Naskh (exegesis)
Encyclopedia
Naskh is an Arabic language
word usually translated as "abrogation"; it shares the same root
as the words appearing in the phrase al-nāsikh wal-mansūkh (الناسخ والمنسوخ, "the abrogating and abrogated [verses]"). It is a term used in Islamic legal exegesis
for seemingly contradictory material within or between the twin bases of Islamic holy law: the Qur'ān
and the Prophetic
Sunna
. Over the last century, there have come to be serious objections to the very idea of Naskh within the Muslim community; returning to a dissenting attitude from early Muslim history (e.g., Abu Muslim Al-Asfahani 948–1038 C.E).
and then as fully elaborated theory
) dates back to the first centuries of Islamic civilization. Almost all classical naskh works, for instance, begin by recounting the incident of the Kufa
n preacher banned from expounding the Qur'ān by an early 'ilmic
authority figure (usually 'Alī but sometimes also Ibn 'Abbās) on account of his ignorance of the principles of naskh.
Whatever the dubious historicity of such traditions:
More precisely:
In time, more complex philological
, theological
, and philosophical
theorizing accrued to this doctrine, and in general the amount of material recognized as either nāsikh (abrogating) or mansūkh (abrogated) has over time decreased as a result, from the 200+ verses cited by the high-medieval
jurists
to the 20 recognized by the late medieval al-Suyūti and the mere adduced 7 in one modern study.
's more than two decade term as prophet, it is argued, required new rulings to meet the Muslim community's
changing circumstances. Or, from a more theologically inflected stand-point, the expiration points of those rulings God intended as temporary all along were reached. A classic example of this is the early community's increasingly belligerent posture towards its pagan and Jewish neighbors:
Yet despite its dependence on chronology, naskh is in no way a historiographical enterprise:
Naskh applies to only the regulative parts of God's
revelation. In Tabarī's words:
In particular, the central tenets of the faith are excluded from this process.
. A Qur'ānic verse may abrogate another Qur'ānic verse, and a Prophetic Sunna
may likewise abrogate another Prophetic Sunna. The possibility of abrogation between these two sources, though, was a more contentious issue precipitated by the absence within a source of the appropriate abrogating (nāsikh) or abrogated (mansūkh) material necessary to bring concordance between it and the Fiqh
.
In Shāfi'ī's source theory
the possibility of abrogation between the Sunna and the Qur'ān was vehemently denied:
This stance was a reaction to larger developments within Islamic jurisprudence, particularly the reformulation of the Fiqh
away from early foreign or regional influences and toward more eminently Islamic bases such as the Qur'ān. This assertion of Qur'ānic primacy was accompanied by calls for an abandonment of the Sunna. Shāfi'ī's insistence upon the impossibility of contradiction between Sunna and Qur'ān can thus be seen as one component in this larger effort of rescuing the Sunna:
Later scholars, writing when the juridicial legitimacy of the Sunna could be taken for granted (thanks largely to Shāfi'ī's efforts!), were less inclined to adopt his inflexible stance. To their minds the reality of this sort of inter-source abrogation was proven by several "indisputable" instances: the changing of the qibla
towards Mecca
and away from Jerusalem, and the introduction of the penalty
of stoning
for adultery. The following passage from Qurtubī (al-Jāmi' li ahkām al-Qur'ān) is representative in this regard:
Al-Ghazālī
employs the same three examples in his Mustasfā.
One outcome of these disputations was the proposal of a mode of naskh known as naskh al-tilāwa dūna al-hukm ("abrogation of the wording but not ruling") in order to provide a Qur'ānic nāsikh, or abrogator, for Q.24:2 (see below).
Of these three modes of naskh, it was the first — naskh al-hukm dūna al-tilāwa — which received widespread recognition. The second mode, naskh al-hukmwa-'l-tilāwa, was also generally acknowledged, in part due to the many alleged instances of revelatory erasure:
In all, 564 verses were alleged to have been expunged from the mushaf, or 1/11th of its total content.
The third mode, naskh al-tilāwa dūna al-hukm, was accepted by only a minority of scholars. The most prominent alleged instance of this sort of abrogation is the naskh of the so-called āyat al-rajm
, or stoning
verse. Adduced to exist from a tradition derived from the caliph 'Umar, the verse provided Qur'ānic sanction for the penalty for adultery
found within the Fiqh (i.e. stoning
) in contravention to the penalty prescribed by Q.24:2 – flogging.
The postulation of this mode stems (indirectly, however) from Shāfi'ī's source theory which rejected abrogation between sources:
Though Shāfi'ī thus never in fact postulated the existence of a "stoning verse", in one particular instance he did acknowledge the probability of "abrogation of wording but not ruling":
Implicit in the latter two modes of naskh is the distinction between the Qur'ān as temporally contingent document-i.e. the mushaf
- and the Qur'ān as the unity of all revelation ever sent down to Muhammed. According to some exegetes this latter conception is not a wholly abstract one, but in fact corresponds to a heavenly reality, with the Qur'ān existing as a celestial archetype within the Mother of the Book (umm al-kitāb) (Q.43:4) or upon the Preserved Tablet (Q.85:21). Thus those verses omitted from the terrestrial mushaf may yet be said to still endure in Heaven.
s. In Islamic prophetology, a messenger
may abrogate certain ritual and social laws handed down by his predecessors in order to lighten Man's burden, make lawful what had previously been unlawful, and therefore demonstrate God's mercy for His creation. According to Burton, "that Muhammad accepted a doctrine of external naskh cannot be doubted", and indeed naskhs Qur'ānic "proof text", Q.2:106, coming as it does right after a series of verses abrogating many aspects of the Jewish Halakha
, may intend this sort of naskh.
). Overall, though, these verses were of marginal importance for the exegesis of naskh.
More significant is the occurrence at Q.22:52:
This verse, cited by Tabarī in connection with the incident of the so-called "Satanic Verses
", supported an interpretation of naskh as eradication (izāla) and thus made acceptable the idea of naskh as the nullification of a verse without any replacement- naskh al-hukm wa-'l-tilāwa. In Tabarī's interpretation (Tafsīr):
The "hint of dualism
" in this passage (even Satan, Tabarī seems to say, plays a meaningful role in the dialectic
al process of God's revelation) is more apparent than real. In order to enlist Q.22:52 as incontrovertible proof of naskhs eradicatory facility, Tabarī must gloss over the essential difference between the activity pledged within it and those forms of abrogation considered the legitimate expressions of naskh- namely, the authentically divine provenance of the latters' abrogated material. Thus his incentive to construe the divine eradication of Satanic material as a purposeful, even constructive, activity, rather than a wholly reactive and defensive one. Later exegetes such as Makkī would carefully guard this distinction, though:
Thus Q.22:52 was relegated to merely lexical significance.
