Abū Bakr ibn al-‘Arabī and others among Mālik’s followers; and Abū Mansūr al-Māturīdī, Maymūn al-Nasafī, and others among Abū Hanīfah’s followers—is that they said:

If the Quran were created, Allah would necessarily have created it either within His own essence or in a locus other than Himself; alternatively, it would subsist independently, neither within His essence nor in another locus.

The first possibility entails that Allah would be a locus for temporal events. The second entails that the speech would belong to the locus in which it was created, rather than being Allah’s speech—as with other attributes He creates in a locus, such as knowledge, life, motion, colour, and so forth. The third entails that an attribute would subsist independently, which is impossible.

This argument is their principal basis in the question of the Quran. ‘Abd al-‘Azīz al-Makkī, the author of the well-known al-Haydah, had preceded them in setting out this division.

[‘Abd al-‘Azīz al-Kinānī’s Statements on the Quran and Allah’s Attributes, with Commentary]

One might suppose that their statements were exactly the same as his, that he held their position—that nothing connected with Allah’s power and will subsists in His essence—and that his position was of the same kind as Ibn Kullāb’s.

That is not the case. This ‘Abd al-‘Azīz has discussions refuting the Jahmiyyah and others in which no departure from the position of the early generations and the scholars of hadith is known.