disbelievers, to whom hidden matters are sometimes disclosed, and to some soothsayers, whom devils inform about certain things. The states experienced by the people of religious innovation belong to this category.

Some of these people are carried by devils, who fly with them through the air. Some dance in the air. Others are possessed by a devil, so that they feel neither blows nor fire when thrown into it. Yet the fire does not become cool or safe for them, for that happens only to those whose states come from the Most Merciful. Those who perform “signs”—corrupt practices involving lādhan, saffron, rosewater, and other substances—belong to this group. Most of them practise fraudulent deception, while their elite experience satanic states. There is no friend of Allah among them; rather, they are brethren of the devils, of the same kind as the Tatars.

There are no forty men residing on Mount Lebanon or elsewhere in this manner, nor are there people who remain perpetually hidden from human sight. The hadith stating that the abdāl (replacements) number forty men is weak. Allah’s friends who are mindful of Him increase or decrease in number according to the prevalence or scarcity of faith and mindfulness of Allah. At the beginning of Islam, they numbered fewer than forty; when Islam spread, they became more numerous than that.

As for traversing great distances, this happens to some righteous people and also to some brethren of the devils. It is not among the greatest miraculous gifts; rather, the one who