‘The Master is Allah.’” His words, “the One, the Self-Sufficient One upon whom all depend,” indicate that He neither begets nor was begotten, and there is none comparable to Him. For al-Samad is the One who has neither an internal cavity nor internal organs. Nothing enters Him, so He neither eats nor drinks—glorified and exalted is He—as He says:

“Shall I take as protector anyone other than Allah, the Originator of the heavens and the earth, who feeds but is not fed?”

In the reading of al-A‘mash and others, it is wa-lā yat‘amu (“and He does not eat”), with a fathah.

He, Exalted, also says:

“I did not create jinn and mankind except to worship Me.”

“I seek no provision from them, nor do I ask that they feed Me.”

“Indeed, Allah alone is the Provider.”

Among His creatures are the angels, who are samad and neither eat nor drink. Their Creator—majestic is His glory—is all the more entitled to every form of self-sufficiency and perfection that He has granted to some of His creatures. Hence some of the early generations explained al-Samad as the One who neither eats nor drinks. Al-Samad is the One who is not hollow, who has no internal cavity; no distinct entity therefore issues from Him, and so He does not beget.

For this reason, some of the early generations said, “He is the One from whom nothing issues.” They did not mean that He does not speak, even though speech may be described as issuing from Him, as stated in the hadith:

“The servants draw near to Allah through nothing better than that which has issued from Him.”

This means the Quran. When Abū Bakr al-Siddīq heard Musaylimah’s purported Quran, he said, “This has certainly not issued from God.”

Speech issuing from a speaker means that he speaks it, so it is heard from him and reaches another. It is not something created in another, as the Jahmiyyah claim. It does not mean that anything subsisting in Him separates from Him and moves from Him to another