their specialized terminology a nawʿ (species), whereas what the jurists themselves designate as a jins (genus) is simply the sense current in everyday Arabic. The jurists speak in this vein when they say, for example: “If he marries her for an unspecified slave, she is entitled to receive a slave from the middle rank up to the highest of the ajnās (genera), such as a Turk and the like; the lowest rank is a Nubian, and the middle (1) a Byzantine (Greek) and the like.” Likewise, in their view the horse and the camel fall under different ajnās, so here they have called “genus” what, in the chapter on usury, they had called a “species.”

Some grammarians say, “The kalima (word) is an ism jins (generic term) beneath which lie three anwāʿ (species): the noun, the verb, and the particle.” According to this convention, then, the word jins is broader in scope than nawʿ.

To sum up: whenever these scholars wish to distinguish between a general designation and a particular one, they assign jins to the general and nawʿ to the particular. When, however, they are dealing with terms that are equal in breadth and restriction, they treat nawʿ and jins as interchangeable, just as they do with ṣinf (class), ḍarb (kind), and the like. This is precisely the convention we had in mind when we said that “the one” is divided into “one by species” and “one by person”; for what is one by species, genus, kind, or class is not the same as what is one by concrete person or individual entity. Thus, when someone says “one in essence,” he may intend the specific, designated essence—that is, the concrete individual—or he may intend unity in species, genus, or class. A person must therefore distinguish in this field between the various technical usages and customary modes of speech, for the equivocation that arises from divergent conventions has led many groups of people into confusion. Such ambiguity born of differing terminologies is far-reaching in discussion. Once this is understood, the thing they have termed “one”