It was Q.2:106 which served as the chief Qur'ānic "proof-text" for naskh, and indeed it lent the concept its very name:
Opinion as to naskhs technical meaning here oscillated between replacement (ibdāl) and nullification (ibtāl). This despite the fact that the former meaning would make the coordinate clause's "We substitute something better or similar" tautological
. To work around this problem exegetes such as Tabarī interpolated hukm (ruling) in place of the word āya
, arguing that if a ruling is replaced the preservation or not of its wording in the mushaf
is immaterial, thus letting the verse confirm the two main types of naskh. Alternate interpretations were also suggested for the subordinate clause's "cause to be forgotten" (aw nansahā), such as defer or leave. This was primarily motivated by flight from the theologically repugnant idea of prophetic forgetting, with Q.15:9 cited as evidence of its impossibility. Yet verses Q.17:86, Q.18:24, and Q.87:6–7 explicitly endorse its feasibility. Thus "Qur'ān-forgetting is clearly adumbrated in the Qur'ān". Many ahadith
also attest to the phenomenon: entire suras which the Muslims had previously recited, claims one, would one morning be discovered to have been completely erased from memory (cf. Abū 'Ubaid al-Qāsim b. Sallām). In the same spirit of "turning lemons into lemonade" which characterizes much else within the theologizing of naskh, divine purpose was attributed to such incidents; Rāzī, for example, speculates that they may have figured among the Prophet
's miracles.
Finally, there exist two important linguistically unrelated verses cited in connection with naskh: Q.16:101- "When We substitute [tabdīl] one revelation for another"- and Q.13:39- "Allah
doth blot out or confirm what He pleaseth". Besides confirming the two major modes of abrogation (i.e. suppression and supersession), the former verse is employed by Shāfi'ī in his theory of abrogation between sources as proof that a Qur'ān verse can only be abrogated by another Qur'ān verse.
), naskh attained its formal meaning through a process of theoretical refinement in which early applications of the concept were abandoned upon further logical or religious consideration. Tabarī's ambivalent use of the term for the eradication of Satanic material
has already been noted. Among naskh 's other, ultimately discarded, uses in early works of tafsīr are: the abrogation of a ruling from pre-Islamic (i.e. jāhilī
) Arabia, and the juridicial deflation of a broadly applicable ruling by a succeeding one which narrows its scope (nasakha min [al-āya]- "an exception is provided to [the verse]"). The latter usage was reformulated by Shāfi'ī as takhsīs (specification/exception), resulting in a marked decrease in the amount of material considered mansūkh.
Putting aside dubiously attributed
works, such as the Naskh al-Qur-ān of "al-Zuhrī
", the principle of abrogation (without its naskh terminology) makes one of its earliest documented appearance in the Muwatta' of Mālik
:
The impetus for this principle, seen already in Mālik's day, was the need to harmonize the regional variants of Islamic law both with one another as well as the putative sources of Islamic law. That the starting point for these local fiqh
s was in fact neither the Qur'ān nor the Sunna
(in its later sense of the Sunna of Muhammad
) has been shown by Schacht
. As authority for local views began to be attributed back in time to the Companions
and eventually Muhammad himself (documented by what Schacht terms the "backward growth" of isnāds) the contradictions in regional fiqh became irreconcilable. Naskh allowed for the alleviation of these tensions by the claim that, in the case of two "soundly" documented traditions
contradicting one another, one had come later and abrogated the other.
Yet even after the need to ground their legal theories in either Sunna or Qur'ān became apparent to the jurists
, the regional fiqhs were not discarded, but became the third source in reformualting Islamic law, on par with and of even greater importance than Sunna or Qur'ān! This can be seen in the postulation of "lost" verses whose rulings were still operative and conventiently corroborative of the jurist's own school of fiqh (e.g. the "stoning" and "suckling" verses). It is also evinced in Shāfi'ī's remarkable admission that but for the guidance of the Sunna the Muslims would have had no choice but to carry out the rulings of the Qur'ān!
and Shī'a,. Among those groups that did reject naskh were the Mu'tazili
and Zaidiyah, on the rationalist grounds that the word of God could not contain contradictions, and the much later Ahmadī
s, who argued that all Qur'ānic verses have equal validity, in keeping with their emphasis on the "unsurpassable beauty and unquestionable validity of the Qur'ān". The harmonization of apparently incompatible rulings is resolved through their juridical deflation in Ahmadī fiqh
, so that a ruling (considered to have applicability only to the specific situation for which it was revealed
), is effective not because it was revealed last, but because it is most suited to the situation at hand.
" with Islam's core religious doctrines.
Probably the most immediate concern was explaining the very existence of progressive revelation. What could account for God's turn to this expedient outside of limits to His omniscience
(subsequent rulings are "better" because they are informed by superior knowledge) or inconstancy in the divine will? Both prospects were repugnant to orthodox theologians (at least of the Sunni variety; compare this to the Shi'ite doctrine of bada'
, however) and so other rationales were put forth. One of these relied upon the tried apologetic technique (see the argument for theodicy from free will, for example) of reconstruing apparent limitations in the Creator
as expressions of solicitude towards His creatures, and indeed as tokens of His mercy towards them. This was formalized in the doctrine of tahkfīf and is frequently expressed by commentators such as Tabarī, who argued in his exegesis of Q.2:106 that one motivation for naskh was God's desire to lighten the ritualistic and legal burdens He had imposed upon mankind:
Yet tahkfīf is equally applicable where the nāsikh introduces a more onerous requirement- for example, the extension of the ritual fast from a few days (Q.2:184) to the entire month of Ramadan
(Q.2:185)- as its performance is "better" for men on account of it helping them attain greater reward in the Hereafter, or even when the change is indifferent, such as the switching of the qibla
, as the reward will not change. Clearly, then, the criteria of tahkfīf is unfalsifiable
, completely useless for distinguishing nāsikh from mansūkh, and therefore entirely dogmatic in character.
Another, much more specifically Islamic, problem was raised by the doctrine by mu'jaz- or the literary perfection and inimitability of the Qur'ān. How could one āya be replaced by one which is better than it, as Q.2:106 explicitly promises, if all āyat or inimitable and therefore incommensurable? This issue was side-stepped by interpolation; the superior replacement is the verse's ruling, not the verse's wording, and so no violation of the doctrine of mu'jaz is entailed.
Lastly, there is the issue of abrogated material whose wording is preserved in the mushaf
(naskh al-hukm dūna al-tilāwa). Since the verse's ruling is inoperative, what purpose is served by retaining its wording? One common rationale, expressed here by Suyūti (Itqān) and mirroring the tahkfīf argument was:
Overall, though, the Muslim commentators demonstrate a remarkable degree of complacency in the face of naskh 's more theologically disturbing implications, supremely confident (as expressed in the following gloss on a famous Ā'isha
hadith
) that whatever the mechanisms used to expurgate or cancel the Divine revelation, what has ultimately come down to us is exactly what Allah
intended mankind to have:
Such complacency reflects the important constitutive effects of naskhs eventual theological sanitization. Once the genuineness of God's abrogation of His own commandments was accepted, the fact that no intelligible pattern underlay His sequence of actions was taken as indicative of important facts about the nature of the Creator, as well as the proper duties of His creatures. In particular this reinforced the extreme deontological currents
within Islamic philosophy and ethics:
, naskh generated its own corpus of specialized legal manuals. These treatises invariably begin with an introduction designed to impress the importance and high Islamic credibility of the science, often by an appeal to 'ilmic
authority figures of the past (as in the story of 'Alī and the Kufa
n preacher). As is made clear in these stories
, "none may occupy judicial
or religious office in the community
who is not equipped with this indispensable knowledge and who is incapable of distinguishing nāsikh [abrogator] from mansūkh [abrogatee].
