Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān

The Prophet's mission extended over twenty years. There was therefore nothing surprising in the idea that his instructions to his community should show signs of development. Little resistance was expressed to the notion that one of the Prophet's practices could abrogate another. Indeed, for scholars who undertook the derivation of the law from its sources in the Qurʾān and sunna, the simplest means of disposing of an opponent's view was the blunt assertion that, although it had been correct at one time, it has since been abrogated. It was the need to regularize appeals to the sources and especially to the principle of abrogation that led the scholar al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820) to compose his Contradictory ḥadīth (Ikhtilāf al-ḥadīth) and Treatise [on Jurisprudence] (al-Risāla), the earliest surviving statements on jurisprudential method.

A key feature of al-Shāfiʿī's work is the emphasis on redefining the term “sunna” to restrict it to the words and actions reported from the Prophet alone. Others had interpreted the term in the older, broader sense to include the practice of other authorities, in addition to the Prophet. Al-Shāfiʿī sought to convince them that God had singled out the Prophet as alone qualified to pronounce on the law. He amassed from the Qurʾān evidence that God insisted on unquestioning obedience to his Prophet (e.g. q 4:13, 65). Appealing to a series of verses linking Muḥammad's commands and prohibitions to the divine will, and culminating in a verse which identified Muḥammad's will with the divine will (q 4:80), al-Shāfiʿī succeeded in recovering the unique prophet-figure central to and partner in the processes of divine revelation.

Those who denied the sunna any role in the construction of the law did so on the basis that the Qurʾān contains everything that is needed and that many reports about the Prophet's behavior were forged. Al-Shāfiʿī sought to convince these scholars that it was the Qurʾān itself that enjoined appeal to the prophetic sunna (al-Risāla, 79-105). The result was not merely his assertion that the Qurʾān required adherence to the sunna of the Prophet, but also the elevation of the sunna to the status of another form of revelation (Umm, vii, 271), elucidating, supplementing and never contradicting the Qurʾān. Only a verse of the Qurʾān could abrogate another verse of the Qurʾān and these verses could only abrogate other qurʾānic verses. By the same token, a prescriptive practice of the Prophet could only be abrogated by his adoption of another practice. Contrary to the practice of earlier generations of scholars who were willing to believe that their doctrines abrogated those of their foes without any evidence to support the claim, al-Shāfiʿī asserted that the ḥadīth documenting every actual instance of abrogation have survived. Therefore, one had to show that one sunna followed the other chronologically in order to determine which was abrogated. Although al-Shāfiʿī defined “abrogation” as “to abandon” (taraka, al-Risāla, 122), he added that no ruling is abrogated without a replacement ruling being promulgated in its stead, as had occurred in the case of the change of the direction of prayer (al-Risāla, 106-13). Thus, for him, “abrogation” actually meant “substitution.”

To some minds, the idea that one verse from the Qurʾān abrogated another suggested that divine will changes and divine knowledge develops and this was held to contravene basic theological tenets. Those who allowed that some verses of the Qurʾān abrogated others, responded that no Muslim ever objected to the notion that Islam had abrogated Christianity and Judaism. External abrogation of this type was an acknowledged reality, one to which the Qurʾān referred and consequently one that could be accepted. If God adapts his regulations to the different circumstances prevailing in different ages, as is apparent in the alteration of laws revealed to the different prophets, he may equally adapt regulations appropriate to the initial stages of one revelation to meet the changes wrought in the course of the revelation (al-Ghazālī, al-Mustaṣfā, i, 111). Moreover, there was historical evidence of this having happened. For example, the Muslims at Mecca were bidden to be patient under the verbal and physical assaults of their enemies. When the Muslim community emigrated to Medina, they were ordered to answer violence with violence. The weakness of Meccan Islam was replaced by the numerical and economic strength of Medinan Islam. Given these changed conditions, patient forbearance could be replaced by defiant retaliation (q 2:191, 216; 20:130; 30:60; 73:10).

