He foretold all that, and many of his predictions proved accurate—for example, his announcement that the Muslims would one day enter Harran and other lands, conquer them, and humble his own community. In Harran there was a well called Bir ʿAzun, which they revered greatly; it was said that spirits gathered there. He mentions this and other matters of the same sort in a scripture of his that still survives; I myself, and others as well, have read it.

Concerning these spirits, some people call them simply “spirits” or “spiritual beings,” making no further distinction. Others label them all “angels,” drawing no line between jinn and angels. Indeed, a faction among the scholastic theologians and the like regard jinn and angels as a single kind, differentiating them only by their good or evil deeds, just as human beings vary. From this arose the scholars’ debate over Iblis: was he an angel or not? The discussion has been expanded elsewhere. Those Muslim scholars who grasp the reality know that the spirits who aid the polytheists are devils, and they clearly distinguish angels from jinn, as is established by the Qurʾan, the Sunnah, and the unanimous consensus of the community.

Demonstrating that mistakes in these reports outweigh what is correct:

Ninth: Even if we assume that such disclosures come either from the soul’s contact with a celestial psychic force, or from information imparted by spirits as earlier described, it remains evident that error in this field far exceeds accuracy. On their own theory, this is because imagination presents to the common perceptive faculty the images the soul has grasped of congenial forms, and imagination lies more often than it tells the truth. According to the Muslims and others, the reason is that the jinn habitually lie in what they report. It is soundly narrated that when the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—spoke of the soothsayers, he said that they “snatch a single word and then weave around it a hundred lies.” Experience and recurrent testimony confirm this: those who relay information on the authority of the jinn are frequently found to be lying in what they relate.