direction and limits. Those earlier people said, “He has no speech; He merely created speech.” These people say, “He spoke once, and ever since He spoke, He has continued speaking it without interruption. His speech exists in a place where He is not.” Yet they also say, “He is not in any place.”

Then they said, “His speech has neither sound nor letters.” They said, “This is vitriol and paper; this is wool and wood. Here, only the nafs is intended, and an explanation is meant. This is the reciter’s voice—do you not see that some of it is beautiful and some is not? This is his utterance. Or do you not see that it is used figuratively?” One of their leaders even said, “Or could there be a Quran made of