Also foreclosing on the possibility of any improvisation of Quranic verses was the belief of Sunni scholars that the Quran was not written/spoken during the course of its revelation, in fact not even created/written by God, but is as ageless as God himself, "uncreated", an "attribute" of God (like being all-powerful, beneficent, merciful, etc.), its original copy being the "mother of the book" — "umm al-kitab" — kept in the presence of God (Q.13:39; Q.43:4), the earthly Quran being only a copy of it. (The Mutazilah argued that the Qur'an could not be both eternal and subject to abrogation, with a new verse abrogating an earlier one.)