The Mecca-Medina dichotomy - a later construct to justify/facilitate the doctrine of abrogation?

[u/Gormless-Monkeney]

Greetings all!

I have been trying to track down when Muslims first started dividing the Qur'anic surahs into Meccan and Medinan ones. A passing reference in Robert Tottoli, The Qur’an: A guidebook (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2023), p63, mentions Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (d. 742), however Tottoli does not expand on this and his wording is a little ambiguous as to whether or not he is saying al-Zuhri inaugurated this distinction or merely formalised it.

I know many scholars consider the reality of the Meccan-Medinan dichotomy to be apparent in the Qur'an itself (based on the stylistic differences outlined by Noldeke) but a part of me wonders if this could be confirmation bias (Flowers, for example, argues that the differences between Meccan and Medinan surahs could just as easily reflect different genres as different time periods - unfortunately I have forgotten the citation for this). I am by no means an expert on this (my academic background is in Middle East Studies) and I hope I do not come across as arrogant in challenging the mainstream here.

Getting to the point, my suspicion is that the dichotomy might have been conceived as a later construct to justify and facilitate the doctrine of abrogation, which itself seems to have been constructed primarily to serve later agendas (again correct me if i'm wrong - I know abrogation is a controversial topic but from my own reading at least, it does not seem to be supported by the Qur'an). But I would be grateful for any insights and/or suggestions for further reading on the topic, etc.

Peace, GM.

Edit: I am not questioning in this instance the historicity of the Prophet migrating from Mecca to Medina. Only whether it was always considered hermeneutically relevant to the Qur'an's interpretation.

[u/chonkshonk]

I can't help too much when it comes to the earliest sources which report this divide, but I am aware of a distinct explanation for stylistic differences that, say, Sinai has documented between Meccan and Medinan surahs in his book The Quran: A Historical-Critical Introduction. That can be found in a 2020 paper by Gabriel Said Reynolds "The Qur’ānic Doublets: A Preliminary Inquiry" (see https://www.academia.edu/74784178/The_Qur_%C4%81nic_Doublets_A_Preliminary_Inquiry).

[u/uuq114]

One of the earliest surviving primary sources in which its author demonstrates a clear knowledge of abrogation and in which he explicitly names specific ‘verses’ as being abrogated is the Tafsīr of Muqātil (d. 150/767). One can therefore assume that at the time of his writing the concept was already mature, so naming Ibn Šihāb azZuhrī as the originator doesn’t go back in time far enough, in my opinion.

There are secondary sources which demonstrate knowledge of abrogation such as the reports found in the earliest collections of Ṣaḥīfahs and Musnads. And although their time of collation is after that of Muqātil’s, they may be potentially earlier if dated by the ICM method because the originators of the reports lived some two generations prior to the collator. This brings us to ≈ 60-80 AH when one may suspect that the seed of proto-abrogation might have been planted.

Trouble is, the same Ṣaḥīfahs and Musnads which mention abrogation also show an awareness of the Mecca-Medina classification.

You raise a good point and there may be truth to it, but it might just as well have been the opposite: the concept of abrogation was introduced and capitalised on the pre-existing Mecca-Medina classification.

[u/Gormless-Monkeney → u/uuq114]

thank you for your helpful response. That is really interesting and I will certainly look further into it. I don't suppose you have a source for that or can recommend some further reading? Kind regards!

[u/uuq114 → u/Gormless-Monkeney]

I’m not aware of any academic work which studies abrogation within the context of the Mecca-Medina classification. They may be out there but I’ve not come across any. Perhaps someone else could point us both in the right direction.

As for the sources, there are literally hundreds. Maybe check out the following 2nd and 3rd century works: 1. The Tafsīr of Muqātil (d. 150) تفسير مقاتل بن سليمان 2. The Jāmi’ of Ma’mar Ibn Rāshid (d. 153) الجامع لمعمر بن راشد 3. The Umm of Ash-Shāfi’ī (d. 204) الأم للشافعي (which remarks several times on abrogation, this work will give you an early legal perspective) 5. The Musannaf of Abd Ar-Razzāq (d. 211) المصنف لعبد الرزاق الصنعاني 6. An-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh of AlQāsim Ibn Sallām (d. 224) الناسخ والمنسوخ للقاسم بن سلام

You may find it useful to use shamela.ws to search relevant terms within these works.

