a man stood up and said, “O Allah, Lord of the Qur’an, forgive him.” Ibn ʿAbbās leapt toward him, saying, “Enough! The Qur’an is from Him.” In another wording he said: “The Qur’an is the speech of Allah; it is not created. From Him it issued and to Him it shall return.”
Al-Ṭabarānī also transmitted this in Kitāb al-Sunnah (1): he narrated to us through Aḥmad ibn al-Qāsim ibn Masāwir al-Jawharī, who narrated to us from ʿĀṣim ibn ʿAlī, from his father, from ʿImrān ibn Ḥudayr, from ʿIkrimah, who said: Ibn ʿAbbās was at a funeral, and when the deceased was placed in his niche, a man stood up and said, “O Allah, Lord of the Qur’an, make his entrance spacious; O Allah, Lord of the Qur’an, forgive him.” Ibn ʿAbbās turned to him and said, “Enough! The Qur’an is the speech of Allah; it is not created. From Him it issued and to Him it returns.”
Al-Khallāl (2) said: al-Marwadhī related to me in the book (3) which he had presented to
= al-Sunnah.
(1) This work is cited by al-Baghdadi in Hadiyya al-Arifin 1:396; by al-Dhahabi in Siyar A‘lam al-Nubala’ 16:128, who notes that it is contained in a single volume; and by al-Safadi in al-Wafi lil-Wafayat 15:346. It does not appear as an entry in Umar Kahn’s Mu‘jam al-Mu’allifin 4:253, nor in Fuat Sezgin’s Tarikh al-Turath al-‘Arabi, vol. 1/1, ‘Ulum al-Qur’an wa al-Hadith, pp. 393–396, where he lists al-Tabarani’s works. I have found no indication of any surviving copy. Consequently, the editor of al-Mu‘jam al-Kabir, Hamdi Abd al-Majid al-Salafi, included a biography of the ḥāfiẓ at the end of vol. 25—listing his writings and, for each, commenting on its existence, location, and publication status—yet he omits any mention of Kitab al-Sunnah. I therefore refer the reader to my remarks in the previous note.
(2) Al-Musnad min Masa’il Abi ‘Abd Allah Ahmad ibn Hanbal, transmitted by Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Khallal – manuscript; folio 174, beginning at folio 172.
(3) This work was composed by Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hajjaj al-Marwazi at the behest of Imam Abu ‘Abd Allah Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Its script is unclear in the manuscript I consulted (the original in the British Museum is also indistinct), but what I gathered is that =