—with our demand of whoever interpreted their words according to his interpretation—to produce what has previously been clarified. And it will be said to him: How can you deny that whoever among them attributed any of that to whichever of the nations other than the Arabs he attributed it to, only attributed it to one of its two rightful attributions, without negating the other attribution from it? Then it will be said to him: What do you think of someone who says of a land that is both a plain and mountainous: "It is a plain," without denying that it is mountainous, or says: "It is mountainous," without denying that it is a plain—is he negating its having the other characteristic by saying that?

If he says: "Yes!" he contradicts his own intellect. And if he says: "No," it will be said to him: "Then how can you deny that the statement of whoever said regarding sijjīl that it is Persian, and regarding al-qisṭās that it is Roman, is just like that?" And if he asks for the difference between that, he will not state anything regarding one of them without being bound to the same regarding the other.

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