Al-Nawawī transmits Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s account that some scholars, including al-Khaṭṭābī, understood «الْوَحْيُ» here as writing or knowledge of script; the Arabic verbs «أَوْحَى» and «وَحَى» can mean “to write.” On this reading, the statement concerns the difficulty of learning writing and does not necessarily claim a new kind of divine revelation.
Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ also describes the historical suspicions: claims attributed in an extremist polemical setting about a special designation of ʿAlī, and assertions that the Prophet ﷺ confided to him secrets of revelation and knowledge of the unseen not disclosed to others. These reported claims and suspicions explain why critics could suspect a more objectionable sense of «الْوَحْيُ». They do not independently establish the truth of those claims or prove al-Ḥārith’s precise intention from this ambiguous phrase alone.