because of the permissibility of their coexisting at a single time in a single person. So the speaker of that is truthful if his companion is as he described him.

Likewise, regarding what we have said—concerning the words we mentioned and their like—it is not impossible for some of them to be Arabic and non-Arabic, or Abyssinian and Arabic, since the usage of that exists in both nations. Thus, whoever attributes whatever he attributes of that to one of the two nations or to both of them is correct and not mistaken.

And if a foolish person imagines that the coexistence of that in speech is impossible—just as it is impossible in the lineages of the children of Adam—he has imagined so out of ignorance. That is because the lineages of the children of Adam are confined to one side rather than the other, due to the statement of God, exalted be His mention: ﴿Call them by [the names of] their fathers; that is more just in the sight of God﴾ [Sūrat al-Aḥzāb: 5]. But that is not the case with speech and expression, because speech is only attributed to those among whom its usage is known. So if the usage of a piece of speech is known among various nations—two or more—with one vocalization and one meaning, it is attributed to every one of those nations, without any single nation meriting to be more entitled to it than the rest of the nations. Just as if a land were situated between a plain and a mountain, having the air of the plain and the air of the mountain, or between land and sea, having the air of the land and the air of the sea—no person of sound intellect would refrain from describing it as plain-like and mountainous (1), or land-like and marine, since attributing it to one of its two characteristics does not negate its right to be attributed to the other. And if someone mentioned one of its two characteristics individually without stripping it of its other characteristic, he would be truthful and correct.

The same applies to the words we previously mentioned at the beginning of this chapter.

And this meaning that we have stated regarding that is the meaning of the statement of whoever said: "In the Qur'an there is something from every tongue"—according to us, meaning, and God knows best: that in it there is something from every tongue in which the vocalization of the Arabs and that of other nations speaking it coincide, similar to what we described in the preceding discussion.