what they meant. Thus, al-Shāfi'ī, al-Asma'ī and others are reported to have said: “If you hear a man say that the name is distinct from what it names, bear witness to his heresy.” Nor is any of the early generations known to have said that the name is identical with what it names. Rather, many who affiliated themselves with the Sunnah after the imams said this, and most of the people of the Sunnah rejected their assertion.

Some refrained from either affirming or denying anything concerning this question, since either unqualified formulation was an innovation. Al-Khallāl reported this from Ibrāhīm al-Harbī and others, as did Abū Ja'far al-Tabarī in the treatise he entitled Sarīh al-Sunnah (The Sunnah Clearly Stated). In it, he set out the well-known position of the people of the Sunnah concerning the Quran, seeing Allah, faith, divine decree, the Companions and other matters. He stated that none of the earlier scholars had spoken on “the question of utterance,” saying: “We have found no statement on it from any Companion who has passed away, nor from any Successor who followed them, except from one whose words provide healing and suffice, and whom we regard as holding the standing of the earliest imams: Abū 'Abd Allāh Ahmad ibn Hanbal.” He used to say: “The Lafziyyah are Jahmiyyah.” He also said: “Whoever says, ‘My utterance of the Quran is created,’ is a Jahmī; and whoever says, ‘It is uncreated,’ is an innovator.”

Al-Tabarī also stated that discussion of the name and what it names is among the foolish innovations on which no statement is known from any of the imams, and that it suffices a person to go no further than the words of the Most High:

“To Allah belong the most beautiful names.”

This amounts to saying that the name belongs to what it names. This formulation is preferred by most of those affiliated with the Sunnah among the followers of Imam Ahmad and others.

Many of those affiliated with the Sunnah held that the name is identical with what it names, such as Abū Bakr