say: “The Qur'an is the speech of Allah; the speech of Allah issues from Him, and nothing that issues from Allah is created.”

114– I say: ʿAbd Allah recorded it in al-Sunnah (pp. 24–25). All the narrators are reliable except Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-ʿAmrī, whom I have not been able to identify.

The same statement is also attributed to Aḥmad, as transmitted by Abū Dāwūd in al-Masāʾil (263). The Ashʿarīs re-interpreted it, claiming: “The Qur'an is the speech of Allah only in the sense that He created it in the Preserved Tablet.” See al-Bājūrī’s marginal notes on al-Jawharah (pp. 44–45).

136– And Maymūn ibn Yaḥyā al-Bakrī reported that Mālik said: “Whoever says, ‘The Qur'an is created,’ is to be asked to repent; if he repents, so be it, otherwise his neck is to be struck.”

115– I say: Its chain is unobjectionable. Maymūn ibn Yaḥyā al-Bakrī is described by Ibn Abī Ḥātim (4/1/240) on the authority of his father as “a shaykh,” and the rest of the narrators are trustworthy. ʿAbd Allah ibn Aḥmad also cited it in al-Sunnah (p. 5) through another route from Mālik with the wording, “…he is to be severely beaten and imprisoned until he repents,” and that chain is sound.

7– al-Layth ibn Saʿd, the scholar of Egypt (d. 175 AH).

137– The compiler transmitted with his chain from al-Walīd, who said: “I asked al-Awzāʿī, al-Layth ibn Saʿd, Mālik, and al-Thawrī about these ḥadiths that mention the Beatific Vision and the like. They replied, ‘Let them pass as they are, without asking how.’”

116– This has been cited a little earlier with the phrase, “Let them run their course.” Ibn Taymiyyah said in al-Ḥamawiyyah: “Their words ‘let them pass as they have come’ refute the negators, while their words ‘without how’ refute those who liken Allah to His creation.” Ibn al-Qayyim added in al-Juyūsh al-Islāmiyyah (p. 77): “By saying ‘without how,’ the early scholars meant to deny figurative interpretation (taʾwīl), for that is the ‘how’ which the interpreters imagine. They thus fall into three errors: negating the real attribute, affirming a specific modality through their interpretation, and stripping the Lord—exalted is He—of the attribute He affirmed for Himself. As for the people of affirmation, none of them assigns a modality to what Allah has affirmed for Himself …” and so forth; some distortion or omission seems to have crept into the text that has reached us.

8– Salām ibn Abī Muṭīʿ, one of the leading scholars of Basra (d. 164 AH).

138– Abū Zurʿah al-Rāzī said: Hudbah ibn Khālid narrated to us: “I heard Salām ibn Abī …”