and says that these sounds are distinct from those.

Whoever maintains that speech consists of letters, or letters and sounds, conjoined with one another without beginning or end, yet constituting a single entity, holds a position whose falsity is recognized by the great majority of rational people. Likewise, the position of anyone who regards them as a single utterance is recognized as false by the great majority of rational people. In any event, if something is held to be a single entity, it is impossible to ask whether some of it is superior to the rest.

As for someone who affirms multiplicity in meanings and letters, or in either of them, his position makes the question of equality and superiority intelligible. The question then arises: can there be degrees of superiority within Allah’s speech, attributes, and names, or can such differences exist only among created things?

Accordingly, Ibn Battāl’s account in his commentary on al-Bukhārī, when discussing this hadith, reads:

“Al-Muhallab said—and he related this from al-Asīlī; it is also the position of al-Ash'arī, Abū Bakr ibn al-Tayyib, Ibn Abī Zayd, al-Dāwūdī, Abū al-Hasan al-Qābisī, and a group of Sunni scholars—that no part of the Quran is superior to another, since all of it is the speech of Allah Most High and His attribute, and it is uncreated. Degrees of superiority are possible only among created things.”

This presents these scholars’ views according to what he supposed their positions entailed, since he believed that degrees of superiority could exist only among created things, whereas these scholars held the Quran to be uncreated. Yet we have already explained that none of the early generations who declared it uncreated is reported to have said that no part of it is superior to another. Rather, what is reported from them is