is commonly attributed to the Peripatetics. Rather, they maintained that there was no proof ruling out a greater number. Seeing that prophetic revelations had spoken of the multitude of angels, they sought to establish their multitude through a philosophical method, as did Abū al-Barakāt, author of al-Mu'tabar, and al-Rāzī in al-Matālib al-'Āliyah, among others.

As for the speculative theologians, they say that every contingent thing, everything that has come into being, or every created thing either occupies space or subsists in something that occupies space. Many of them say that every existent either occupies space or subsists in something that occupies space, and that no existent can be conceived otherwise. Various groups engaged in speculative theology and rational inquiry have maintained this.

When philosophically inclined thinkers such as Ibn Sīnā and his followers, al-Shahrastānī, al-Rāzī, and others sought to establish the existence of something that is not of this kind, their principal support was their affirmation of universals, such as shared humanity and shared animality. Since these are universals only in the mind, their opponents did not dispute this with them. Rather, they disputed their affirmation of something existing outside the mind, subsisting in itself, yet entirely imperceptible to the senses—indeed, something that cannot even be conceived.

They said to them: “What is intellectually apprehended is in the intellect. But whatever exists and subsists in itself must be capable of being perceived by the senses, even if we do not perceive it in this world, just as we do not perceive the jinn, the angels, and other such beings. It must therefore be perceptible to beings other than ourselves, such as the angels and jinn, and be perceived after death, or in the Hereafter, or