Al-Ḥasan ibn Ṣabbāḥ narrated to us; Maʿbad Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Kūfī—who later settled in Baghdad—narrated to us; Muʿāwiyah ibn ʿAmmār narrated to us, saying: “I asked Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad about the Qur’an, and he replied, ‘It is neither Creator nor created.’

Abū ʿAbd Allāh said: “The Jahmites try to argue their case with certain verses, and nothing they cite is more misleading than three of them.

1. Allah’s words: ‘He created everything and proportioned it with precise determination’ (al-Furqān 25:2). They claim, ‘If you say the Qur’an is not a “thing,” you have disbelieved; and if you say the Qur’an is a “thing,” then it falls under this verse and is therefore created.’
2. His words: ‘The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, is but a messenger of Allah and His word which He cast to Mary, and a spirit from Him’ (al-Nisāʾ 4:171). They argue, ‘You have adopted the Christians’ view: the Messiah is the word of Allah, yet he is created. But you maintain that Allah’s speech is uncreated while Jesus is from that speech.’
3. His words: ‘No new reminder comes to them from their Lord…’ (al-Anbiyāʾ 21:2), whereas you assert that the Qur’an is not “new.”

Abū ʿUbaydah responded: “As for the verse ‘He created everything,’ it means exactly what it says. Yet Allah also says elsewhere: ‘Our only command to a thing, when We intend it, is to say to it “Be,” and it is’ (al-Naḥl 16:40). He thus informs us that the very first creation came into existence by His word; that first creation is included among the ‘everything’ of the statement ‘He created everything.’ Therefore His speech precedes creation.

“As for their distortion of the verse concerning the Messiah, had their reading been correct the wording between the two covers of the written text would have had to read ‘and His word which He cast to Mary’—for ‘Jesus’ is masculine, whereas ‘word’ in Arabic is feminine, and there is no dispute among the Arabs about that. Allah created Jesus by means of the word; Jesus is not himself the word. Do you not hear His statement: ‘and His word which He cast to Mary and a spirit from Him,’ meaning Gabriel, peace be upon him—just as He says elsewhere: ‘We sent to her Our spirit, and he appeared before her as a well-proportioned man’ (Maryam 19:17)? And He also says: ‘The likeness of Jesus in Allah’s sight is like that of Adam; He created him from dust, then said to him, “Be,” and he was’ (Āl ʿImrān 3:59). Thus He created both Jesus and Adam with His word “Be,” and there is no contradiction between these two verses.

“As for their distortion of the phrase ‘a new reminder from their Lord,’ the reminder became ‘new’ only in the presence of the Prophet ﷺ and his Companions when Allah taught him what he had not previously known.”