He continued:

One of them said to me, “Allah, the Almighty, says, ‘Allah is the Creator of everything’ (al-Zumar 39:62). Is the Quran not a thing?”

I replied, “Allah, the Almighty, also says, ‘It destroyed everything by the command of its Lord’ (al-Ahqaf 46:25). Yet did it destroy anything beyond what it was sent upon?”

Another of them objected, quoting, “Whenever a new reminder (dhikr) comes to them from their Lord …” (al-Anbiya 21:2). “Can something be called ‘new’ without being created?”

I answered, “Allah, the Almighty, says, ‘Sad. By the Quran rich in Reminder’ (Sad 38:1). The ‘reminder’ here is the Quran, whereas in your verse the word appears without the definite article—there is neither alif nor lam.”

Abu ʿAmro—Hamzah ibn al-Qasim—narrated to us; he said: Hanbal narrated to us; he said: Abu ʿAbd Allah related to us a report similar to this; he said, “So I told them, ‘In that verse the word is indefinite, so it may refer to any kind of reminder, whereas the definite form—al-dhikr—is the Quran.’”

Abu ʿAmro 1—ʿUthman ibn ʿUmar al-Darraj—informed me; he said: Abu Bakr—Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Harun al-Khallal—narrated to us; he said: Ahmad ibn al-Husayn al-Warraq wrote to me from Mosul; he said: Bakr ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hakam narrated to us from his father, from Abu ʿAbd Allah. I asked him about the proof he advanced when he appeared before those people. He said, “They cited against me the verse, ‘Whenever a new reminder comes to them from their Lord …’ (al-Anbiya 21:2), arguing that the Quran is new (muhdath). I countered them with the verse, ‘Sad. By the Quran rich in Reminder’ (Sad 38:1). I said, ‘He has named it the Reminder,’ and I added, ‘Whenever a new reminder comes to them from their Lord …’ This could