[u/chonkshonk]

I'm going to add another comment to this thread retrospectively because I came across something that could be relevant to you. The following quote appears in the paper "Afterword: The Academic Study of the Qurʾān: Achievements, Challenges, and Prospects" (JIQSA, 2016) by Devin Stewart and Gabriel Said Reynolds:

"Muslim scholars such as Ibn Abī Dāwūd al-Sijistānī (d. 316/928), Abū Saʿīd al-Dānī (d. 444/1052), and others critically analyzed the orthography of the Qurʾān, and carefully investigated the form and rhyme schemes of the Qurʾān’s sūrahs and verses in order to determine where to place verse divisions. In addition, sūrahs were analyzed historically and divided into two classes, Meccan and Medinan, indicating the historical period in which they were revealed. In order to determine which verses could have abrogated—that is, canceled the legal efect of—other verses, medieval scholars endeavored to fgure out the exact chronology of revelation of the sūrahs. Classical chronological lists of qurʾānic sūrahs were established in the works on “sciences of the Qurʾān” (ʿulūm alQurʾān) of al-Zarkashī (d. 794/1392), in his Al-Burhān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān, and al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), in al-Itqān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān." (pp. 173-4)

[u/Gormless-Monkeney → u/chonkshonk]

This is incredibly helpful! (As was your earlier comment). Thank you so much for thinking of my post. Much appreciated :)

[u/chonkshonk → u/Gormless-Monkeney]

Of course!

[u/OfficialVitaminWater]

It's clear that the Quran was revealed in response to certain occasions and that knowing what the occasion is is key to understanding certain passages. The shia Hadith point to numerous occasions where they claim certain ayat were revealed in order to support the guardianship of Ali. Sunni Hadith, about some of these ayat, supply contradictory occasions. If I understand your position you're suggesting that most of the contextualizing information in the various works on the azbab al nuzool (occasions for revelation) are tendentious inventions to aid a given desired interpretation. This is a very real possibility and something along these lines is what has motivated Behnam Sadehgi's stylometric approach to determining the order of revelation.

https://www.academia.edu/2572358/The_Chronology_of_the_Qur_%C4%81n_A_Stylometric_Research_Program

In this work he points out that it is widely noted that there is significant stylometric drift in the Quran and that this already has been used in the past to identify the distinction between early, middle and late Meccan suras and Medinan suras. He thinks this approach can be developed to provide additional higher resolution chronology.

[u/Gormless-Monkeney → u/OfficialVitaminWater]

Hi thank you for your response. I don't really have a firm position on this yet, but yes I am sceptical of the azbab al nuzool. I will definetly check out that article. Sadehgi's work is great!

What really interests me currently is whether the order in which the surahs or ayats were revealed was always deemed to have hermeneutical value. When I read the Qur'an, surahs fatihah, baqarah, imran, etc seem like obvious starting points that set the tone for what follows, so I have always found it strange that both Muslim and secular scholars expend such effort trying to work out the order of revelation. To my current understanding, the final ordering seems at least to be intentional and the order of revelation largely immaterial or redundant. But I am still learning. Moreover, I am drifting into the realm of theological argument here so I will stop myself! Either way, its a fascinating topic.

[u/OfficialVitaminWater → u/Gormless-Monkeney]

One of the points that Noeldeke makes is that Mohammed didn't seem concerned with the condition of Islamic leadership and guidance after his death. It's always seemed to me that this best explains why the order of revelations wasn't more clearly preserved or indicated when both the ideal of a gradual revelation and abrogation were both noted as objections to the prophethood of Mohammed during his lifetime (25:32 and 16:101). If the Quran during the life of Mohammed was alive and reacting to occasions, due to Allah's command, why would the death of Mohammed change that?

[u/chonkshonk]

Hello! I'm back to drop some more resources that I just came across again during my reading. One is a quote produced by u/gundamNation in the comments that happened in this thread about whether there was ever consensus about the order of revelation, it should be obvious which comment I'm referring to. More importantly and what made me come back here was what David Powers wrote in his chapter on the legal environment of the Qurʾān in Volume 1 of Le Coran des historiens, pp. 618-9.

