their being eternal without beginning. This dispute is longstanding; al-Ash‘arī mentioned it in al-Maqālāt. Ahmad’s followers disagree over it, as do the followers of Mālik, Abū Hanīfah, al-Shāfi‘ī, and other groups, as well as the scholars of hadith and the Sufis.

It may therefore be said:

Either this is impossible or it is possible. If it is impossible, its impossibility is no more evident than that of the Kullābiyyah’s position, which entails that the diverse meanings conveyed by ordered expressions are eternal without beginning, while nevertheless treating them as a single meaning.

Words give form to meanings. Just as we cannot conceive of letters except as following one another in succession, neither can we conceive of their meanings otherwise. Even supposing that we could conceive of their meanings coexisting, they would still be diverse meanings, not one thing.

Thus, when the Kullābiyyah said to these people:

“Letters follow one another in succession: the letter s comes after b, and this precludes their being eternal without beginning.”

They offered three replies, as Ibn al-Zāghūnī mentioned, saying:

“This is countered by the meanings of the letters, for these follow one another in succession in us, yet you maintain that they are eternal without beginning.”

The second reply is that succession and order are of two kinds: one is an order within the reality itself, and the other an order in its existence. If things exist one after another, the second comes into existence. As for the intrinsic order apprehended by reason, it is analogous to the fact that