rather, this may never even have occurred to them. Spoken letters cannot be described as standing upright or prostrating. Whoever cites this statement of theirs as evidence that they held that Allah did not speak the Arabic Quran or the Hebrew Torah has attributed to them something they never said.
As for Imam Ahmad, he rejected both making this statement without qualification and what it implies when left unqualified: that the letters of the alphabet themselves are created. He is reported to have said:
“Whoever claims that any letter of the alphabet is created is a Jahmī following a path towards innovation. For if he says that it is created, he has said that the Quran is created”—or words to that effect.
Undoubtedly, whoever holds that letters as a type are created, separate from Allah, and brought into existence after not having existed must consequently regard Allah’s speech in Arabic, Hebrew and other languages as created. On that view, Allah could not have spoken His speech which He sent down to His servant Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace; none of it, therefore, would be His speech. The approach of Imam Ahmad and the other early scholars thus accords with the third position, which agrees with clear reason and authentic transmitted evidence.
The shaykh and imam Abū al-Hasan Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik al-Karajī al-Shāfiʿī stated in his book entitled Al-Fusūl fī al-Usūl (Chapters on Fundamentals):
I heard Imam Abū Mansūr Muhammad ibn Ahmad say: I heard Imam Abū Bakr ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ahmad say: I heard Shaykh Abū Hāmid al-Isfarāyīnī say: “My position, and that of al-Shāfiʿī