exist without sounds, and that the letters bā’, sīn, and mīm, despite occurring in succession, are individually beginningless: they have always existed and will always exist. I have discussed people’s various positions concerning the Quran at length elsewhere.

The purpose here is to draw attention to the underlying basis of these groups’ doctrines. Ibn Kullāb introduced what he did because the foundational principle of Jahmī speculative theology had taken root in his heart and driven him to it. Yet he had demonstrated the unsoundness of their denial that Allah is above His creation and their denial of His attributes. He wrote many books on the foundations of Allah’s oneness and His attributes, presenting numerous rational proofs of the unsoundness of the Jahmiyyah’s position. In these works, he explained that Allah’s being above His creation and separate from them is known through both innate human nature and rational inference, just as it is established by the Quran and Sunnah.

Al-Hārith al-Muhāsibī likewise presented these proofs in his book Fahm al-Qur’ān (Understanding the Quran) and elsewhere. In it, he explained Allah’s being above His creation and His rising over His Throne in a way that demonstrated the unsoundness of the position of those who deny the attributes.

Many speculative thinkers who understood the foundational principle of the theologians’ doctrine, recognized that Allah’s attributes are established, and rejected the claim that His speech is created welcomed this approach adopted by Ibn Kullāb. They included Abū al-‘Abbās al-Qalānisī, Abū al-Hasan al-Ash‘arī, and al-Thaqafī, as well as their followers, such as Abū ‘Abd Allāh ibn Mujāhid and his companions, Judge Abū Bakr, Abū Ishāq al-Isfarāyīnī, Abū Bakr ibn Fūrak, and others. These scholars proceeded to refute those doctrines of the Mu‘tazilah that had been refuted by Ibn Kullāb and al-Qalānisī