The remainder of the introduction then typically treats the various modes of naskh, naskh 's applicability between Sunna and Qur'ān, and- in appeasement of theological scruples- why naskh is not the same as badā'
, or inconstancy of the Divine Will. Following this comes the core of the treatise, an enumeration of abrogated verses in sūra
order of the Qur'ān. In their consideration of nāsikh wal-mansūkh the taxonomic
predilections of these authors comes out, evinced in their discussions of special verses considered "marvels" (ajā'ib) of the Qur'ān, such as the verse which abrogates the greatest number of other verses (Q.9:5), the verse which was in effect longest until it was abrogated (Q.46:9), and the verse which contains both an abrogatee and its abrogator (Q.5:105).
Abū 'Ubaid al-Qāsim b. Sallām (d. 838), Kitāb al-nāsikh wal-mansūkh (Book of the Abrogating and Abrogated [Verses])
al-Nahhās (d. 949), Kitāb al-nāsikh wal-mansūkh
Hibat Allāh ibn Salāma (d. 1019), Kitāb al-nāsikh wal-mansūkh
al-Baghādī (d. 1037), al-Nāsikh wal-mansūkh
Makkī b. Abū Tālib al-Qaisī (d. 1045) al-Īdāh li-nāsikh al-Qur'ān wa-mansūkhihi
Ibn al-'Atā'iqī (d. 1308), al-Nāsikh wal-mansūkh
Ibn Hkuzayma al-Fārisī, Kitāb al-mujāz fī'l-nāsikh wa'l-mansūkh
Ibn Al-Jawzī, Nawāsikh al-Qur-ān
Jalāl-ud-Dīn al-Suyūţi, Al-Itqān fi Ulūm al-Qur-ān
Modern examples include:
Mustafā Zayd, Al-Naskh fil-Qur'ān al-Kari-m, Cairo
: Dār al-Fikr al-'Arabī, 1963 Ali Hasan Al-Arīď, Fatħ al-Mannān fi naskh al-Qur-ān
Abd al-Mutaāl al-Jabri, Al-Nāsikh wal-Mansūkh bayn al-Ithbāt wal-Nafy, Cairo
: Wahba Bookstore, 1987
Mustafa Ibrahīm al-Zalmi, Al-Tibyān liraf` Ghumūď al-Naskh fi al-Qur-ān, Arbīl
: National Library, Iraq, 2000
Ihāb Hasan Abduh, Istiħālat Wujūd al-Naskh fi al-Qurān, Cairo
: Al-Nāfitha Bookstore, 2005
Frequently cited examples of intra-Qur'ānic abrogation are:
Examples of inter-Qur'ānic abrogation, where one of the rulings comes from the Sunna
, are:
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
word usually translated as "abrogation"; it shares the same root
Triliteral
The roots of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages are characterized as a sequence of consonants or "radicals"...
as the words appearing in the phrase al-nāsikh wal-mansūkh (الناسخ والمنسوخ, "the abrogating and abrogated [verses]"). It is a term used in Islamic legal exegesis
Tafsir
Tafseer is the Arabic word for exegesis or commentary, usually of the Qur'an. Ta'wīl is a subset of tafsir and refers to esoteric or mystical interpretation. An author of tafsir is a mufassir .- Etymology :...
for seemingly contradictory material within or between the twin bases of Islamic holy law: the Qur'ān
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
and the Prophetic
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
Sunna
Sunnah
The word literally means a clear, well trodden, busy and plain surfaced road. In the discussion of the sources of religion, Sunnah denotes the practice of Prophet Muhammad that he taught and practically instituted as a teacher of the sharī‘ah and the best exemplar...
. Over the last century, there have come to be serious objections to the very idea of Naskh within the Muslim community; returning to a dissenting attitude from early Muslim history (e.g., Abu Muslim Al-Asfahani 948–1038 C.E).
History
The emergence of naskh (initially as practiceFiqh
Fiqh is Islamic jurisprudence. Fiqh is an expansion of the code of conduct expounded in the Quran, often supplemented by tradition and implemented by the rulings and interpretations of Islamic jurists....
and then as fully elaborated theory
Usul al-fiqh
Uṣūl al-fiqh is the study of the origins, sources, and principles upon which Islamic jurisprudence is based. In the narrow sense, it simply refers to the question of what are the sources of Islamic law...
) dates back to the first centuries of Islamic civilization. Almost all classical naskh works, for instance, begin by recounting the incident of the Kufa
Kufa
Kufa is a city in Iraq, about south of Baghdad, and northeast of Najaf. It is located on the banks of the Euphrates River. The estimated population in 2003 was 110,000....
n preacher banned from expounding the Qur'ān by an early 'ilmic
Ilm (Arabic)
‘Ilm as an Islamic term refers to knowledge of Islam. The Qur'an is said to encourage the acquisition of knowledge. It explains the study and development of sciences during the Golden Age of Islam....
authority figure (usually 'Alī but sometimes also Ibn 'Abbās) on account of his ignorance of the principles of naskh.
Whatever the dubious historicity of such traditions:
More precisely:
In time, more complex philological
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
, theological
Islamic theology
Islamic theology is a branch of Islamic studies regarding the beliefs associated with the Islamic faith. Any religious belief system, or creed, can be considered an example of aqidah. However, this term has taken a significant technical usage in Islamic history and theology, denoting those...
, and philosophical
Islamic philosophy
Islamic philosophy is a branch of Islamic studies. It is the continuous search for Hekma in the light of Islamic view of life, universe, ethics, society, and so on...
theorizing accrued to this doctrine, and in general the amount of material recognized as either nāsikh (abrogating) or mansūkh (abrogated) has over time decreased as a result, from the 200+ verses cited by the high-medieval
Islamic Golden Age
During the Islamic Golden Age philosophers, scientists and engineers of the Islamic world contributed enormously to technology and culture, both by preserving earlier traditions and by adding their own inventions and innovations...
jurists
Faqih
A Faqīh is an expert in fiqh, or, Islamic jurisprudence.A faqih is an expert in Islamic Law, and, as such, the word Faqih can literally be generally translated as Jurist.- The definition of Fiqh and its relation to the Faqih:...
to the 20 recognized by the late medieval al-Suyūti and the mere adduced 7 in one modern study.
Theory
Naskh employs the logic of chronology and progressive revelation. The different situations encountered over the course of MuhammadMuhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
's more than two decade term as prophet, it is argued, required new rulings to meet the Muslim community's
Ummah
Ummah is an Arabic word meaning "community" or "nation." It is commonly used to mean either the collective nation of states, or the whole Arab world...
changing circumstances. Or, from a more theologically inflected stand-point, the expiration points of those rulings God intended as temporary all along were reached. A classic example of this is the early community's increasingly belligerent posture towards its pagan and Jewish neighbors:
Yet despite its dependence on chronology, naskh is in no way a historiographical enterprise:
Naskh applies to only the regulative parts of God's
Allah
Allah is a word for God used in the context of Islam. In Arabic, the word means simply "God". It is used primarily by Muslims and Bahá'ís, and often, albeit not exclusively, used by Arabic-speaking Eastern Catholic Christians, Maltese Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Mizrahi Jews and...
revelation. In Tabarī's words:
In particular, the central tenets of the faith are excluded from this process.
