the ninth celestial sphere, and the Kursī is the eighth.” We have discussed this in “The Question of Encompassment” and demonstrated, on both rational and scriptural grounds, the ignorance of those who say this.

When someone of this kind hears them mention the angels, he supposes that they are the intellects and souls posited by the philosophers, or the forces within bodies. Likewise, he imagines that the jinn and devils are accidents inhering in souls, since this is the extent of his knowledge. He also accepts what Ibn Sīnā and others like him maintain: that extraordinary phenomena in this world are caused by celestial, natural, or psychic powers. He places the prophets’ miracles in the category of psychic powers, regarding them as belonging to the same kind as sorcery, except that the sorcerer intends evil whereas the prophet intends good.

All this stems from ignorance of the universal principles encompassing existing things and their kinds, and from ignorance of what the Messenger brought. Their knowledge of the universal sciences and metaphysics extends no further than what the ancient philosophers knew, together with additions received from certain speculative theologians or adherents of religious faith.

For this reason, the discussions of metaphysics and universal principles by later philosophers, such as Ibn Sīnā and others like him, were superior to those of their predecessors. This also explains why Greek philosophy became congenial to heretical innovators among the adherents of religious faiths: it contained an admixture of religious teaching. Thus the heretical Banū ‘Ubayd embraced it, taking the Intellect and the Soul from these polytheistic Sabian philosophers, and Light and Darkness from the Magians. They themselves called them “the Preceder” and “the Follower.” Likewise, heretics claiming affiliation with Sufism and devotion to God, such as Ibn Sab‘īn and others like him, followed