—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—in an authentic hadith:

“Among the nations before you were men granted inspired insight. If there is anyone of this kind in my community, it is Umar.”

He thus made their presence in his own community conditional, while affirming it decisively of earlier communities. This is because the communities before us needed people granted inspired insight, just as they needed one prophet after another. As for the community of Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, Allah has made their Messenger and their Book sufficient for them, leaving them in no need of anything else. Thus, even from someone among them granted inspired insight, such as Umar ibn al-Khattāb, may Allah be pleased with him, only what accords with the Book and the Sunnah is accepted. If something is conveyed to his heart, he may not accept it until he has tested it against the Book and the Sunnah. Nor may he accept it unless it accords with the Book and the Sunnah. This is an extensive subject concerning the merits of the Quran over everything else.

The point is to show that matters such as this were firmly established in the minds of the community’s earliest generations and those who followed them. No one among the early generations was ever known to reject such a thing or to say, “No part of Allah’s speech can be nobler than another, for all of it belongs to Allah’s attributes,” or anything similar. Such rejection arose only when the innovations of the Jahmiyyah appeared—those who differed concerning the Book and divided it into parts.

Among those who discussed “the intrinsic superiority of some parts of the Quran over others” were followers of al-Shāfi‘ī, Ahmad, and others, including Shaykh Abū Hāmid al-Isfarāyīnī, Judge Abū al-Tayyib, Abū Ishāq al-Shīrāzī, and others; likewise, Judge Abū Ya‘lā, al-Halwānī the Elder and his son ‘Abd al-Rahmān, and Ibn ‘Aqīl. Abū al-Wafā’ Ibn ‘Aqīl said in