Asbab al-Nuzul
Occasions or circumstances of revelation (in Arabic أسباب النزول -asbāb al-nuzūl) names the historical context in which Quranic verses were revealed from the perspective of traditional Islam.The reasons for revelation found in the hadiths are divided into types: 1: The answer that the Prophet Muhammad should give to a question that was asked to him [1] 2: Comment on events that occurred.William Montgomery Watt, for example, stressed the narratological significance of these types of reports: "The Quranic allusions had to be elaborated into complete stories and the background filled in if the main ideas were to be impressed on the minds of simple men.I would tentatively trace the origins of this material to the context of the qussās, the wandering story-tellers, and pious preachers and to a basically popular religious worship situation where such stories would prove both enjoyable and edifying.At this stage, the quṣṣāṣ (story-tellers) could promote the Islamic status of their traditions (originally suspect of biblical influence) by extending to them the divine authority of the Quran.Rippin takes issue with this last assumption, though, by arguing that the evidence does not preclude the creation of parallel sīra narratives even after the circulation of a supposedly "authoritative" Qur'anic one.This extends beyond the question of temporal ordering to one of basic unity of thought and expression: It has often been remarked that the Qur'ān lacks an overall cohesive structure... and does not provide within itself many keys for interpretation.A sabab put forward by both al-Wāhidī (Kitāb 22) and al-Suyūtī (Lubāb 19) claim this verse was revealed about those Jews of Medina who urged their converted relations to obey Muhammed's example even while they hypocritically refused to do so themselves (such Jewish hypocrisy being a common Qur'ānic polemical motif).For Muslims the definition of the jāhiliyyah scene (i.e. Arabia's pre-Islamic age of "ignorance") was an important concern, but complicated by their religion's competing claims to be both a stark break with this past as well as a continuation of practices begun by "Islam" in its pre-Qur'anic, ur-religion manifestations, as in worship at the Kaaba.The first sabab states that the pagan Arabs practiced this (ur-Islamically[clarification needed] sanctioned) ritual, but that they so adulterated it with idolatry that the first Muslims pressed to abandon it until Q.2:158 was revealed.Here the reports agree the verse is directed against the Jews, and so a proscription with seemingly broad applicability is almost completely deflated into a polemical filip about Jewish alteration of holy scripture (tahrīf).The asbāb put forward by the exegetes cannot establish the meaning of the probably-transliterated word rā'inā, but they generally identify it as some sort of curse or mock which the Jews tricked the Muslims into incorporating into their own greetings.The earliest and the most important work in this genre is undoubtedly Kitab asbab al-Nuzul ("Book of occasions of revelation") by Ali ibn Ahmad al-Wahidi (d. 1075 CE).His main teacher was the famous Quranic commentator al-Thalabi (d. 1036 CE) and Wahidi seems to have enjoyed the support of the Seljuq vizier Nizam al-Mulk.In Rippin's detailed examination of pre-18th-century exegetical literature,[16] other works include as follows: Though al-Wāhidī may thus be considered the father of this genre (a view consistent with his rather self-serving depiction of asbāb al-nuzūl as the key to all exegesis), al-Suyūtī made significant contributions to it as well, introducing such refinements as limiting reports to only those contemporaneous with the revelation itself (reports related to events described by the verse were reclassified as akhbār) and developing a sabab selection criterion different from al-Wāhidī's rather mechanistic one of scanning for a select few "marker" introductory phrases.The chief innovation of the genre was organizational (i.e. the collection of asbāb-material within one text) and to a lesser degree methodological, and so while no work prior to al-Wāhidī's Kitāb may be properly called an instance of asbāb al-nuzūl, material of equivalent function exists in the earliest hadith and tafsir.