Between sources
Abrogation is applicable to both sources of Islamic law: the Qur'ān and the Prophetic SunnaQur'an and Sunnah
Qur'an and Sunnah is an often quoted Islamic term regarding the sources of Islam. Muslims hold that Islam is derived from two sources: one being infallible and containing compressed information — the Qur'an — and another being a detailed explanation of the everyday application of the principles...
. A Qur'ānic verse may abrogate another Qur'ānic verse, and a Prophetic Sunna
Sunnah
The word literally means a clear, well trodden, busy and plain surfaced road. In the discussion of the sources of religion, Sunnah denotes the practice of Prophet Muhammad that he taught and practically instituted as a teacher of the sharī‘ah and the best exemplar...
may likewise abrogate another Prophetic Sunna. The possibility of abrogation between these two sources, though, was a more contentious issue precipitated by the absence within a source of the appropriate abrogating (nāsikh) or abrogated (mansūkh) material necessary to bring concordance between it and the Fiqh
Fiqh
Fiqh is Islamic jurisprudence. Fiqh is an expansion of the code of conduct expounded in the Quran, often supplemented by tradition and implemented by the rulings and interpretations of Islamic jurists....
.
In Shāfi'ī's source theory
Usul al-fiqh
Uṣūl al-fiqh is the study of the origins, sources, and principles upon which Islamic jurisprudence is based. In the narrow sense, it simply refers to the question of what are the sources of Islamic law...
the possibility of abrogation between the Sunna and the Qur'ān was vehemently denied:
This stance was a reaction to larger developments within Islamic jurisprudence, particularly the reformulation of the Fiqh
Fiqh
Fiqh is Islamic jurisprudence. Fiqh is an expansion of the code of conduct expounded in the Quran, often supplemented by tradition and implemented by the rulings and interpretations of Islamic jurists....
away from early foreign or regional influences and toward more eminently Islamic bases such as the Qur'ān. This assertion of Qur'ānic primacy was accompanied by calls for an abandonment of the Sunna. Shāfi'ī's insistence upon the impossibility of contradiction between Sunna and Qur'ān can thus be seen as one component in this larger effort of rescuing the Sunna:
Later scholars, writing when the juridicial legitimacy of the Sunna could be taken for granted (thanks largely to Shāfi'ī's efforts!), were less inclined to adopt his inflexible stance. To their minds the reality of this sort of inter-source abrogation was proven by several "indisputable" instances: the changing of the qibla
Qibla
The Qiblah , also transliterated as Qibla, Kiblah or Kibla, is the direction that should be faced when a Muslim prays during salah...
towards Mecca
Mecca
Mecca is a city in the Hijaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level...
and away from Jerusalem, and the introduction of the penalty
Hudud
Hudud is the word often used in Islamic literature for the bounds of acceptable behaviour and the punishments for serious crimes...
of stoning
Stoning
Stoning, or lapidation, is a form of capital punishment whereby a group throws stones at a person until the person dies. No individual among the group can be identified as the one who kills the subject, yet everyone involved plainly bears some degree of moral culpability. This is in contrast to the...
for adultery. The following passage from Qurtubī (al-Jāmi' li ahkām al-Qur'ān) is representative in this regard:
Al-Ghazālī
Al-Ghazali
Abu Hāmed Mohammad ibn Mohammad al-Ghazzālī , known as Algazel to the western medieval world, born and died in Tus, in the Khorasan province of Persia was a Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic....
employs the same three examples in his Mustasfā.
One outcome of these disputations was the proposal of a mode of naskh known as naskh al-tilāwa dūna al-hukm ("abrogation of the wording but not ruling") in order to provide a Qur'ānic nāsikh, or abrogator, for Q.24:2 (see below).
Modes
Three modes of naskh were proposed by the classical exegetes:- naskh al-hukm dūna al-tilāwa: abrogation of the ruling but not the wording, or supersession. A regulation- embodied within either a Qur'ānic verse or a hadith report- is replaced but its wording remains- in the former case, as text within the mushafMushafA mus'haf is a codex or collection of sheets . The Qur’an, which Muslims believe to have been revealed at various times and in various ways during the 23-year period at the end of Muhammad's life, was collected into a codex under the third Caliph, Uthman ibn Affan..The Islamic term al-Qur’ān...
.
- naskh al-hukm wa-'l-tilāwa: abrogation of both ruling and wording, or suppression/erasure. Applicable only to the Qur'ān. A ruling is voided and its text omitted from the mushaf. Evidence that the verse ever existed is preserved only within traditionHadithThe term Hadīth is used to denote a saying or an act or tacit approval or criticism ascribed either validly or invalidly to the Islamic prophet Muhammad....
.
- naskh al-tilāwa dūna al-hukm: abrogation of the wording but not the ruling. Again, applicable only to the Qur'ān. The text of a still-functional ruling is omitted from the mushaf. Proof of the verse's existence is preserved within tradition (i.e through a hadith report) as well as in the FiqhFiqhFiqh is Islamic jurisprudence. Fiqh is an expansion of the code of conduct expounded in the Quran, often supplemented by tradition and implemented by the rulings and interpretations of Islamic jurists....
.
Of these three modes of naskh, it was the first — naskh al-hukm dūna al-tilāwa — which received widespread recognition. The second mode, naskh al-hukmwa-'l-tilāwa, was also generally acknowledged, in part due to the many alleged instances of revelatory erasure:
In all, 564 verses were alleged to have been expunged from the mushaf, or 1/11th of its total content.
The third mode, naskh al-tilāwa dūna al-hukm, was accepted by only a minority of scholars. The most prominent alleged instance of this sort of abrogation is the naskh of the so-called āyat al-rajm
Rajm
Rajm is an Arabic word that means "stoning". It is commonly used to refer to the Hudud punishment wherein an organized group throws stones at a convicted individual until that person dies. Traditionally it is called for in cases of adultery where the criteria for conviction are met...
, or stoning
Stoning
Stoning, or lapidation, is a form of capital punishment whereby a group throws stones at a person until the person dies. No individual among the group can be identified as the one who kills the subject, yet everyone involved plainly bears some degree of moral culpability. This is in contrast to the...
verse. Adduced to exist from a tradition derived from the caliph 'Umar, the verse provided Qur'ānic sanction for the penalty for adultery
Adultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...
found within the Fiqh (i.e. stoning
Stoning
Stoning, or lapidation, is a form of capital punishment whereby a group throws stones at a person until the person dies. No individual among the group can be identified as the one who kills the subject, yet everyone involved plainly bears some degree of moral culpability. This is in contrast to the...
) in contravention to the penalty prescribed by Q.24:2 – flogging.
