He said: Shuʿayb then remarked to me, “Allah says, ‘Indeed, We have made it an Arabic Qur’an’ (43:3). Is not everything that is ‘made’ therefore created?”

I replied, “Yet Allah also says, ‘He made them into fragments’ (21:58); did He create them? And He says, ‘He made them like devoured straw’ (105:5); did He create them? Must everything that is ‘made’ be created? How can it be created when it clearly existed before the act of making?” At that he held his peace.

Abu ʿAmr—ʿUthmān ibn ʿUmar—told me, saying: Abū Bakr—Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Hārūn—narrated to us, saying: ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad—Abū Ghālib—related to me, saying: Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Marwazī, known as Ibn Suriyya, told me:

“I visited Abū ʿAbd Allah while the splints were still on his back. He said to me, ‘Abū Jaʿfar, the people have almost shed my blood!’ They had gone to the caliph—meaning al-Muʿtaṣim—and said, ‘Commander of the Faithful, ask him about the Qur’an: is it a thing, or is it something other than a thing?’

The caliph turned to me and said, ‘Aḥmad, answer them.’

I replied, ‘Commander of the Faithful, these men have no understanding of the Qur’an, nor of abrogating and abrogated passages, nor of what is general and what is specific. Allah—Mighty and Majestic—says in the story of Moses: “We inscribed for him upon the tablets [something] of everything” (7:145), yet He did not inscribe the Qur’an for him.

‘And He says in the story of Sheba: “She has been given of everything” (27:23).’ ”