possess the familiarity with the statements of the early generations and the imams on this subject that the imams of the Sunnah possessed, even if he knows the texts of the two Sahīh collections and other works.

This describes Abū Muhammad ibn Hazm, Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī, Judge Abū Bakr ibn al-ʿArabī, and others like them.

Bishr al-Marīsī, Muhammad ibn Shujāʿ al-Thaljī, and others like them also belong to this category.

A third category consists of people who heard hadiths and transmitted reports and held the way of the early generations in high esteem.

They shared some of the remaining foundational tenets of the Jahmī speculative theologians, but lacked the expertise in the Quran, hadith, and transmitted reports possessed by the imams of the Sunnah and hadith—both in their knowledge and ability to distinguish sound reports from weak ones, and in their understanding of their meanings.

They believed some of the rational premises of the Jahmī negationists to be sound and perceived a conflict between those premises and the transmitted texts.

This describes Abū Bakr ibn Fūrak, Judge Abū Yaʿlā, Ibn ʿAqīl, and others like them.