The postulation of this mode stems (indirectly, however) from Shāfi'ī's source theory which rejected abrogation between sources:
Though Shāfi'ī thus never in fact postulated the existence of a "stoning verse", in one particular instance he did acknowledge the probability of "abrogation of wording but not ruling":
Implicit in the latter two modes of naskh is the distinction between the Qur'ān as temporally contingent document-i.e. the mushaf
Mushaf
A mus'haf is a codex or collection of sheets . The Qur’an, which Muslims believe to have been revealed at various times and in various ways during the 23-year period at the end of Muhammad's life, was collected into a codex under the third Caliph, Uthman ibn Affan..The Islamic term al-Qur’ān...
- and the Qur'ān as the unity of all revelation ever sent down to Muhammed. According to some exegetes this latter conception is not a wholly abstract one, but in fact corresponds to a heavenly reality, with the Qur'ān existing as a celestial archetype within the Mother of the Book (umm al-kitāb) (Q.43:4) or upon the Preserved Tablet (Q.85:21). Thus those verses omitted from the terrestrial mushaf may yet be said to still endure in Heaven.
External naskh
A fourth mode of naskh, deemed "external," is that between dispensationDispensation
Dispensation may refer to:* Dispensation , the suspension, by competent authority, of general rules of law in particular cases in the Catholic Church* Dispensation , a period in history according to various religions...
s. In Islamic prophetology, a messenger
Rasul
In Islam, an Apostle or Messenger is a prophet sent by God.According to the Qur'an, God sent many prophets to mankind. The five universally acknowledged messengers in Islam are Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus and Muhammad, as each is believed to have been sent with a scripture...
may abrogate certain ritual and social laws handed down by his predecessors in order to lighten Man's burden, make lawful what had previously been unlawful, and therefore demonstrate God's mercy for His creation. According to Burton, "that Muhammad accepted a doctrine of external naskh cannot be doubted", and indeed naskhs Qur'ānic "proof text", Q.2:106, coming as it does right after a series of verses abrogating many aspects of the Jewish Halakha
Halakha
Halakha — also transliterated Halocho , or Halacha — is the collective body of Jewish law, including biblical law and later talmudic and rabbinic law, as well as customs and traditions.Judaism classically draws no distinction in its laws between religious and ostensibly non-religious life; Jewish...
, may intend this sort of naskh.
In the Canon
The stem n-s-kh occurs four times within the Qur'ān: at Q.7:154, Q.45:29, Q.22:52, and Q.2:106. The first two occurrences come in the context of texts and scribal activity: "in the writing [nuskhah] thereon" (Q.7:154) and "For We were wont to put on Record [nastansikh] all that ye did" (Q.45:29). These uses, combined with the secular Arabic usage nasakha al-kitāb- "he copied the book"- led some to equate naskh with transfer (nql)- as in the transfer of an activity from one legal category (e.g. allowed) to another (forbiddenHaraam
Haraam is an Arabic term meaning "forbidden", or "sacred". In Islam it is used to refer to anything that is prohibited by the word of Allah in the Qur'an or the Hadith Qudsi. Haraam is the highest status of prohibition given to anything that would result in sin when a Muslim commits it...
). Overall, though, these verses were of marginal importance for the exegesis of naskh.
More significant is the occurrence at Q.22:52:
This verse, cited by Tabarī in connection with the incident of the so-called "Satanic Verses
Satanic Verses
The Satanic Verses was a purported incident where a small number of apparently pagan verses were temporarily included in the Qur'an by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, only to be later removed...
", supported an interpretation of naskh as eradication (izāla) and thus made acceptable the idea of naskh as the nullification of a verse without any replacement- naskh al-hukm wa-'l-tilāwa. In Tabarī's interpretation (Tafsīr):
The "hint of dualism
Dualism
Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...
" in this passage (even Satan, Tabarī seems to say, plays a meaningful role in the dialectic
Dialectic
Dialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...
al process of God's revelation) is more apparent than real. In order to enlist Q.22:52 as incontrovertible proof of naskhs eradicatory facility, Tabarī must gloss over the essential difference between the activity pledged within it and those forms of abrogation considered the legitimate expressions of naskh- namely, the authentically divine provenance of the latters' abrogated material. Thus his incentive to construe the divine eradication of Satanic material as a purposeful, even constructive, activity, rather than a wholly reactive and defensive one. Later exegetes such as Makkī would carefully guard this distinction, though:
Thus Q.22:52 was relegated to merely lexical significance.
It was Q.2:106 which served as the chief Qur'ānic "proof-text" for naskh, and indeed it lent the concept its very name:
Opinion as to naskhs technical meaning here oscillated between replacement (ibdāl) and nullification (ibtāl). This despite the fact that the former meaning would make the coordinate clause's "We substitute something better or similar" tautological
Tautology (rhetoric)
Tautology is an unnecessary or unessential repetition of meaning, using different and dissimilar words that effectively say the same thing...
. To work around this problem exegetes such as Tabarī interpolated hukm (ruling) in place of the word āya
Aya
is a female Japanese rock artist on the BMG FUNHOUSE label.AYA's song Over Night is used as the ending theme to the Anime Le Chevalier D'Eon.-Early life:...
, arguing that if a ruling is replaced the preservation or not of its wording in the mushaf
Mushaf
A mus'haf is a codex or collection of sheets . The Qur’an, which Muslims believe to have been revealed at various times and in various ways during the 23-year period at the end of Muhammad's life, was collected into a codex under the third Caliph, Uthman ibn Affan..The Islamic term al-Qur’ān...
is immaterial, thus letting the verse confirm the two main types of naskh. Alternate interpretations were also suggested for the subordinate clause's "cause to be forgotten" (aw nansahā), such as defer or leave. This was primarily motivated by flight from the theologically repugnant idea of prophetic forgetting, with Q.15:9 cited as evidence of its impossibility. Yet verses Q.17:86, Q.18:24, and Q.87:6–7 explicitly endorse its feasibility. Thus "Qur'ān-forgetting is clearly adumbrated in the Qur'ān". Many ahadith
Hadith
The term Hadīth is used to denote a saying or an act or tacit approval or criticism ascribed either validly or invalidly to the Islamic prophet Muhammad....
also attest to the phenomenon: entire suras which the Muslims had previously recited, claims one, would one morning be discovered to have been completely erased from memory (cf. Abū 'Ubaid al-Qāsim b. Sallām). In the same spirit of "turning lemons into lemonade" which characterizes much else within the theologizing of naskh, divine purpose was attributed to such incidents; Rāzī, for example, speculates that they may have figured among the Prophet
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
's miracles.
Finally, there exist two important linguistically unrelated verses cited in connection with naskh: Q.16:101- "When We substitute [tabdīl] one revelation for another"- and Q.13:39- "Allah
Allah
Allah is a word for God used in the context of Islam. In Arabic, the word means simply "God". It is used primarily by Muslims and Bahá'ís, and often, albeit not exclusively, used by Arabic-speaking Eastern Catholic Christians, Maltese Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Mizrahi Jews and...
doth blot out or confirm what He pleaseth". Besides confirming the two major modes of abrogation (i.e. suppression and supersession), the former verse is employed by Shāfi'ī in his theory of abrogation between sources as proof that a Qur'ān verse can only be abrogated by another Qur'ān verse.
