And all of these were scholars of knowledge, the Sunnah, and hadith, and were followers of Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Hence Ibn Qutaybah said: “The people of the Sunnah have not differed in any of their positions except on the question of uttering the Quran.”

Some began stating without qualification that recitation is identical to what is recited, and reading is identical to what is read. By “recitation,” they did not mean the act itself. Rather, when a person speaks, there must be movement, together with the utterances produced by that movement, consisting of ordered letters and intelligible meanings. Sometimes “utterance” and “speech” refer to this whole, including the movement; speech is then a kind of action and falls within it. At other times, they refer to what accompanies and results from the movement, rather than the movement itself; speech is then a category alongside action, distinct from it rather than included within it.

For this reason, scholars differed over whether the term “knowledge,” when used without qualification, includes speech. There are two well-known positions among the followers of Ahmad and others. Upon this distinction they based their disagreement concerning someone who swears not to perform any action that day and then speaks: has he broken his oath or not? There are two positions, because speech may or may not be included within action.

The first usage is illustrated by the words of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace:

“There is no envy except in two cases: a man whom Allah has granted the Quran, who recites it at various hours of the night and day, and another man says, ‘If I had what he has, I would do with it what he does.’”

Al-Bukhārī and Muslim both recorded this in their Sahīh collections. Thus, the activity of the man who recites it at various hours of the night and day is described as action, as expressed in the words: “I would do with it what he does.”