all the meanings of speech.

Others among them said: Rather, the eternal Quran consists of letters, or letters and sounds, which are eternal and beginningless, subsisting in the Lord’s essence without beginning or end. They occur in succession in their intrinsic nature and essence, but not in their existence, for no part of what is eternal can precede another. They thus distinguished between speech itself and its existence, locating succession in speech itself rather than in its existence—just as those among the Mu'tazilah and the philosophers who hold such a view distinguish things’ existence from their individual realities and essences.

Both groups maintain that when He speaks to Moses, the angels, or His servants on the Day of Resurrection, He does not address them with speech that He utters by His will and power at the time He addresses them. Rather, He creates in the one addressed a perception through which that person perceives the eternal speech inseparable from Allah’s essence, without beginning or end. According to them, He has always been, and will always be, saying:

“O Adam, dwell, you and your wife,”

and:

“O Noah, disembark in peace from Us and with blessings upon you,”

and:

“O Iblīs, what prevented you from prostrating to what I created with My two hands?”

and similar statements. These views and others have been discussed at length elsewhere.

The point is that no one can transmit either of these two views from any of the early generations—meaning the Companions, those who followed them in righteousness, and the other leading Muslim scholars renowned for knowledge and religious devotion, who are spoken of with honour within the Muslim community—in the time of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Shāfi'ī, or Abū Hanīfah, or before them. The first to introduce this principle was Abū Muhammad 'Abd Allāh ibn Sa'īd ibn Kullāb. He recognized that letters occur in succession and therefore cannot be eternal as individual entities, for that which comes later