Historical Elaboration
Like other technical terms within Islamic exegesis (e.g. asbāb al-nuzūlAsbab al-nuzul
Asbāb al-nuzūl , an Arabic term meaning "occasions/circumstances of revelation", is a secondary genre of Qur'anic exegesis directed at establishing the context in which specific verses of the Qur'an were revealed...
), naskh attained its formal meaning through a process of theoretical refinement in which early applications of the concept were abandoned upon further logical or religious consideration. Tabarī's ambivalent use of the term for the eradication of Satanic material
Satanic Verses
The Satanic Verses was a purported incident where a small number of apparently pagan verses were temporarily included in the Qur'an by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, only to be later removed...
has already been noted. Among naskh 's other, ultimately discarded, uses in early works of tafsīr are: the abrogation of a ruling from pre-Islamic (i.e. jāhilī
Jahiliyyah
Jahiliyyah is an Islamic concept of "ignorance of divine guidance" or "the state of ignorance of the guidance from God" or "Days of Ignorance" referring to the condition in which Arabs found themselves in pre-Islamic Arabia, i.e. prior to the revelation of the Qur'an to Muhammad...
) Arabia, and the juridicial deflation of a broadly applicable ruling by a succeeding one which narrows its scope (nasakha min [al-āya]- "an exception is provided to [the verse]"). The latter usage was reformulated by Shāfi'ī as takhsīs (specification/exception), resulting in a marked decrease in the amount of material considered mansūkh.
Putting aside dubiously attributed
Pseudepigraphy
Pseudepigrapha are falsely attributed works, texts whose claimed authorship is unfounded; a work, simply, "whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past." The word "pseudepigrapha" is the plural of "pseudepigraphon" ; the Anglicized forms...
works, such as the Naskh al-Qur-ān of "al-Zuhrī
Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri
For the geographer from Al-Andalus see Mohammed Ibn Abu Bakr al-ZuhriMuhammad ibn Muslim ibn Ubaydullah ibn Shihab al-Zuhri , usually called simply Ibn Shihab or al-Zuhri...
", the principle of abrogation (without its naskh terminology) makes one of its earliest documented appearance in the Muwatta' of Mālik
Malik ibn Anas
Mālik ibn Anas ibn Mālik ibn Abī 'Āmir al-Asbahī is known as "Imam Malik," the "Sheikh of Islam", the "Proof of the Community," and "Imam of the Abode of Emigration." He was one of the most highly respected scholars of fiqh in Sunni Islam...
:
The impetus for this principle, seen already in Mālik's day, was the need to harmonize the regional variants of Islamic law both with one another as well as the putative sources of Islamic law. That the starting point for these local fiqh
Fiqh
Fiqh is Islamic jurisprudence. Fiqh is an expansion of the code of conduct expounded in the Quran, often supplemented by tradition and implemented by the rulings and interpretations of Islamic jurists....
s was in fact neither the Qur'ān nor the Sunna
Sunnah
The word literally means a clear, well trodden, busy and plain surfaced road. In the discussion of the sources of religion, Sunnah denotes the practice of Prophet Muhammad that he taught and practically instituted as a teacher of the sharī‘ah and the best exemplar...
(in its later sense of the Sunna of Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
) has been shown by Schacht
Joseph Schacht
Joseph Schacht, born in Ratibor, 15 March 1902, died in Englewood, 1 August 1969, was a British-German professor of Arabic and Islam at Columbia University in New York. He was the leading Western scholar on Islamic law, whose Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence is still considered a centrally...
. As authority for local views began to be attributed back in time to the Companions
Sahaba
In Islam, the ' were the companions, disciples, scribes and family of the Islamic prophet...
and eventually Muhammad himself (documented by what Schacht terms the "backward growth" of isnāds) the contradictions in regional fiqh became irreconcilable. Naskh allowed for the alleviation of these tensions by the claim that, in the case of two "soundly" documented traditions
Hadith
The term Hadīth is used to denote a saying or an act or tacit approval or criticism ascribed either validly or invalidly to the Islamic prophet Muhammad....
contradicting one another, one had come later and abrogated the other.
Yet even after the need to ground their legal theories in either Sunna or Qur'ān became apparent to the jurists
Faqih
A Faqīh is an expert in fiqh, or, Islamic jurisprudence.A faqih is an expert in Islamic Law, and, as such, the word Faqih can literally be generally translated as Jurist.- The definition of Fiqh and its relation to the Faqih:...
, the regional fiqhs were not discarded, but became the third source in reformualting Islamic law, on par with and of even greater importance than Sunna or Qur'ān! This can be seen in the postulation of "lost" verses whose rulings were still operative and conventiently corroborative of the jurist's own school of fiqh (e.g. the "stoning" and "suckling" verses). It is also evinced in Shāfi'ī's remarkable admission that but for the guidance of the Sunna the Muslims would have had no choice but to carry out the rulings of the Qur'ān!
In non-Sunni Islam
The principle of naskh is acknowledged by both SunnisSunni Islam
Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam. Sunni Muslims are referred to in Arabic as ʾAhl ūs-Sunnah wa āl-Ǧamāʿah or ʾAhl ūs-Sunnah for short; in English, they are known as Sunni Muslims, Sunnis or Sunnites....
and Shī'a,. Among those groups that did reject naskh were the Mu'tazili
Mu'tazili
' is an Islamic school of speculative theology that flourished in the cities of Basra and Baghdad, both in present-day Iraq, during the 8th–10th centuries. The adherents of the Mu'tazili school are best known for their having asserted that, because of the perfect unity and eternal nature of God,...
and Zaidiyah, on the rationalist grounds that the word of God could not contain contradictions, and the much later Ahmadī
Ahmadiyya
Ahmadiyya is an Islamic religious revivalist movement founded in India near the end of the 19th century, originating with the life and teachings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad , who claimed to have fulfilled the prophecies about the world reformer of the end times, who was to herald the Eschaton as...
s, who argued that all Qur'ānic verses have equal validity, in keeping with their emphasis on the "unsurpassable beauty and unquestionable validity of the Qur'ān". The harmonization of apparently incompatible rulings is resolved through their juridical deflation in Ahmadī fiqh
Fiqh
Fiqh is Islamic jurisprudence. Fiqh is an expansion of the code of conduct expounded in the Quran, often supplemented by tradition and implemented by the rulings and interpretations of Islamic jurists....
, so that a ruling (considered to have applicability only to the specific situation for which it was revealed
Asbab al-nuzul
Asbāb al-nuzūl , an Arabic term meaning "occasions/circumstances of revelation", is a secondary genre of Qur'anic exegesis directed at establishing the context in which specific verses of the Qur'an were revealed...
), is effective not because it was revealed last, but because it is most suited to the situation at hand.
Theology
Naskh stimulated several lines of theologizing to reconcile this "reality of the FiqhFiqh
Fiqh is Islamic jurisprudence. Fiqh is an expansion of the code of conduct expounded in the Quran, often supplemented by tradition and implemented by the rulings and interpretations of Islamic jurists....
" with Islam's core religious doctrines.
