I also said: No book has ever been written on the laudable reports about al-Ashʿarī that rivals this one, and in it Ibn ʿAsākir quotes the very wording al-Ashʿarī himself used in al-Ibāna.

When I then came to speak about the Muʿtazila, the emir asked, “What does ‘Muʿtazila’ mean?”

I replied: In early times(1) people disagreed about the fate of the grave sinner who still belongs to the Muslim community—the first dispute(2) to arise in the umma—whether such a person is an unbeliever or a believer. The Khārijites declared him an unbeliever, while the mainstream held that he remains a believer.

A third group said, “He is a sinner, neither unbeliever nor believer; we place him in a station between two stations.” They also ruled that he would abide forever(3) in the Fire, and, because they withdrew from the study circle of al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and his companions, they were called Muʿtazila.

At that point the elderly shaykh—scowling(4) and ready with a rebuttal—remarked: “It is not as you have said. The first issue over which Muslims disagreed was the question of kalām (speculative theology). Those who took it up were therefore called mutakallimūn [q 83]. The first to raise it was ʿAmr ibn ʿUbayd; after his death he was succeeded by ʿAtāʾ ibn Wāṣil.”