raise your head toward the sky.” I replied, “And why not? From whom can I hope for good except the One who is above the heavens?”

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad the ḥāfiẓ said: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Faḍl al-Ṣaydāwī narrated to us: I heard Isḥāq ibn Dāwūd al-Shaʿrānī relate that he presented to Muḥammad ibn Aslam al-Ṭūsī some of the statements made by those who had spoken about the Quran. Muḥammad said,

“The Quran is the speech of Allah, uncreated, wherever it is recited and wherever it is written; it neither changes, nor shifts, nor alters.”

I said, “By Allah, you have spoken the truth. From a single codex you may produce a hundred copies, yet the first copy itself has not in any way changed; you may teach the Quran to a thousand souls, yet what is in your own breast remains exactly as it was—undiminished and unaltered. This is because the written text is one, even though the acts of writing are many; what is in your chest is one, and what is in the breasts of the reciters is precisely what is in yours. Likewise, the recited Quran is one, no matter how many mouths recite it, even though it consists of many surahs, verses, and parts. It is the speech of Allah, His revelation, His sending-down and His origination; it is not, in and of itself, our speech. True, our articulation of it—our recitation, our utterance—is from our own deeds, and so too are our writing of it and the sounds we make when pronouncing it. Allah says: ‘Allah created you and what you do’ (Q. 37:96).

Therefore, the Quran that is recited, considered apart from our actions, is the speech of Allah and is uncreated. This is something grasped by the intellect, yet outwardly the Quran can only be found in the voice of a reciter or in a codex. When the believers hear it in the Hereafter from the Lord of all worlds, both the act of recitation at that moment and the Quran that is recited will be uncreated. Hence Imām Aḥmad said: Whoever says, ‘My pronunciation of the Quran is created,’ intending thereby the Quran itself, is a Jahmi.

Reflect on this, for the issue is delicate. Even though what I have explained is correct, Aḥmad—may Allah have mercy on him—and the scholars of the early generations did not permit such expressions; they fled from the terminology of the Jahmiyyah and from speculative speech in every possible way. Indeed, Ḥarb ibn Ismāʿīl said, “I heard Ibn Rāhwayh. He was asked about a man who says, ‘The Quran is not created, but my recitation of it is created, because I only reproduce it.’ He replied, ‘This is an innovation; he is not to be left alone until he gives it up.’”