 Avicenna explains the creation of the world with an idea he adopted from Arabic Neo-Platonic writings: emanation, in Arabic fayḍ (literally “flow”; cf. the Latin fluxus; Hasnawi 1990), which, like the Greek aporrein originally indicated the flow of water from a source. By virtue of an act of thought which is outside time and totally auto-reflective—the First Principle is Itself intelligence, as well as subject and object of intellection: ʿaql, ʿāqil and maʿqūl (Ilāhiyyāt, VIII, 6, 357, 3–12; cf. Arist., Metaph., XII (Λ) 7, 9)—a thinking entity is derived from the First Principle: an intellect or intelligence (ʿaql) which is both the objectification of the intellection of the Principle and an active subject of thought. To the extent that is possible for a caused entity (which is in itself relative), this first emanated intelligence is “one” (“from the one, insofar as it is one, comes only one”: ex uno non fit nisi unum; Ilāhiyyāt, IX, 4, 405, 13–14; cf. IX, 5, 411, 1, 5–6; Išārāt, III, ed. Dunyā, 95–102; cf. Taʿlīqāt, 97, 12–13). Nevertheless, unlike the Principle, which is absolutely simple, this first caused intelligence is already a complex existence. The reason for its existence lies in fact not only in itself—as in the case of the First Principle—but in itself (in its possibility) and in the First Principle’s act of thinking, which makes it necessary: this first created intelligence is therefore twofold.