the right side of the valley, in the blessed place, from the tree: ‘O Moses! Indeed, I am Allah, Lord of all worlds.’” He also says:

“Has the story of Moses reached you, when his Lord called to him in the sacred valley of Tuwā?”

And He says:

“When he came to it, he was called: ‘O Moses! Indeed, I am your Lord.’”

This indicates that he was called at that moment and had not been called before it. The word “when” conveys a temporal meaning, as in His words:

“When the servant of Allah stood up calling upon Him, they almost crowded around him.”

Similar examples are His words:

“On the Day He calls to them and says, ‘What response did you give the messengers?’”

“On the Day He calls to them and says, ‘Where are those you claimed were My partners?’”

He assigns the call a specific time, indicating that it occurs at that moment and not at other times. He makes that time the time of the call, which is heard only then. Similar examples are the words of the Most High:

“When your Lord said to the angels, ‘I am placing a successor on earth.’”

And His words:

“When We said to the angels, ‘Prostrate yourselves before Adam.’”

There are other such passages that assign particular statements of the Lord to a specific time. The Kullābiyyah and those followers of the four imams who agree with them say that He does not speak by His will and power. Rather, particular speech is inseparable from His essence, just as life is inseparable from His essence. Some of them then say that it is a single meaning, because letters and sounds follow one another in succession and therefore cannot be eternal.

Others say that, on the contrary, the individual letters and sounds themselves are eternal, ordered in themselves and close to one another in their existence; they have never ceased, nor