And I said to him: “Who among our scholars is a Hashwī in the sense you intend? Al-Athram, Abū Dāwūd, al-Marwudhī, al-Khallāl, Abū Bakr ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, Abū al-Hasan al-Tamīmī, Ibn Hāmid, Judge Abū Yaʿlā, Abū al-Khattāb, Ibn ʿAqīl?”

I raised my voice and said: “Name them! Tell me which of them! Is the Sharia to be invalidated and the defining features of religion effaced on the strength of Ibn al-Khatīb’s lies and fabricated accounts of people’s doctrines? He and others have attributed to them the claim that the eternal Quran consists of the reciters’ voices and the scribes’ ink, and that the voice and ink are eternal and without beginning. Who said this? In which book of theirs is this found? Tell me! Likewise, the claim that Allah will not be seen in the Hereafter was attributed to them on the basis of the necessary implication he alleged and the premise he ascribed to them.”

When “the question of the Quran” arose—namely, that it is Allah’s speech, uncreated, that it originated with Him and will return to Him—some of them disputed the statement that it originated with Him and will return to Him, and asked for an explanation. I said: “This statement is authentically transmitted from the early generations.

“For example, ʿAmr ibn Dīnār reported: ‘For seventy years I have known people to say: Allah is the Creator, and everything besides Him is created, except the Quran, for it is Allah’s speech, uncreated; it originated with Him and will return to Him.’

“The meaning of ‘it originated with Him’ is that He is the One who spoke it and sent it down from Himself. It is not as the Jahmiyyah claim: that it was created in the air or elsewhere and originated with someone other than Him.

“As for ‘it will return to Him,’ it will be taken away by night, at the end of time, from written copies and from people’s hearts,