and thus misled many people with his words. Men from among the followers of Abū Hanīfa and the followers of ‘Amr ibn ‘Ubayd in Basra adopted his teachings, and he established the religion of the Jahmiyyah.

[Ibn Taymiyyah’s commentary]

I say:

The Sumanis mentioned in Imam Ahmad’s account of Jahm’s debate are those whom writers on religious doctrines describe as rejecting all knowledge beyond sensory perception. Thus they asked Jahm:

“Have you come to know Him through any of the five senses?”

He replied, “No.”

They said, “Then how do you know that He is God?”

They acknowledge only what is perceptible to the senses. They do not mean that a person knows only what he himself has perceived; rather, they affirm only what people can perceive through their senses in this world.

These people resemble the negationist, eternalist naturalists among the Greek philosophers and others like them, who deny any existence beyond what people observe and perceive: the existence of the celestial spheres and everything within them.

These are the people whose view Ibn Sīnā mentions in his al-Ishārāt (Pointers), saying:

“This perceptible thing exists by virtue of itself and is necessary in itself. Yet if you recall what was said about the condition that the Necessary Existent must satisfy, you will not find this perceptible thing to be necessarily existent.”

This is the view that Pharaoh openly proclaimed, and, on close examination, it is also what the view of the adherents of the doctrine of unity amounts to.

Yet these people believe that they affirm the Creator, and that His existence