except for what reaches him only after investigation and reflection—indeed, after debate, objection, and counter-argument. Only then does he come to know it, accept it, and concede it, even though for most people it belongs to the clearest matters that require no research at all. Hence the protracted path and the hidden premises adduced by many dialecticians do benefit such individuals in their own deliberation, and they are useful in disputation for silencing the obstinate and confounding the denier.

Sophistry (safsata) is a condition that befalls many souls; it is the repudiation of truth. The term itself is an Arabized word of Greek origin—sophistía—meaning “counterfeit wisdom.” When rendered into Arabic it became safsata.

As for the story repeated by some scholastic theologians and compilers of sectarian reports—that there once lived a man named “Sophista” who, together with his followers, denied all realities and all branches of knowledge—this is sheer fabrication with no basis in fact. It is unimaginable that any human being, or even any animal, could survive while rejecting every reality and every sensation. Man is, by nature, a social creature: people must recognize one another; a person is aware of his hunger and satiety, his thirst and quenching, his pleasure and pain. He distinguishes between what he may and may not eat, what he may and may not wear, his own dwelling and that of his neighbor, night and day, and innumerable other matters indispensable to life.

Likewise, the claim that among the Samaniyyah there is a group who reject all knowledge save sense-perception—even denying what is established by recurrent mass-transmission—is a misrepresentation. They denied only the existence of what lies beyond the scope of sensation; they did not deny the existence of things merely because they themselves did not sense them. Imām Aḥmad, who recorded their debate with Jahm ibn Ṣafwān, makes this clear. Otherwise, these people are counted among the rational.