who could find no other source or did not look for one, applied certain verses and Hadiths to those israiliyyat stories and expounded them by means of them. However, it is only the Qur'an itself and sound Hadiths that can expound the Qur'an, not the Gospels and Torah, whose injunctions have been abrogated and stories even are corrupted. Yes, the meaning of a thing and something that corroborates it (mâsadaq) are different. But then something that could have corroborated the meaning was substituted for it, and numerous possibilities were confused with facts.

Also, in Ma'mun's time, Greek philosophy was translated so as to make it Muslim. But since it had as its source numerous myths and superstitions, it was somewhat putrid, and confused to a degree the unspoiled minds of the Arabs when it intermixed with them. So too it paved the way leading from investigative study to blind imitation.

Also, although with their innate imaginative faculties they had the ability to deduce matters from Islam, the water of life, they deigned to become pupils of that philosophy. Yes, just as when their ability to speak truly eloquent Arabic [^8] began to be impaired by mixing with non-Arabs, the authoritative scholars codified the rules of the sciences of Arabic so as to preserve them; so too, when philosophy and israiliyyat entered the fold of Islam, some punctilious Islamic scholars attempted to sort them out and purify Islam of them. But alas! they were not altogether successful.

[^8]:The most eloquent Arabic, kelâm-ı Mudarî. This refers to the Arabic spoken by the tribe, Muḍar, whose speech in that era was reputed to be the most eloquent and whose dialect was favoured when differences arose on the Qur'an being put down in writing.

But that was not all; for when they endeavoured to expound the Qur'an, literalists applied the transmitted knowledge it contains (nakliyat) to some israiliyyat and adapted its verses requiring reasoned interpretation (akliyat) to the above-mentioned philosophy. For they saw that the Qur'an comprises both transmitted (menkul) and reasoned (mâkul) knowledge. Hadiths are the same. Then they deduced a correspondence and relation between some of the true