“It is not a creator.”
He said, “That is not what I am asking you about either.”
He replied, “I do not know how to say anything else,” and he would not budge.
He (Ishaq) then asked, “Do you testify that there is no deity but Allah, the One, the Unique; that nothing existed before Him and nothing will exist after Him; and that none of His creation resembles Him in any attribute whatsoever or in any respect?”
“Yes,” he answered.
So Ishaq told the scribe, “Write down what he has said,” and the scribe did so.
He then examined them one by one. Most of them refused to say that the Quran is created. Whenever a man balked, Ishaq would test him with the written statement (1) to which Bishr ibn al-Walid al-Kindi had agreed—that Allah resembles nothing in His creation in any attribute whatsoever or in any respect—and the man would reply, “Yes, exactly as Bishr said.”
When the turn came to question Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ishaq asked, “Do you say that the Quran is created?”
He replied, “The Quran is the Speech of Allah; I will add nothing to that.”
Ishaq said, “Then what do you say about this written statement?”
Ahmad answered by reciting, “There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing” (Surah al-Shura 42:11).
A man from the Muʿtazilah objected, “He is saying that Allah hears with an ear and sees with an eye!”
Ishaq said to Ahmad, “What did you intend by your words ‘All-Hearing, All-Seeing’?”
He replied, “I intended only what Allah intended; He is exactly as He has described Himself, and I will add nothing beyond that.”
The answers of the assemblage were then written down—each man’s answer separately (2)—and sent to al-Maʾmun.
[Section]
It has already been mentioned that when Ishaq ibn Ibrahim, the governor of Baghdad, examined the group regarding the doctrine that the Quran is created and the denial of resemblance, they all agreed to deny likeness. As for declaring the Quran created, they refused, all of them saying, “The Quran is the Speech of Allah.”
Imam Ahmad said, “I will never add another letter to that,” and, to underscore the denial of likeness, he recited, “There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing” (42:11).
They asked, “What did you mean by saying ‘the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing’?”
He replied, “I meant by it only what Allah meant.”
Some of those present did agree to the doctrine that the Quran is created, trying to placate the authorities under duress, for anyone who refused was removed from his post; if he drew a stipend from the public treasury it was cut off; if he was a mufti he was forbidden to issue rulings; if he was a hadith teacher he was prevented from transmitting and teaching.
Thus a deafening fitna broke out, a monstrous ordeal, an overwhelming calamity—there is no power and no strength except with Allah, the Most High, the Almighty, the All-Wise.
The governor, Ishaq ibn Ibrahim, ordered the scribe to record each man’s reply verbatim and to send it to