“The sound is uncreated”? How much more someone who says, “The sound is eternal”? They declared such people innovators and ordered that they be shunned. Al-Marwadhī compiled an extensive work on this subject, which al-Khallāl mentioned in his Book of the Sunnah. They likewise branded as Jahmīs and innovators those who said, “The utterance of it is created,” as explained elsewhere.

The point here is that some of the most distinguished scholars do not know the imams’ positions on the most important questions—neither the positions of those who uphold the truth nor those of the proponents of falsehood. They know only certain views introduced into Islam as innovations. It is well known that the early generations and the imams held a position that was neither that of the Muʿtazilah, the Kullābiyyah, nor the Karrāmiyyah, nor that attributed to Muslims under the label Hashwiyyah. Where, then, is that position? Did the best and most knowledgeable members of this community, and its finest generations, know neither truth nor falsehood concerning this matter?

It is well known that each of these positions is unsound in several respects, though some may be more unsound than others. Thus, although the Muʿtazilah’s assertion, “Allah’s speech is created,” is unsound in several respects, the position of the Kullābiyyah is also unsound in several respects, as is that of the Karrāmiyyah.

Imam Ahmad and the other imams rejected all these positions. Their rejection of the positions of the Kullābiyyah and the Karrāmiyyah is established through reliably transmitted statements from them, while their rejection of the Muʿtazilah’s position is widely reported through mass transmission. They also denounced those who held that the servants’ utterances of the Quran were not