sounds heard by whomever He wills among His angels and prophets, without any speech subsisting in Him, whether meaning or letters. They dispute whether this created thing is a body, an accident, or something described as neither.

When these people appeared, the early generations—the Successors and their followers—declared them disbelievers and refuted them in statements well known from those generations. The discerning imams among the scholars recognized that the reality of these people’s doctrine was the denial of Allah’s attributes and heresy, even though their ordinary followers did not understand this. Likewise, they recognized that the reality of the doctrine of the Qarāmitah and Ismā‘īliyyah was the denial of Allah’s attributes and heresy, even though their ordinary followers professed only Rāfidism.

The Jahmī ordeal unfolded, and the imams were put to the test. “Imam Ahmad”—the imam of the Sunnah, the community’s champion of truth in his time, the successor to the messengers and heir to the prophets—stood firm. Through him, Allah strengthened Islam and the Quran, preserved knowledge and faith for the community, and repelled the people of unbelief, hypocrisy, and tyranny who believed in part of the Scripture and disbelieved in another.

Thus, the people of the Sunnah, the great majority of the Muslim community, those who upheld its unity, and the leading figures of the faith throughout its eastern and western lands remained firmly committed to the faith that the messengers brought from Allah and that the Seal of the Prophets brought, confirming the Scripture that preceded him and serving as a guardian over it: namely, that the Quran, the Torah, and the Gospel are Allah’s speech, and that Allah’s speech cannot be something created and separate from Him, just as a speaker’s speech cannot be separate from him. For this amounts to denying His speech, which