Probably the most immediate concern was explaining the very existence of progressive revelation. What could account for God's turn to this expedient outside of limits to His omniscience
Omniscience
Omniscience omniscient point-of-view in writing) is the capacity to know everything infinitely, or at least everything that can be known about a character including thoughts, feelings, life and the universe, etc. In Latin, omnis means "all" and sciens means "knowing"...
(subsequent rulings are "better" because they are informed by superior knowledge) or inconstancy in the divine will? Both prospects were repugnant to orthodox theologians (at least of the Sunni variety; compare this to the Shi'ite doctrine of bada'
Bada'
Badā is a Shia concept regarding God. It refers to God revealing His true will about a decision, wherein the people thought His will had already been made on that issue...
, however) and so other rationales were put forth. One of these relied upon the tried apologetic technique (see the argument for theodicy from free will, for example) of reconstruing apparent limitations in the Creator
Creator deity
A creator deity is a deity responsible for the creation of the world . In monotheism, the single God is often also the creator deity, while polytheistic traditions may or may not have creator deities...
as expressions of solicitude towards His creatures, and indeed as tokens of His mercy towards them. This was formalized in the doctrine of tahkfīf and is frequently expressed by commentators such as Tabarī, who argued in his exegesis of Q.2:106 that one motivation for naskh was God's desire to lighten the ritualistic and legal burdens He had imposed upon mankind:
Yet tahkfīf is equally applicable where the nāsikh introduces a more onerous requirement- for example, the extension of the ritual fast from a few days (Q.2:184) to the entire month of Ramadan
Ramadan
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, which lasts 29 or 30 days. It is the Islamic month of fasting, in which participating Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking and sex during daylight hours and is intended to teach Muslims about patience, spirituality, humility and...
(Q.2:185)- as its performance is "better" for men on account of it helping them attain greater reward in the Hereafter, or even when the change is indifferent, such as the switching of the qibla
Qibla
The Qiblah , also transliterated as Qibla, Kiblah or Kibla, is the direction that should be faced when a Muslim prays during salah...
, as the reward will not change. Clearly, then, the criteria of tahkfīf is unfalsifiable
Falsifiability
Falsifiability or refutability of an assertion, hypothesis or theory is the logical possibility that it can be contradicted by an observation or the outcome of a physical experiment...
, completely useless for distinguishing nāsikh from mansūkh, and therefore entirely dogmatic in character.
Another, much more specifically Islamic, problem was raised by the doctrine by mu'jaz- or the literary perfection and inimitability of the Qur'ān. How could one āya be replaced by one which is better than it, as Q.2:106 explicitly promises, if all āyat or inimitable and therefore incommensurable? This issue was side-stepped by interpolation; the superior replacement is the verse's ruling, not the verse's wording, and so no violation of the doctrine of mu'jaz is entailed.
Lastly, there is the issue of abrogated material whose wording is preserved in the mushaf
Mushaf
A mus'haf is a codex or collection of sheets . The Qur’an, which Muslims believe to have been revealed at various times and in various ways during the 23-year period at the end of Muhammad's life, was collected into a codex under the third Caliph, Uthman ibn Affan..The Islamic term al-Qur’ān...
(naskh al-hukm dūna al-tilāwa). Since the verse's ruling is inoperative, what purpose is served by retaining its wording? One common rationale, expressed here by Suyūti (Itqān) and mirroring the tahkfīf argument was:
Overall, though, the Muslim commentators demonstrate a remarkable degree of complacency in the face of naskh 's more theologically disturbing implications, supremely confident (as expressed in the following gloss on a famous Ā'isha
Aisha
Aisha bint Abu Bakr also transcribed as was Muhammad's favorite wife...
hadith
Hadith
The term Hadīth is used to denote a saying or an act or tacit approval or criticism ascribed either validly or invalidly to the Islamic prophet Muhammad....
) that whatever the mechanisms used to expurgate or cancel the Divine revelation, what has ultimately come down to us is exactly what Allah
Allah
Allah is a word for God used in the context of Islam. In Arabic, the word means simply "God". It is used primarily by Muslims and Bahá'ís, and often, albeit not exclusively, used by Arabic-speaking Eastern Catholic Christians, Maltese Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Mizrahi Jews and...
intended mankind to have:
Such complacency reflects the important constitutive effects of naskhs eventual theological sanitization. Once the genuineness of God's abrogation of His own commandments was accepted, the fact that no intelligible pattern underlay His sequence of actions was taken as indicative of important facts about the nature of the Creator, as well as the proper duties of His creatures. In particular this reinforced the extreme deontological currents
Deontological ethics
Deontological ethics or deontology is the normative ethical position that judges the morality of an action based on the action's adherence to a rule or rules. It is sometimes described as "duty" or "obligation" or "rule" -based ethics, because rules "bind you to your duty"...
within Islamic philosophy and ethics:
Literature
In addition to being discussed within general works of jurisprudenceFiqh
Fiqh is Islamic jurisprudence. Fiqh is an expansion of the code of conduct expounded in the Quran, often supplemented by tradition and implemented by the rulings and interpretations of Islamic jurists....
, naskh generated its own corpus of specialized legal manuals. These treatises invariably begin with an introduction designed to impress the importance and high Islamic credibility of the science, often by an appeal to 'ilmic
Ilm (Arabic)
‘Ilm as an Islamic term refers to knowledge of Islam. The Qur'an is said to encourage the acquisition of knowledge. It explains the study and development of sciences during the Golden Age of Islam....
authority figures of the past (as in the story of 'Alī and the Kufa
Kufa
Kufa is a city in Iraq, about south of Baghdad, and northeast of Najaf. It is located on the banks of the Euphrates River. The estimated population in 2003 was 110,000....
n preacher). As is made clear in these stories
Hadith
The term Hadīth is used to denote a saying or an act or tacit approval or criticism ascribed either validly or invalidly to the Islamic prophet Muhammad....
, "none may occupy judicial
Qadi
Qadi is a judge ruling in accordance with Islamic religious law appointed by the ruler of a Muslim country. Because Islam makes no distinction between religious and secular domains, qadis traditionally have jurisdiction over all legal matters involving Muslims...
or religious office in the community
Ummah
Ummah is an Arabic word meaning "community" or "nation." It is commonly used to mean either the collective nation of states, or the whole Arab world...
who is not equipped with this indispensable knowledge and who is incapable of distinguishing nāsikh [abrogator] from mansūkh [abrogatee].
The remainder of the introduction then typically treats the various modes of naskh, naskh 's applicability between Sunna and Qur'ān, and- in appeasement of theological scruples- why naskh is not the same as badā'
Bada'
Badā is a Shia concept regarding God. It refers to God revealing His true will about a decision, wherein the people thought His will had already been made on that issue...
