For much disagreement among rational people arises because they do not clearly understand the point at issue. In many disputes, the correct position may be a third view, different from either of the two advanced. Many disputes may also rest on a weak premise: once its invalidity is explained, the dispute falls away.
The first matter in this question is their expression, “the letters that Allah sent down to Adam.” Some have mentioned that Allah sent down to him the letters of the alphabet, written separately. Ibn Qutaybah mentioned this in al-Maʿārif. This and similar accounts appear in historical works such as the history of Ibn Jarīr al-Tabarī and others. Such accounts are related from those who transmit Israelite narratives and similar reports concerning earlier prophets, such as Wahb ibn Munabbih, Kaʿb al-Ahbār, Mālik ibn Dīnār, Muhammad ibn Ishāq, and others.
Muslims unanimously agree that what these people relate concerning earlier prophets may not be made a basis for the religion of the Muslims unless it is established through mass transmission or transmitted from the Seal of the Messengers. Moreover, this report is contradicted by another report:
“The first to write and sew was Idrīs.”
This is related from some of the early generations and is comparable to the former account—indeed, stronger. They mention in it that Idrīs was the first to sew clothes and write with a pen. Accordingly, Adam’s descendants before Idrīs neither wrote with pens nor read books. And what is stated in the well-known hadith of Abū Dharr, narrated from Abū Dharr, from