And the early generations said:

“Allah Most High has always spoken whenever He wills.”

If someone says, “Allah’s speech is eternal,” meaning that He did not become a speaker after not having been a speaker, that His speech is neither created nor a single eternal meaning subsisting in His essence, but that He has always spoken whenever He wills, then this is correct. None of the early generations said that any particular instance of speech was itself eternal.

They used to say:

“The Quran is Allah’s speech, sent down and uncreated. From Him it began, and to Him it returns.”

None of them said that the Quran was eternal, nor did they say that His speech was a single meaning subsisting in His essence. Nor did they say that the letters of the Quran—or its letters and sounds—were eternal and beginningless, subsisting in Allah’s essence, although, with respect to letters as a kind, Allah has always spoken with them whenever He wills. Rather, they said that the letters of the Quran were uncreated, and they condemned anyone who said that Allah created the letters.

Ahmad and others among the early generations condemned anyone who said:

“My utterance of the Quran is created,” or “uncreated.”

They would say:

“Whoever says it is created is a Jahmī, and whoever says it is uncreated is an innovator.”

For “utterance” may refer to the act of uttering—the verbal noun of “to utter”—or it may refer to what is uttered, namely the actual letters spoken. As for people’s voices and the ink in copies of the Quran, none of the early generations hesitated to affirm that these were created. Ahmad explicitly stated that the reciter’s voice is the servant’s voice, as did other leading scholars besides Ahmad.

And Ahmad said:

“Whoever