from Him, because they denied that anything connected to His will and power could subsist in His essence.

Those who opposed them, meanwhile, sought to affirm speech inseparable from the speaker and unconnected to his will and power—whether a meaning or letters. They maintained that the speaker has no power to speak and cannot say anything other than what he has said, thus depriving him of the power to speak and of speaking by his own choice and will.

When the former says to the latter, “A speaker is one who produces speech,” the latter replies, “A speaker is one in whom speech subsists.” Yet the former says that speech does not subsist in the one who produces it, while the latter says that the speaker does not choose to speak.

Thus one accepted part of what characterizes speech, and the other accepted another part. A speaker, as commonly understood, is someone in whom speech subsists and who speaks by his will and power. Hence, many later authors writing on doctrines and speculative theology set out the positions they know concerning a fundamental principle of Islam.

As for the position transmitted from the early generations and the imams, which brings together what is sound in each position, they know neither that position nor those who held it. Al-Shahrastānī, for example, wrote al-Milal wa-l-Nihal (Religions and Sects), recording therein as many doctrines of various peoples as Allah willed. Yet he neither knew nor mentioned the position known from the early generations and the imams.

Judge Abū Bakr, Abū al-Ma‘ālī, Judge Abū Ya‘lā, Ibn al-Zāghūnī, Abū al-Husayn al-Basrī, Muhammad ibn al-Haytham, and other distinguished scholars and authors like them—you will find one of them listing several positions held within the Muslim community concerning the Quran or a similar issue, then choosing one of them. Yet none of them mentions the position established from the early generations and the imams, such as Imam Ahmad and others like him, even though