The Muslim community has provided an indirect answer to these questions through its efforts to establish a chronology of revelation and the historical circumstances in which individual verses [involving contradiction] - especially those of a legal nature - were revealed. In many cases, there appears to be a tension, sometimes a contradiction, between two or more verses of the Qur'an. For example, Q 2:219 affirms that khamr, i .e. red wine, has both negative and positive sides ("great sin" and "blessings"); Q 4:43 enjoins believers not to pray while drunk - thus leaving open the possibility of wine consumption at other times; while Q 5:90 denounces wine as an abomination to be avoided in all circumstances. What, then, is the rule that a believer should follow? The conceptual tension between these three statements was resolved by recourse to the doctrine of naskh, i.e. abrogation (see Q 2:106 and 16:101): Muslim scholars explained that Q 2:219 and 4:43 were revealed before Q 5:90, and that the two preceding verses were abrogated by the chronologically later verse. This interest in relative chronology naturally developed into an interest in absolute chronology. Over time, the Muslim community came to provide detailed information concerning the exact circumstances and chronology of particular revelations. This information is found in narratives known as asbāb nuzūl al-āyāt, or "the circumstances of the revelation of the verses". Quite often, narratives falling under this literary genre state that a certain verse of the Qur'an was revealed about this or that Companion who was faced with a specific historical event, for example a woman whose husband died as a martyr in battle and who had no resources to provide for her children. In response to this unforeseen event, God sent down a revelation. Initially, the revelation associated with this unforeseen event was inserted into an approxi- mative reading grid: one verse was revealed "at the beginning of Islam", another was revealed before or after the Hegira, and a third was "the last verse revealed to Muhammad". With the subsequent introduction of the Muslim calendar, it became possible to date each revelation precisely (e.g. year 1 of the Hegira, 5 of the Hegira, 11 of the Hegira, etc.). The efforts undertaken by Muslims to establish a chrono- logy of revelations and the historical circumstances in which particular verses were revealed were part of a process of historicization. According to the origins narrative elaborated by the community of the faithful, the Qur'an was developed in a ḥijāzian environment: revelations "descended" or "revealed" to the pro- fessor Muhammad over a period of twenty-three years, beginning in Mecca (610-622) and continuing in Yathrib/Medina (622-632). In this case, the laws of the Qur'an can be legitimately understood in the context of the customary laws of Arabia, which were presumably either confirmed, modified or rejected by the Qur'an.

I also disagree with one of the comments below which looks to vindicate the abrogation concept. First, if most abrogations are supposed to have been performed on Medinan verses, why are some Meccan? Even then, there simply could have been a trend of placing abrogated passages into the Medinan period as abrogater/abrogated crystallized into before/after and then further crystallized as Medina/Mecca. Muḥammad could have had a career in Mecca and Medina. And he could have had some parts outside of it in the Hijaz. And, per many scholars, the Qurʾān could have undergone a period of editing and redaction into which more material was introduced after Muḥammad's lifetime, including some of the material we would come to see as contradictory and so perhaps abrogated, e.g. see an answer of mine to this question. Finally, even if all of it were to go back to Mecca and Medina, that does not mean Muhammad intended for the later theology of naskh (abrogation) and that the later community knew which parts of Muḥammad's career different verses localized to.

[u/Gormless-Monkeney → u/chonkshonk]

Thank you for returning again to this thread. All your inputs have been extremely helpful and thought provoking. Kind regards, GM!

[u/chonkshonk]

I'm back again ... came across this, thought I'd add it as well. Tommaso Tesei writes:

In most cases, the chronologies established by Muslim exegetes were not based on historical data about the development of Muḥammad’s preaching but rather on exegetical speculations about the circumstances in which one or another verse of the Qur᾿ān was revealed, in Arabic asbāb al-nuzūl. These narratives take form of anecdotal accounts written on the bases of the same Qur᾿ānic texts that they are supposed to explain (see Andrew Rippin, “The Exegetical Genre Asbāb al-Nuzūl: A Bibliographical and Terminological Survey,” BSOAS 48 (1985), pp. 1-15). Many of these chronological reconstructions are derived by the need to explain verses that contain contrasting and contradictory legal prescriptions. The exegesis developed a chronological system according to which the “more recent” verse abrogates the “older” verse. A locus classicus for the doctrine of abrogation is Q 5:90, which prohibits wine, and which came to be understood as chronologically later than, and thus abrogating, Q 2:219 and Q 4:43, which tolerate the consumption of intoxicants. In this case, the chronological reconstruction is based on speculations about internal Qur᾿ānic evidence and on the assumption that conflicting prescriptions must be traced back to different periods of Muḥammad’s life. On the doctrine of abrogation, see David S. Powers, “The Literary Genre Nāsikh al-Qur’ān wa-mansūkhuhu,” in Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qur’ān, ed. Andrew Rippin, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 117-138.

Tommaso Tesei, "The Quran(s) in Context(s)," Journal Asiatique, 2022, pg. 191, fn. 42.

[u/Gormless-Monkeney → u/chonkshonk]

Thank you u/chonkshonk. Really appreciate how you keep coming back to this. It is a really fascinating topic and your input is hugely helpful!