Muslim theologians maintained that divine will is sovereign and limited by no power in the universe. God may command or forbid whatever he wants. In the same way, divine knowledge is infinite and instantaneous. From all eternity, God has known what he proposed to command, when he would command it, the precise duration intended for each command and the exact moment when he proposed to countermand it. There is perfect harmony between divine will and divine knowledge. Perfect will does not alter and perfect knowledge does not develop. In the case of fasting during the month of Ramaḍān, the earlier option of fasting was subsequently made obligatory. In the case of the night prayer, an obligation was reduced to an option. In the case of the change in the direction of prayer, the Muslims were required to face Mecca after having been required to turn to Jerusalem. In each instance, the earlier ruling was viewed to be proper for its time and the later abrogation was also viewed to be proper in its time (al-Shāfiʿī, al-Risāla, 117-37).

Human circumstances, however, do change and human knowledge does develop. When humans command one another and subsequently become aware of unforeseen consequences, they are obliged to withdraw a command. Their lack of perfect foresight often obliges them to have second thoughts (badāʾ, Qurṭubī, Jāmiʿ, ii, 64), which according to classical Sunnī theology, may never by posited of the divine being.

When abrogation occurs people may perceive a change, but this is only a change from the human perspective. God sends his prophets with his commands and the true believer is the one who obeys (q 4:65). Muslims should emulate the ideal attitude adopted by Abraham and his son, when both of them with full knowledge — in the Islamic tradition — were willing to proceed with the sacrifice.

The claim that abrogation, understood as the cancellation of a legal ordinance, was solidly rooted in the revelation was connected with the appropriation of the qurʾānic root n-s-kh as a technical term. The root occurs in no fewer than four verses which the classical exegetes treated as circumstantially unrelated contexts to be interpreted independently. That prevented scholars from agreeing on an unequivocal etymology and definition of “naskh” and led to the consequent emergence of a host of irreconcilable theories of abrogation. q 7:154 (nuskha) and q 45:29 (nastansikhu), the first referring to tablets (alwāḥ) and the second to a book (kitāb), united with the everyday usage, “nasakha l-kitāb” (copied a book), to produce the concept of “duplication.” The essence of this understanding is a plurality of texts. This secular usage was said to be a synonym for “naqala l-kitāb” (transcribed the book) which, however, bears the added sense of “removal” hence “transfer” or “replace,” as in the phrase nasakhat al-shams al-ẓill, “the sunlight replaced the shadow” (an etymology that is rejected by some, see Qurṭubī, Jāmiʿ, ii, 61). “God abrogates (yansakhu) whatever Satan brings forth” (q 22:52) could yield only the sense of “suppression.” This paralleled the secular usage “nasakhat al-rīḥ al-āthār” (The wind obliterated the traces [of an encampment, etc.]; cf. Qurṭubī, Jāmiʿ, ii, 61; al-Ghazālī, al-Mustaṣfā, i, 107). In this usage, abrogation as “removal” carries the connotation of “withdrawal.”

“We will make you recite so you will not forget except what God wills” (q 87:6-7) and “We do not abrogate (nansakh) a verse or cause it to be forgotten without bringing a better one or one like it” (q 2:106) introduced the idea that God might cause his Prophet to forget materials not intended to appear in the final form of the text (J. Burton, Collection, 64). This interpretation could be reinforced by reference to “We substitute (baddalnā) one verse in the place of another” (q 16:101). The concept of “omission” was added to the growing list of meanings assigned to abrogation (Qurṭubī, Jāmiʿ, ii, 62). According to one report, one night two men wished to incorporate into their prayer a verse which they had learned and had already used, but they found that they could not recall a syllable. The next day they reported this to the Prophet, who replied that the passage had been withdrawn overnight and they should put it out of their minds (Qurṭubī, Jāmiʿ, ii, 63). In another report, the Companion Ibn Masʿūd decided to recite in his prayers one night a verse he had been taught, had memorized and had written into his own copy of the revelations. Failing to recall a syllable of it, he checked his notes only to find the page blank. He reported this to the Prophet who told him that that passage had been withdrawn overnight (Nöldeke, gq, i, 47, ii, 44).

