Likewise, when Abū al-Maʿālī says, “The adherents of truth said,” he habitually means his own associates. Many people speak this way; it amounts to someone expressing his own belief, since anyone can describe his own group in these terms.

The point is that he attributed the view that knowledge is attained through inference to the majority of his own associates, not to the majority of Muslims. As for his opening statement, “Most of the people of the qiblah hold this view,” he means the speculative theologians whom he regards as the scholars among the people of the qiblah, such as his own associates, the Muʿtazilah, and others like them. Unless understood in this sense, his statement would be an outright falsehood. For neither he nor anyone else can transmit the statement he has cited, whether verbatim or in substance, from any imam of the Muslims—whether a leader in learning or in worship—or from any of the early generations of this community, or from anyone universally held in good repute within it. Rather, the statements of all these figures are explicit in