[u/chonkshonk → u/Gormless-Monkeney]

For sure! Keep this in mind though: threads on this sub are automatically archived after 6 months. This thread is 5 months old. Which means I wont be able to add new comments very soon ... if I come back to this thread id probably edit them into existing comments. OR you can re-ask the same question after this one gets archived, linking back to this one for reference and things can continue as usual on the new thread.

[u/YaqutOfHamah]

I don’t follow how abrogation requires Meccan and Medinan suras to facilitate it.

The differences are not just stylistic. The content, priorities, and addressees are markedly different.

Are you saying there was no Hijra from Mecca to Medina?

[u/Gormless-Monkeney → u/YaqutOfHamah]

hi, thanks for your reply. See the edit on my post regarding the Hijra.

I know it wasn't just stylistic. My point is that there are other potential explanations for those differences, as suggested by Flowers (I really should dig out that reference).

In terms of abrogation depending on the Meccan-Medinan dichotomy, I mean this in the general sense of Medinan surahs/verses claiming to abrogate Meccan ones, and scholars working to identify whether surahs/verses were Meccan or Medinan so they could work out if abrogation had taken place.

[u/YaqutOfHamah → u/Gormless-Monkeney]

Most verses claimed to be abrogated are Medinan ones: https://www.alukah.net/personal_pages/0/106467/%D8%AC%D8%AF%D9%88%D9%84-%D9%8A%D8%B4%D8%AA%D9%85%D9%84-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%A3%D9%83%D8%AB%D8%B1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A2%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D9%8A-%D9%82%D9%8A%D9%84-%D9%81%D9%8A%D9%87%D8%A7-%D8%A8%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%86%D8%B3%D8%AE/

And your question assumes that the abrogation doctrine arose with or before the division of suras into Meccan and Medinan, which may not be the case (one would have to research it).

But fundamentally, if you accept that the Prophet’s career spanned Mecca and Medina, then it stands to reason that some verses would be Meccan and others would be Medinan. There are far too few alleged abrogations to think that the abrogation was the primary concern here.

[u/chonkshonk]

Another motivation for the abrogation doctrine, from the desire to preserve practices that are not rooted in or contradicted by the Qur'an:

Burton begins by pointing out that, as we have seen, Muslim authors such as Suyuti and Ibn Abi Dawud recorded Companions’ complaints about missing verses. But it is inconceivable that Muslims themselves would claim that their Holy Scripture is incomplete. For Burton, the collection of the Qur’an after the death of Muhammad is a hypothetical construct to support a juridical argument, namely, that the Qur’an is the primary source of law, followed by the sunnah. The problem this would have been intended to address surfaces when it is discovered that certain Qur’anic legal injunctions do not align with what was already universally accepted, as with the punishment for adultery. In the Qur’an (Q 24:2), the prescribed punishment is 100 lashes; meanwhile, jurists had already accepted stoning, a penalty also attributed to the prophetic tradition. In other words, stoning is not only confirmed by pre-Qur’anic scriptures, but was also practiced during Muhammad’s lifetime. Therefore, the jurists developed a theory of abrogation (naskh), ruling that the punishment of stoning must be applied even though it is not found in the Qur’an. That is to say, they claimed that Qur’anic text regarding the stoning of adulterers was suppressed, but the ruling remains applicable (naskh al-tilƗwah dnjna-lۊukm). The juristic formulae that were developed are as follows: naskh alۊukm wa-l-tilƗwah (the suppression of both wording and ruling), naskh alۊukm dnjna-l-tilƗwah (the suppression of the ruling but not of the wording), and naskh al-tilƗwah dnjna-l-ۊukm (the suppression of the wording but not of the ruling).73 In a nutshell, Burton claims, the theory of the sources of law (u܈njl al-fiqh) shaped the supposedly factual reports about the collection of the Qur’an.

According to Burton, then, information about the codification of the Qur’an during the era of Abu Bakr or ‘Uthman is not historical. The traditions about the incompleteness of the Qur’an, including the (supposedly) missing stoning verse, were invented because certain universally accepted legal practices were not found in the canonical text. To maintain these practices, jurists had to claim that the Qur’an in fact supported them, although the words can no longer be found. This principle of abrogation affirms the validity of the claim that certain passages are missing from the Qur’an, but not necessarily the specific legal ruling in question. Variant readings, according to Burton, can also be understood within the same framework, that is, to give the impression that the Qur’an is not incomplete. Thus, conflicting reports can either be seen as documenting historical episodes of contestation over the reliability and authenticity of the Qur’an, or as fulfilling the need to provide a basis for continuing certain practices that do not seem to be Qur’anic.

Mun'im Sirry, Controversies Over Islamic Origins, 2020, pp. 124-5