The error here stems from the fact that al-Shahrastānī, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, al-Āmidī, and other later writers assumed that the theologians possessed no proof to negate the existence of these things, and that they had advanced no argument against them. Matters, however, are not as they supposed. Leading dialecticians—such as Imām al-Ḥaramayn, Abū al-Wafāʾ Ibn ʿAqīl, and, before them, al-Qāḍī Abū Bakr, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī, and Abū