the Muslim scholars—whether followers of Imam Ahmad or others—that such things are eternal. Anyone who attributes this view to a scholar among the followers of Imam Ahmad or others like them is either mistaken in his attribution or deliberately lying.

Rather, Imam Ahmad and the majority of his followers are explicitly reported to have declared anyone who said, “My utterance of the Quran is uncreated,” an innovator, just as they classified anyone who said, “Utterance of the Quran is created,” as a follower of the Jahmiyyah. Abū Bakr al-Marwadhī—the closest of Imam Ahmad’s disciples—composed a lengthy, detailed treatise on this subject. Abū Bakr al-Khallāl transmitted it from him in his Book of the Sunnah, in which he collected the statements of Imam Ahmad and other leading scholars of the Sunnah on matters of belief.

At that time, some scholars of hadith had stated without qualification, “My utterance of the Quran is uncreated,” in opposition to those who said, “My utterance of the Quran is created.” When Imam Ahmad heard of this, he condemned it vehemently, declared anyone who said it an innovator, and stated that none of the scholars had said such a thing. What, then, of someone who claims that a human being’s voice is eternal? More reprehensible still is someone who attributes to certain scholars the view that the ink in a copy of the Quran is eternal. All the leading scholars among Imam Ahmad’s followers, as well as others, rejected this. I know of no scholar who says such a thing; we have only received reports of it from some ignorant people among the Kurds and others like them.”

Allah distinguishes in His Book between speech and ink. He, Most High, says:

“Say, ‘If the sea were ink for the words of my Lord, the sea would be exhausted before the words of my Lord were exhausted, even if