the sounds heard from the reciters—or that two sounds are heard from the reciters: a beginningless sound and an originated sound. Regarding the beginningless sound, some said that it indwells the originated sound. Others said that it becomes manifest in it without indwelling it. Still others said: “It is in it, but we do not say that it becomes manifest or indwells.” Those holding this view are a group of scholars of hadith and jurisprudence and practitioners of Sufism among the followers of al-Shāfiʿī, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, and others. They uphold indwelling with respect to the divine attributes, but not the divine essence.

Another group, from among the Sālimiyyah and the Sufis, agreed with them. These latter also maintain that the divine essence indwells everything and that He manifests Himself to everything in its form. Their position is of the same kind as that of those who say that He is, in His essence, in every place, and those who uphold “the unity of existence.” Yet they also say that He is upon the Throne, that He indwells the hearts of those who know Him in His essence, and that He is in everything, as stated by Abū Tālib al-Makkī and others like him.

The Ashʿarīs, by contrast, take the opposite position. Their doctrine entails negation of the divine reality: that He is neither within the world nor outside it, that His speech is a single meaning, and that the meaning of the Verse of the Throne, the verse concerning debt, the Torah, and the Gospel is one and the same. The invalidity of this is self-evident. Likewise, words, according to them, are one single thing. Their position thus amounts to saying that there is no Lord, no Quran, and no faith. Their doctrine therefore entails negation of the divine reality.

The Sālimiyyah uphold indwelling with respect to both the divine essence and the attributes, whereas those who say that beginningless letters and sounds indwell human beings uphold indwelling with respect to the attributes, but not the essence.