bench; then he rose and went inside his house.

Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal said to Yaḥyā, “Did I not forbid you and tell you that he is reliable?”
He replied, “By Allah, his kick is dearer to me than my whole journey.” (1)

Hanbal said: I heard Abū ʿAbd Allāh say, “There were two shaykhs about whom people used to speak and criticize; we suffered from what the people said about them in a way that only Allah knows. Yet the two of them stood up for the cause of Allah in a manner that no great figure did: ʿAffān and Abū Nuʿaym.” (2)

Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Sarrāj reported—on the authority of al-Kudaymī—that when Abū Nuʿaym was brought before the governor to be examined, while Yūnus, Abū Ghassān and others were present, the first to be questioned was so-and-so, and he complied. The governor then turned to Abū Nuʿaym and said, “This man has answered; what do you say?”

He replied, “By Allah, I have always suspected his grandfather of zandaqah (heresy). Yūnus ibn Bukayr told me that he heard that grandfather say, ‘There is no harm in stoning the jamrah with pieces of glass.’

“I reached Kūfah when it still had more than seven hundred shaykhs—from al-Aʿmash on down—all declaring, ‘The Qur’an is the speech of Allah,’ and adding, ‘My neck is cheaper than the button on this collar.’”

At that, Aḥmad ibn Yūnus stood, kissed his head—though there had been ill-feeling between them—and said, “May Allah reward you, O shaykh, with goodness.” (3)

Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Tirmidhī and others relate from Abū Nuʿaym that he said, “The Qur’an is the speech of Allah; it is not created.” (4)

al-Ṭabarānī said: I heard Ṣulayḥah bint Abī Nuʿaym say, “I heard my father declare: ‘The Qur’an is the speech of Allah, uncreated; whoever says that it is created is an unbeliever.’”