In the Sunan collections, Jābir reported:

“The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, would present himself to people during the pilgrimage season, saying, ‘Is there no man who will take me to his people so that I may convey the speech of my Lord? For Quraysh have prevented me from conveying the speech of my Lord.’”

Just as none of the early generations said that it was created, none of them said that it was eternal. Neither the Companions, nor those who followed them in righteousness, nor those after them—whether the four imams or anyone else—made either statement. Rather, mass-transmitted reports establish that they used to say, “The Quran is the speech of Allah.” When people appeared who said that it was created, they responded by saying, “It is uncreated.”

By this, they did not mean that it was fabricated, as some people have supposed. No Muslim ever said that it was fabricated; rather, this is manifest disbelief, as every Muslim knows. They only said that it was something created, which Allah created in something other than Himself. The early generations rejected this statement, as mass-transmitted reports from them establish, and they wrote numerous works on the subject. They said, “From Him it originated, and to Him it will return.”

The first people known to have said that it was created were al-Ja‘d ibn Dirham and his associate al-Jahm ibn Safwān. The first person known to have said that it was eternal was ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sa‘īd ibn Kullāb. Those who shared this latter position subsequently differed among themselves.

Some of them held that speech is a single meaning subsisting in the Lord’s essence; that the meaning of the entire Quran, the Torah, the Gospel, and all the other books of Allah, as well as His speech, is that one meaning, which neither admits of multiplicity nor can be divided; and that Allah did not speak the Arabic Quran