understanding its meanings, or knowing which doctrines agree with it or contradict it, and how it explains their questions and proofs. These are those among Quran reciters, hadith scholars, and others who confine themselves to outward forms. These two groups resemble a student of jurisprudence who does not know hadith, or a student of hadith who does not understand its jurisprudence. Likewise, there is the speculative theologian who does not reflect upon the Quran, or the reciter who cannot distinguish, through the Quran, the various kinds of true and false discourse. These, then, are two groups concerned with knowledge.

The “third” group consists of people who abandoned listening to it with their hearts, delighting in it, responding inwardly to its stirring influence, savoring its sweetness, and experiencing its flavor. Instead, they turned to listening to other sounds: poetry or musical entertainments drawn from the sounds of the Sabians or Christians, or things derived from these, akin to them, or of a similar kind. These are the deviant Sufis and those who profess spiritual poverty.

Opposite them are people who recite it aloud and listen to its recitation without being moved by it, experiencing spiritual emotion through it, or tasting its truths and meanings. These are those concerned with outward forms among worshippers, those who perform voluntary devotions, and those devoted to Quran recitation.

Thus, these two types are the person of spiritual states whose state is stirred by sounds, but whose stirring and spiritual state do not arise from the sound of the Quran; and the person of doctrinal discourse who distinguishes between statements and examines them, but whose examination and discourse do not derive from the Quran. Opposite these two are the person of outward worship, whose listening to the Quran and recitation of it remain outward acts; and the person of outward knowledge, who memorizes the Quran’s wording or explains it in terms of its unfamiliar vocabulary, grammatical analysis, circumstances of revelation, and similar matters.

These, then, are the four categories: those who stopped at the outward aspects of prescribed knowledge and practice, and those who delved into the inward aspects of knowledge