Irrecoverable forgetting was thus formalized as “withdrawal,” a more satisfactory explanation for the disappearance of revealed material. Although the majority of scholars viewed forgetting as one of the mechanisms of abrogation affecting the Qurʾān, there were those who strove to keep it separate from abrogation. According to one report, the Prophet omitted a verse in a prayer and asked one of his Companions why he had failed to prompt him. The Companion replied that he thought the verse had been withdrawn. “It was not withdrawn,” declared the Prophet, “I merely forgot it” (Saḥnūn, al-Mudawwana al-kubrā, i, 107).

Still some scholars had difficulty in accepting the mechanism of abrogation as worthy of God. Some went so far as to provide variant readings for the references to abrogation in the holy text (Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ii, 478). One particular difficulty was “We do not abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten without bringing a better one or one like it” (q 2:106). Some objected that no part of the holy text could be said to be superior to another so “without bringing a better one” could not be a reference to the Qurʾān. The same consideration applies to the Prophet's sunna abrogating the Qurʾān since no ḥadīth could be thought superior or even similar to a divine verse. The proponents of abrogation claimed that God was not referring to the text of the Qurʾān, but to the rulings conveyed by the text (al-Ghazālī, al-Mustaṣfā, i, 125; cf. Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ii, 471-2). While in terms of beauty, no qurʾānic verse can be considered superior to another and certainly no ḥadīth is more beautiful than a verse from the Qurʾān, the legal content of one verse — or even of a ḥadīth — could be considered superior to the ruling contained in another verse. Less easy to explain was the reason that in these cases God did not suppress the abrogated texts to avoid confusion (Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ii, 472).

That the notion of portions of the holy text being forgotten was repugnant to some is shown in two procedures adopted to avoid that interpretation. As an exegetical alternative, a number of different readings (see readings of the qurʾān) were proposed for the troublesome passages. In the passage “We do not abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten (nunsihā) without supplying a similar or better one” (q 2:106) attention focused on the word which the majority of scholars read as nunsi (cause to forget). This reading was supported by “You will not forget (tansā), except what God wills” (q 87:6-7). Also suggested were “You are caused to forget” (tunsa) which is to be preferred to “You forget” (tansa, Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ii, 474-5). Both of the problems, Muḥammad forgetting on his own and God making him forget, could be circumvented by reading nansaʾ, “We defer” (Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ii, 476-8). q 2:106 would then be mentioning two revelatory processes, naskh and deferment. The deferment of naskh, in the sense of “copying,” could mean “the deferring of revelation from the heavenly original (see preserved tablet) to its earthly representation in the Qurʾān,” said to have occurred in the case of the night prayer which the revelation of q 73:6 changed from obligatory to optional (al-Shāfiʿī, al-Risāla, 108). Or it could mean deferring the removal of a passage from the Qurʾān, by leaving the passage in the text despite suppression of the ruling it contained (Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ii, 478). Generally, the sense of the verb nasaʾa (to defer) is held to be temporal, although it has also been said to have a physical connotation, “driving away,” as men drive strange animals away from the cistern intended for their own beasts (Zamakhsharī, Kashshāf, ad q 2:106; cf. Ṭūsī, Tibyān, i, 395). Transferred to the qurʾānic context, verses might be driven away from a text, even from human memory. Men may be caused to forget. In support of this interpretation, reports were cited which claimed that certain sūras were originally longer than they are in the present-day text of the Qurʾān. Even verses which had allegedly been revealed and failed to find a place in the final text — such as the Ibn Ādam and Biʾr Maʿūna verses (see J. Burton, Sources, 49-53) — were cited, supposedly from the few Companions who had not quite forgotten them (Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ii, 479-80). Through another approach it is not even necessary to resort to variant readings because the Arabic word for “to forget” (nasiya) could be construed to mean “to remove something” or its opposite, “to leave something where it is” (Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ii, 476). This could mean that the verses were in the heavenly original, but not revealed, or the verses were left in the text of the Qurʾān and were neither repealed nor removed. Once replacement is ascertained to have occurred, it is immaterial whether the wording of an abandoned ruling is expunged or whether it is left to stand in the Qurʾān. The passages whose rulings have been replaced become inoperative or effectively removed (Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ii, 472).

