Shaykh al-Islām—may Allah have mercy on him—also said:

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The debate about the “Quran” and “speech”—whether it consists of letters and sound or not—is a later development. It arose around the third century AH and became widespread in the fourth.

When Abū Sa‘īd ibn Kullāb, followed by Abū al-Hasan al-Ash‘arī and others like them, debated the Mu‘tazilah in affirmation of Allah’s attributes and of the Quran being uncreated, they considered that this could only be established if the Quran were eternal, without beginning. They held that it could only be eternal if it were a meaning subsisting in Allah Himself, like His knowledge. They further asserted that Allah does not speak with sound or in any language, whether eternal or otherwise, because they considered it impossible for anything newly occurring to subsist in Him.

In this they differed from the majority of Muslims among the scholars of hadith, jurisprudence, speculative theology, and Sufism, despite their differing grounds. The transmitted reports testify that Allah speaks with sound. For this reason, Imam Ahmad and others declared those who denied this to be Jahmīs.

‘Abdullāh ibn Ahmad said:

“I said to my father: ‘Some people say that Allah does not speak with sound.’