uncreated, and that what is truly pre-eternal and uncreated are the letters and sounds that inhere in created beings—namely, the voices of worshippers and the ink of the muṣḥafs (codices). They therefore attribute to them the view that the very sound produced by the servant and the very ink are ancient, eternal, uncreated (1).

Everyone knows by direct sensory experience and plain necessity that such a claim is untenable. I have never encountered any recognized scholar who affirms it; on the contrary, they all repudiate it. It may, however, be voiced by certain ignorant folk from the desert and mountain regions and the like (2).

The early imams unanimously rejected this notion, as al-Bukhārī records in his book Khalq Afʿāl al-ʿIbād (3). He said:

(Ishāq ibn Ibrāhīm remarked, ‘As for the receptacles, who could possibly doubt that they are created? Allah, Exalted is He, says: “By a Book inscribed (2) in parchment unrolled (3),” (5) and He says: “Nay, but it is a Glorious Qur’an (21) in a Preserved Tablet (22).” (6)’)

Muḥammad ibn Naṣr al-Marwazī (7) reported in his book, through the chain of Aḥmad ibn ʿUmar, from ʿAbdān, from Ibn al-Mubārak, who said: ‘The paper and the ink are created, but the Qur’an is neither Creator nor created; rather, it is the speech of Allah.’