Legal scholars appealed to the principle of abrogation continually to resolve the apparent contradictions between the legal practice of the various regions of the Islamic world and between all of these and their putative sources in the revelation. “Forgetting” and “omission” were of no interest to the legal scholars who concentrated on “substitution” derived from “We substitute one verse in the place of another” (q 16:101) and imposed by them on “We do not abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten without bringing a better one or one like it” (q 2:106). The difficulties which beset the exegetes and theologians were of little concern to legal scholars, who declared that “abrogation” (naskh) was a technical term with a meaning now clear to all (al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām, ad q 2:106). Most cited “We substitute one verse in the place of another” (q 16:101) as evidence that abrogation in the form of “substitution” had occurred, an interpretation already mentioned by the oldest exegetes (e.g. al-Farrāʾ, Maʿānī, i, 64-5). In fact, abrogation as substitution became the theater of the liveliest development of the theories of abrogation.

To the jurisprudent's interpretation of abrogation as “the replacement of the ruling but not of the text in which it appears” and to the exegete's “the withdrawal of both the ruling and its wording,” a third type was added. q 5:89 mentions “a fast of three days” as one way to atone for breaking an oath. The Companion Ibn Masʿūd (d. ca. 33/653) was said to have preserved in his personal notes the original reading of “a fast of three consecutive days.” His anomalous reading was still referred to in the time of the legal expert Abū Ḥanīfa (d. ca. 150/767). Although the word “consecutive” was not found in the text of the Qurʾān that was in general use, the ruling was adopted into Ḥanafī doctrine (al-Sarakhsī, Uṣūl, ii, 81). This exemplifies the third type of abrogation in which the text, but not the ruling, of a qurʾānic revelation was cancelled.

q 4:15-16 introduces a penalty for illicit sexual behavior (see adultery and fornication ). Both partners are to be punished with unspecified violence and the female held under house arrest for life or “until God makes a way for them.” The promised way was thought to have been provided in q 24:2, which imposed a penalty of one hundred lashes for male and female fornicators. Nevertheless, a Companion reported that the Prophet had announced, “Take it from me! Take it from me! God has now made the way for women. Virgin with virgin, one hundred lashes and banishment for twelve months. Non-virgin with non-virgin, one hundred lashes and death by stoning” (al-Shāfiʿī, al-Risāla, 129). Reports from other Companions show the Prophet extending the dual penalties to males while a number state that he stoned some offenders without flogging them (Mālik, al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, Ḥudūd, Ḥadd al-zinā). On the basis of this material, some concluded that this was a case of the Prophet's practice abrogating the Qurʾān.

The vast majority of scholars, however, regarded the imposition of stoning as the penalty for adultery as an instance of a verse from the holy text being eliminated, although the ruling it contained remained in effect. The Medinan scholar Mālik b. Anas (d. 179/795), for instance, had heard that the penalty of stoning had originated in “the book of God,” which in this case he understood to be the Torah. He reported that the Prophet had consulted the rabbis and the stoning ruling was indeed found in the Torah. With explicit reference to “the book of God,” Muḥammad imposed the ruling. Other scholars interpreted the term “the book of God” as a reference to the Qurʾān and were puzzled that they could not find such a ruling within its pages. The Prophet's second successor ʿUmar (r. 12/634-22/644) gravely urged the Muslims not to overlook “the stoning verse” which, he maintained, had been revealed to Muḥammad, taught by him to his Companions and recited in his company in the ritual prayers: “The mature male and female, stone them outright.” ʿUmar insisted that the Prophet, his immediate successor Abū Bakr (r. 11/632-13/634) and he himself had put this ruling into practice and claimed that fear of being accused of adding to the holy text was the only reason that he did not actually write the “verse” in the Qurʾān. Countless scholars in succeeding centuries have stated with assurance that a verse with the same or similar wording had once stood in the qurʾānic text. From this, they concluded that a verse could be removed from the Qurʾān without this vitiating the validity of the ruling it contained (al-Ghazālī, al-Mustaṣfā, ii, 124).

