namely, of clay. To bolster this, they quoted a couplet whose author is entirely unknown:
“Grain sprouts between water and ‘ajl.”

When the verse, “Man was created of haste” (21:37), confused them, they contrived this sleight of hand. Yet it is merely an instance of inversion: the intended meaning is, “He created haste from man,” and there are many similar examples.

The Refutation of Those Who Deny God’s Khullah

Imagining that God must be exalted above being the intimate friend of a creature—because, they claim, khullah is nothing more than friendship—they explained the Almighty’s words, “Allah took Abraham as a khalīl” (4:125), as “He made him needy of Him.” They pronounce the word with a fatḥa (khalla), giving it the sense of poverty, and they appeal to the line of Zuhayr:
“And if a khalīl should come to him on the day he asks,
he will say, ‘My wealth is neither absent nor withheld.’”
—that is, a poor man. Shame on such minds and on such reasoning! Have they not, woe unto them, heard the unanimous