308—Ahmad ibn Ubayd informed us. He said: Muhammad ibn al-Husayn narrated to us. He said: Ahmad ibn Zuhayr narrated to us. Musab—that is, al-Zubayri—said:

“Ishaq ibn Abi Israil debated with me and said, ‘I do not make such a statement’—meaning, concerning the Quran. I debated with him, and he said, ‘I did not say it out of doubt; rather, I remain silent, just as the people before us remained silent.’

“He wept, so I recited to him these verses. He liked them and wrote them down. They were verses composed more than twenty years earlier:

[al-Wafir metre]

Shall I sit idle after my bones have trembled,
while death has drawn nearer to me than all else?

Shall I dispute with every hostile opponent,
and make his religion a target for my own?

Shall I abandon what I know for another’s opinion,
when opinion is not like certain knowledge?

What have I to do with disputation—
a confusion that turns one now left, now right?

Upright sunnahs have been laid down for us,
plainly visible along every road and mountain pass.

The truth is not shrouded in obscurity:
bright as the radiant break of clear dawn.

⦗168⦘

Jahm’s way can never replace for us
the way of the trustworthy son of Aminah.

What I know has sufficed me;
what I do not know—keep it away from me.

I do not declare any person who prays to be an unbeliever,
nor do I deem you sinful if you declare me one.

We were brothers, casting together,
and casting at every suspicious doubter.

Speculative contrivance persisted until,
over one matter, factions of differing concerns appeared.

Then the pillar of a house nearly collapses,
and one companion is severed from another.”

Musab said: “I saw the people of our town—meaning the people of Medina—forbidding theological disputation in matters of religion.”