another version he is reported to have added: “Were it not that people would say that ‘Umar has added in the Book of Allāh that which is not in it, I would have written it”.22 The argument attributed to ‘Umar is very unsound. He admitted that the Holy Qur’ān did not contain any verse prescribing the punishment of stoning for adulterers, and at the same time he is reported as stating that there was such a verse in what Allāh revealed. In all probability what ‘Umar meant, if he ever spoke those words, was that the verse of stoning was to be found in the Jewish sacred book, the Torah, which was undoubtedly a Divine revelation, and that the Holy Prophet stoned adulterers to death. The use of words “Book of God” (Kitāb Allāh) for the Torah is common in the Holy Qur’ān itself, the Torah being again and again spoken of as Kitāb Allāh or the Book of God, or al-Kitāb, i.e., the Book.23 In all likelihood ‘Umar only spoke of rajm as the punishment of adultery in the Mosaic law and he was misunderstood. At any rate he could not have spoken the words attributed to him. Had there been such a verse of the Holy Qur’ān, he would have brought it to the notice of other Companions of the Holy Prophet, when a complete written copy was first prepared in the time of Abū Bakr at his own suggestion. The words, as attributed to him in some of these reports, are simply meaningless. How could he say that there was a verse of the Holy Qur’ān which he would have written down in the Holy Qur’ān, but he feared that people would say that he had made an addition to the Holy Qur’ān, that is to say, added to it what was not a part of it? A verse could not be said to be a part of the Holy Qur’ān and not a part of the Holy Qur’ān at one and the same time.

There is further evidence in ḥadīth itself that ‘Umar himself, at least in one reported case (and it is a reliable report), punished adultery with flogging as laid down in the Holy Qur’ān in 24:2, and not with stoning to death. According to Bukhārī, one of ‘Umar’s collectors, Ḥamzah by name, found that a married man who had committed adultery with his wife’s slave-girl had been punished by ‘Umar with a hundred stripes, and he referred the case to ‘Umar, and ‘Umar upheld his first decision.24 His own action therefore negatives the report which attributes to him the statement that stoning to death as a punishment for adultery was an ordinance contained in a Quranic verse. An explanation is sometimes offered, that such a verse