, or inconstancy of the Divine Will. Following this comes the core of the treatise, an enumeration of abrogated verses in sūra
Sura
A sura is a division of the Qur'an, often referred to as a chapter. The term chapter is sometimes avoided, as the suras are of unequal length; the shortest sura has only three ayat while the longest contains 286 ayat...
order of the Qur'ān. In their consideration of nāsikh wal-mansūkh the taxonomic
Taxonomy
Taxonomy is the science of identifying and naming species, and arranging them into a classification. The field of taxonomy, sometimes referred to as "biological taxonomy", revolves around the description and use of taxonomic units, known as taxa...
predilections of these authors comes out, evinced in their discussions of special verses considered "marvels" (ajā'ib) of the Qur'ān, such as the verse which abrogates the greatest number of other verses (Q.9:5), the verse which was in effect longest until it was abrogated (Q.46:9), and the verse which contains both an abrogatee and its abrogator (Q.5:105).
Works
The following is a list of classical examples of the genre:- "al-ZuhrīIbn Shihab al-ZuhriFor the geographer from Al-Andalus see Mohammed Ibn Abu Bakr al-ZuhriMuhammad ibn Muslim ibn Ubaydullah ibn Shihab al-Zuhri , usually called simply Ibn Shihab or al-Zuhri...
",
Modern examples include:
- Ahmad Shah Waliullah Dehlvi,
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
: Dār al-Fikr al-'Arabī, 1963
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
: Wahba Bookstore, 1987
Arbil
Arbil / Hewlêr is the fourth largest city in Iraq after Baghdad, Basra and Mosul...
: National Library, Iraq, 2000
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
: Al-Nāfitha Bookstore, 2005
Instances
The amount of material recognized as abrogated by Muslim exegetes and jurists varied, partly as the result of the continuous refinement of the concept (e.g. Shāfi'ī's introduction of the distinction between naskh and takhsīs), partly as a result of the normally disputatious process of elaborating the law. Hibat Allāh, for example, lists 239 instances of abrogation across 71 suras, with Q.9:25 accounting for almost half of the mansūkh verses. Many modern Muslim scholars have proposed more stringent criteria, arguing that only material which directly (and exactly) contradicts previous rulings can be said to be abrogating (nāsikh).Frequently cited examples of intra-Qur'ānic abrogation are:
- Verse: Q.8:65
- Abrogator (nāsikh): The immediately succeeding Q.8:66, which lightens the ratio of enemies the Muslims are expected to vanquish from 10:1 to 2:1 .
- Verse: Q.2:180
- Abrogator: Q.4:10–11, which provides specific allotments for a deceased's relatives. These verses constitute a perfect example of what later exegetes would claim to be takhsīs (specification).
- Verse: 2.219
- Abrogator: Q.4:43, whose more explicit disapproval of drunkenness is in turn abrogated by Q.5:90, which institutes a complete ban on the consumption of alcohol:
- Verse: Q.9:5 (āyat al-sayf, the "sword verse")
- Abrogatee (mansūkh): Literally dozens of verses enjoining the ummaUmmahUmmah is an Arabic word meaning "community" or "nation." It is commonly used to mean either the collective nation of states, or the whole Arab world...
's peacable conduct towards outside groups: Hibat Allāh and al-Nahhās cite 124 and 130 verses, respectively. Ibn al Jawzī and Mustafā Zayd count 140 verses and Ibn Kathir says in his Tafsir that 9.5 abgrogated "It abrogated every agreement of peace between the Prophet and any idolator, every treaty, and every term."
- Abrogatee (mansūkh): Literally dozens of verses enjoining the umma
- Verse: Q.9:29
- Abrogatee: "Nahhās considers 9:29 to have abrogated virtually all verses calling for patience or forgiveness toward Scriptuaries".
Examples of inter-Qur'ānic abrogation, where one of the rulings comes from the Sunna
Sunnah
The word literally means a clear, well trodden, busy and plain surfaced road. In the discussion of the sources of religion, Sunnah denotes the practice of Prophet Muhammad that he taught and practically instituted as a teacher of the sharī‘ah and the best exemplar...
, are:
- Verse: Q.2:150
- Verse: Q.24:2
- Abrogator: For those unwilling to countenance the existence of a "lost" āyat al-rajm (e.g. Qurtubī, Al-GhazālīAl-GhazaliAbu Hāmed Mohammad ibn Mohammad al-Ghazzālī , known as Algazel to the western medieval world, born and died in Tus, in the Khorasan province of Persia was a Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic....
), the Prophetic Sunna which establishes stoningRajmRajm is an Arabic word that means "stoning". It is commonly used to refer to the Hudud punishment wherein an organized group throws stones at a convicted individual until that person dies. Traditionally it is called for in cases of adultery where the criteria for conviction are met...
to death as the penalty for adultery.
- Abrogator: For those unwilling to countenance the existence of a "lost" āyat al-rajm (e.g. Qurtubī, Al-Ghazālī
Abrogation mentioned in hadith literature
claims that the verse 2:240 was abrogated. says that the verse 2:184 "They had a choice, either fast or feed a poor for every day" was abrogated. claims that the verse 2:284 was abrogatedSee also
- Bada'Bada'Badā is a Shia concept regarding God. It refers to God revealing His true will about a decision, wherein the people thought His will had already been made on that issue...
- Raf'
- TafsirTafsirTafseer is the Arabic word for exegesis or commentary, usually of the Qur'an. Ta'wīl is a subset of tafsir and refers to esoteric or mystical interpretation. An author of tafsir is a mufassir .- Etymology :...
- Asbab al-nuzulAsbab al-nuzulAsbāb al-nuzūl , an Arabic term meaning "occasions/circumstances of revelation", is a secondary genre of Qur'anic exegesis directed at establishing the context in which specific verses of the Qur'an were revealed...
- Asbab al-nuzul
- FiqhFiqhFiqh is Islamic jurisprudence. Fiqh is an expansion of the code of conduct expounded in the Quran, often supplemented by tradition and implemented by the rulings and interpretations of Islamic jurists....
- Usul al-fiqhUsul al-fiqhUṣūl al-fiqh is the study of the origins, sources, and principles upon which Islamic jurisprudence is based. In the narrow sense, it simply refers to the question of what are the sources of Islamic law...
- Usul al-fiqh
- Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi`iMuhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi`iAbū ʿAbdullāh Muhammad ibn Idrīs al-Shafiʿī was a Muslim jurist, who lived from 767 CE to 820 CE. He was active in juridical matters and his teaching eventually led to the Shafi'i school of fiqh named after him. Hence he is often called Imam al-Shafi'i...
- Hadith of the Verse of Rajm
- RetconRetconRetroactive continuity is the alteration of previously established facts in a fictional work. Retcons are done for many reasons, including the accommodation of sequels or further derivative works in a series, wherein newer authors or creators want to revise the in-story history to allow a course...
External links
- "Abrogation?" Islamic scholar GF Haddad answers some questions
- "Naskh (Abrogation)", by Suheil Laher
- Load-Islam.com's Refutation on Peaceful verses being abrogated by Swordvers
- Submission.org's claim against the Qur'an-Abrogation
- TheMostReadBook.org forums Extensive and detailed discussion of the hypothesis of abrogation in the Quran in principle and of each claim made in the classic literature
- http://www.bismikaallahuma.org/archives/2008/the-myth-of-the-myth-of-moderate-islam/ Clarifications by Bismikaalahuma.org
- Qur'anic Sciences: Abrogation in the Quran www.altafsir.com