Or they said:
“It(1) consists of letters, or of letters and sounds, whose individual entities are pre-eternal and which are not subject to His will and power.”
This is the position of various groups among speculative theologians, hadith scholars, and jurists(2). It is attributed to the Sālimiyya(3), and al-Shahrastānī reported(4) it as the position of the Salaf and the Hanbalis. This(5) is not, however, the position of the majority of the leading Hanbalis; rather, it is the position of a group among them and among the followers of Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and others.
This doctrine originated with the Jahmiyya [the followers of Jahm ibn Safwān](6), Abū al-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf, and others like them(7). They said: “This is because the evidence has established that the perpetuity of
(1) A, N, and M read: “or he said that it”; B reads: “or that it.” The reading I have adopted is perhaps the correct one.
(2) N and M read: “and jurisprudence and hadith.”
(3) The Sālimiyya were followers of Abū Abd Allāh Muhammad ibn Sālim (d. 297 AH) and his son, Abū al-Hasan Ahmad ibn Sālim (d. 350 AH). Muhammad ibn Sālim studied under Sahl ibn Abd Allāh al-Tustarī. Abū Tālib al-Makkī and Abū al-Hakam ibn Burjān were among the best-known figures of the Sālimiyya. Their doctrine combined elements of the teachings of Ahl al-Sunna and the Mutazila, together with an inclination toward *tashbīh* (likening Allah to His creation) and a Sufi tendency toward *ittihād* (mystical union). See: *Shadharāt al-Dhahab*, 3/36; Massignon, *Encyclopaedia of Islam*, s.v. “al-Sālimiyya”; Abū Nasr al-Sarrāj, *al-Luma*, pp. 472–476, Cairo, 1960; *al-Farq bayn al-Firaq*, pp. 157, 202; *Tabaqāt al-Sūfiyya*, pp. 414–416; and al-Sharānī, *al-Tabaqāt al-Kubrā*, pp. 99–100.
(4) A and B read: “and transmitted it.”
(5) “This” is absent from A and B.
(6) The text between square brackets is omitted from N and M.
(7) B alone reads: “and others besides the two of them.”