and Ahmad ibn Uthman al-Nasawi, and Muadh ibn Muhammad ibn Muadh al-Nasawi. All of them said: “The Quran is the speech of Allah, uncreated; whoever says that it is created is a disbeliever.”

Thus, these are five hundred and fifty persons, or more, from among the Successors, the successors of the Successors, and the approved imams—apart from the righteous Companions—across differing eras and the passage of years and ages. Among them are approximately one hundred imams whose views people adopted and whose legal schools they followed as their religion. Had I occupied myself with transmitting the statements of the hadith scholars, their names would have reached many thousands; but I have been concise and omitted the chains of transmission for brevity’s sake. I have related the positions of these scholars, generation after generation, without any objector objecting to them. Whoever rejected their statement, they would call him to repent, or order that he be killed, banished, or crucified.

There is no disagreement within the Ummah that the first to say, “The Quran is created,” was Jad ibn Dirham, in the early twenties AH; then Jahm ibn Safwan. As for Jad, Khalid ibn Abd Allah al-Qasri killed him. As for Jahm, he was killed in Marw during the caliphate of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik. I shall mention their account, if Allah wills, and begin by mentioning the prescribed punishments which the scholars deemed incumbent upon them, as well as shunning them and keeping away from them, so that Muslims may have in this an example and model to follow.