I said: This is exactly what he meant by “al-matlī and al-mutlā”: he intended the recited text itself (al-matlī) and the act of recitation, as well as the reciter (al-muqriʾ) and the reading. The doctrine of the early generations and the leading imams of the religion is that the mighty, revealed Quran is the speech of Allah—exalted is He—uncreated.

The Muʿtazila hold that it is created and that it is called the speech of Allah only in the sense in which they say, “Jesus is a word from Allah” and “the she-camel of Allah,” i.e., a mere attribution of ownership.

Dāʾūd and a group with him maintain that it is the speech of Allah and that it is originated (muhdath), while still claiming that it is uncreated.

Others—among the Hanbalis and others—state that it is the speech of Allah, eternal (qadīm), neither originated nor created. They argue, “If it is not created, then it is eternal,” but they were disputed over this meaning and over the wording they used.

Still others say that it is the speech of Allah only figuratively, and that it merely signifies the eternal Quran that subsists in His Essence (1).

There are lengthy investigations and debates on these matters into which we shall not enter at all. The sound position is the one with which we began; more than three hundred imams have explicitly affirmed it, and for its sake Imām Aḥmad was tested and lashed—may Allah have mercy on him.

Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī the Vizier, Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-ʿĀbir, ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn ʿAbd al-Muḥsin, and others told us, saying: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Makkī informed us; he said: my grandfather Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī informed us; Makkī ibn ʿAllān informed us; Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ḥayrī informed us; Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Maʿqil narrated to us in the year 336 AH; he said: Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Dhuhli narrated to us; he said: Yaʿqūb ibn Ibrāhīm narrated to us; he said: my father narrated to us, from Ṣāliḥ, from Ibn