forgotten, and thus the Holy Qur’ān was needed to take the place of that which was abrogated, and that which had been forgotten by the world.

Ḥadīth on abrogation

“The ḥadīth speaking of abrogation are all weak”, says Ṭabraṣī. But it is stranger still that the theory of abrogation has been accepted by writer after writer without ever thinking that not a single ḥadīth, however weak, touching on the abrogation of a verse, was traceable to the Holy Prophet. It never occurred to the upholders of this theory that the Quranic verses were promulgated by the Holy Prophet, and that it was he whose authority was necessary for the abrogation of any Quranic verse; no Companion, not even Abū Bakr or ‘Alī, 27 could say that a verse was abrogated. The Holy Prophet alone was entitled to say so, and there is not a single ḥadīth to the effect that he ever said so; it is always some Companion or a later authority to whom such views are to be traced. In most cases, where a report is traceable to one Companion who held a certain verse to have been abrogated, there is another report traceable to another Companion to the effect that the verse was not abrogated.28 Even among later writers we find that there is not a single verse on which the verdict of abrogation has been passed by one without being questioned by another; and while there are writers who would lightly pass the verdict of abrogation on hundreds of verses, there are others who consider not more than five to be abrogated, and even in the case of these five the verdict of abrogation has been seriously impugned by earlier writers.

Use of the word naskh

The theory of abrogation has in fact arisen from a misunderstanding of the use of the word naskh (abrogation), by the Companions of the Holy Prophet. When the significance of one verse was limited by another, the former was sometimes spoken of as having been “abrogated” (nusikhat) by the latter. Similarly when the words of a verse gave rise to a misconception, and a later revelation cleared up that misconception, the word “abrogation” was metaphorically used in connection with it, the idea underlying its use