took account of actual properties of causes and proofs: complete sufficiency or the mere capacity to produce a result. Their considerations were therefore closer to truth and reason than those of these others, who relied on nothing but arbitrary stipulation. For this reason, knowledgeable people of sound judgment described their logic as a conventional system devised by a Greek man, which rational people do not need.
Nor does rational people’s pursuit of knowledge depend on it, any more than it depends on using their vocabulary, such as fīlāsūfiyā (philosophy), sūfistīqā (sophistics), anūlūtīqā (analytics), athūlūjiyā (theology), qātīghūriyās (categories), and other terms with which they express their meanings. No one claims that all other rational people need this language—especially those whom Allah has honoured with the noblest of languages, one that combines the highest degrees of eloquence and conveys what minds conceive in the fewest words and with the fullest clarity.
This was among the arguments Abū Saʿīd al-Sīrāfī advanced in his celebrated debate with the philosopher Mattā, when Mattā began praising logic and claiming that rational people needed it. Abū Saʿīd replied that there was no need for it, and that what was needed was to learn Arabic. Meanings are naturally accessible to reason and require no special convention, unlike the language just mentioned, which is needed to understand the meanings one is required to know and must therefore be learned. Hence, learning the Arabic upon which understanding the Quran and hadith depends is a collective obligation, unlike logic.