my brother Ishaq was beside me when Abu ʿAbd Allah Muhammad ibn Nasr came in. I rose to him out of reverence for knowledge. When he left, my brother reproached me, saying, “You are the governor of Khurasan and yet you stand up for an ordinary subject? That is the ruin of statecraft.”

He went on: That night I lay awake with a troubled heart, and I saw the Prophet ﷺ in a dream. It was as though I were standing with my brother Ishaq when the Prophet ﷺ approached, took me by the upper arm, and said, “Your dominion and that of your sons has been made firm because you honoured Muhammad ibn Nasr.” Then he turned to Ishaq and said, “Ishaq’s rule and that of his children has vanished because of his disdain for Muhammad ibn Nasr.”

I [the author] say: Muhammad ibn Nasr was the husband of the sister of the judge Yahya ibn Aktham; her name was Khannah—with khāʾ followed by nūn (1). He died only a few days after Ṣalih ibn Muhammad ibn Jazarah, in Muḥarram of the year 294 AH.

Al-Ḥāfiẓ Abu ʿAbd Allah ibn Mandah said, in the discussion of faith: “Muhammad ibn Nasr declared explicitly in his book Al-Īmān that faith is created, and that profession, testimony, and reciting the Quran with one’s own utterance are created.” He added, “Because of this, the scholars of his time boycotted him, and the leading imams of Khurasan and Iraq opposed him.”

I reply: Delving into such matters is impermissible, and it is likewise impermissible to assert that faith, confession, recitation, and the verbal articulation of the Quran are uncreated. Allah created His servants and their deeds. Faith is both word and deed; recitation and articulation are the acquisition of the reciter, whereas the recited, articulated text is the Speech of Allah—His revelation and His sent-down word—and it is uncreated. The same applies to the declaration of faith—“lā ilāha illā Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah”—for it is part of the Quran, and whatever is from the Quran is uncreated, while speaking it