatise On Power, al-Ghazālī (1056–1111) explains the doctrine of acquisition as a middle position between that of the determinists, who deny that created things have power, and that of the Muʿtazilites, who hold that humanity produces certain accidents. Al-Ghazālī rejects the determinist position on the ground that it cannot account for the difference between a deliberate human action and an involuntary one, such as a bodily tremor. And he also rejects the Muʿtazilite position; central to his argument against them is an appeal to the pervasiveness of divine power. On the basis of his analysis of these rival positions, al-Ghazālī draws two conclusions. First, it must be possible for two possessors of power, a human being and God, to be related to the same object of power. Second, the power possessed by the human being cannot be causally related to the object of power because this would conflict with the pervasiveness of divine power. He links these conclusions to the doctrine of acquisition. As he sees it, this doctrine attributes created power to humanity, but it also maintains that the relationship between this created power and its object is non-causal (al-Ghazālī AIFI; McGinnis and Reisman 2007: 254–265; Marmura 1994). This account of acquisition suggests that God alone has causal power.