Aḥmad remarked, “Their tribulation comes only from these books they themselves have authored, and from their abandonment of the transmitted reports (1).”

Ibn ʿAdī said, “I heard Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṣayrafī al-Shāfiʿī say to his students:
‘Take warning from al-Karābīsī and from Abū Thawr. In knowledge and memorization Abū Thawr is not even one-tenth of Ḥusayn, yet Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal spoke against al-Karābīsī over the issue of the pronunciation doctrine, and he was cast down, while he praised Abū Thawr and the latter’s standing rose because he held fast to the Sunnah (2)(3).’ ”

Al-Karābīsī died in 248 AH. Another opinion places his death in 245 AH.

There is no doubt that what al-Karābīsī introduced—and carefully formulated—regarding the question of pronunciation, namely that the very act of pronouncing is created, is in itself true. Yet Imām Aḥmad rejected it so that no one might exploit it as a pretext for claiming that the Qur’an itself is created. Thus the door was closed, for you are unable to separate, except in your mind, the act of pronouncing from the pronounced words, which are the speech of Allah.

24 – Fatḥ ibn Khāqān, Abū Muḥammad al-Turkī*

The great amir and flawless vizier, Abū Muḥammad the Turk, was a poet, an accomplished prose stylist, eloquent and persuasive, endowed with nobility, generosity, and manifold virtues—though there was a playful side to him. Al-Mutawakkil could hardly bear to be without him; he made him his vizier and entrusted to him the governorship of Syria,