then either he maintains that these parts are infinite in number while actually existing, as al-Nazzām holds. On this basis, al-Nazzām committed himself to the view that the zāfir does not align with the parts beneath it, lest something infinite lie beneath something finite. People thus began saying: “The marvels of speculative theology are al-Nazzām’s leap ن, Abū Hāshim’s states, and al-Ashʿarī’s acquisition.” Their discussions of these matters are too extensive to recount;

or he maintains that division without limit is possible in bodies, as philosophers such as Ibn Sīnā and others like him hold.

Since the invalidity of both positions is self-evident—the position of those who affirm something whose parts cannot be distinguished from one another, and that of those who affirm something divisible without limit ن—some eminent speculative thinkers suspended judgment on the matter. These included Abū al-Husayn al-Basrī, Abū al-Maʿālī al-Juwaynī in some of his books, and Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Rāzī in his Nihāya.

Those who affirmed neither the possibility of division without limit nor the existence of something whose parts cannot be distinguished from one another escaped both difficulties ن. They said that, when it becomes very small, it transforms into something else, although its parts would remain distinguishable from one another if it continued to exist.

In short, rejecting both positions is the view of groups—the view of many groups—among speculative thinkers: the Kullābiyya, the Karrāmiyya, and indeed the Hāshimiyya, the Najjāriyya, the Dirāriyya, and others.