“Indeed, everything apart from Allah is vain.”

Yet every rational person knows that those who transmit and recite poetry have not stripped the poets of their very attributes so that these have come to reside in them. Nor have the actual attributes and actions that subsisted in those poets, such as their voices and movements, come to reside in the transmitters and reciters. How, then, could anyone imagine that the Creator’s attributes—His speech or His other attributes—have departed from His essence and come to reside in His creatures, or that a creature’s own attributes and actions, such as its movements and sounds, are the Creator’s attributes residing within it? They do not say anything of this kind even about created beings.

Rather, they compare knowledge to the light of a lamp: the learner draws from it without diminishing what the scholar possesses, just as someone takes light from a lamp and Allah brings light into being for him. As it is said, “Air turns into fire when a wick is brought near a lamp, without the fire in the lamp itself changing.” Likewise, someone who teaches Quran recitation or imparts knowledge loses nothing of what he possesses; rather, the learner comes to possess the like of what the teacher possesses.

Hence people say, “So-and-so transmits so-and-so’s knowledge and conveys his words.” They also say, “The knowledge that so-and-so possessed has passed to so-and-so,” and similar expressions. Likewise, one says, “I transcribed what is in the book,” “I copied what is in the book,” or, “I transcribed the book,” or, “I copied it.” They do not mean that the actual letters in the first book have ceased to exist there and come to reside in the second. Rather, since the purpose of copying and transcribing books is of the same kind as conveying knowledge and speech, and this is achieved by placing in the second