Al-Shāfiʿī did not analyze these materials from the standpoint of those who saw here the abrogation of the Qurʾān by the sunna, a claim which he at all times studiously avoided. Rather he preferred to review the case on the basis of his theory of exclusion (takhṣīṣ). By imposing on slave women half the penalty of the free, q 4:25 excluded slaves from the full brunt of q 24:2 — which ordered a flogging of one hundred lashes for male and female adulterers — and from the stoning penalty, since death has no definable half. Therefore certain classes of free Muslims may also be exempt from some of the penalties. The Prophet's practice indicated that married offenders were not covered by q 24:2 or, if they had originally been covered by that provision, they were subsequently excluded. Their penalty was to be stoning. The sunna of stoning had replaced the earlier sunna of flogging and stoning. In his analysis, al-Shāfiʿī maintained that the Prophet's words, “God has now made a way for women,” showed that the qurʾānic ruling “confine [the women] in their home until they die or until God makes a way for them” (q 4:15) had been abrogated (J. Burton, Sources, 143-56). He asserted that the Prophet had dispensed with flogging those who were to be stoned, although earlier he had applied both penalties. Because flogging was undeniably a qurʾānic ruling, some have mistakenly assumed that al-Shāfiʿī believed that stoning was a qurʾānic ruling as well.

Al-Shāfiʿī did acknowledge a third type of abrogation in his discussion of a different question, that of the withdrawal of a qurʾānic verse while the ruling it contained remained in effect. q 4:23 lists the women whom a Muslim male is forbidden to marry, including his wet-nurse and any female to whom she has given suck. Scholars disputed the number of times a child had to be suckled by a woman to establish this ban to marriage. For Mālik, a single suckling in infancy sufficed to create a barrier to marriage (Mālik, al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, al-Raḍāʿa, Raḍāʿat al-ṣaghīr). For others even a single drop of breast-milk initiated the ban. Al-Shāfiʿī fastened on one report in which the Prophet's widow ʿĀʾisha was said to have claimed that a verse imposing ten suckling sessions had been revealed to the Prophet and it was replaced by a second verse reducing the number of sessions to five, which was also subsequently lost. Earlier Mālik had curtly dismissed this report (al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, al-Raḍāʿ, al-Raḍāʿa baʿd al-kibar), but al-Shāfiʿī made it central to his conclusions. He accepted this as the one undoubted instance of the withdrawal of a qurʾānic verse while the ruling it expressed remained valid (Ikhtilāf al-ḥadīth, vii, 208 margin; see also J. Burton, Sources, 156-8).

It is clear that the theory of abrogation developed its own internal dynamic. Al-Shāfiʿī's theory that the abrogating verses of the Qurʾān had once existed was not accepted by all of his contemporaries, but it later gained widespread support. Mālikīs and Ḥanafīs had no general need of this principle while Shāfiʿīs had no need what- ever to posit that the sunna abrogated the Qurʾān or vice-versa. One nevertheless finds Mālikī and Ḥanafī scholars claiming that three forms of abrogation are documented (al-Sarakhsī, Uṣūl, ii, 81; Qurṭubī, Jāmiʿ, ii, 66), just as one also finds Shāfiʿīs adducing occurrences of the sunna abrogating the Qurʾān and the reverse which, they claimed, their eponym had overlooked (al-Ghazālī, al-Mustaṣfā, i, 124). See also traditional disciplines of qurʾānic study.