Naskh (tafsir) - History

History

The emergence of naskh (initially as practice 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 Kufan preacher banned from expounding the Quran 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:

...the elaboration of the theories is datable with certainty to at least the latter half of the second century after Muhammad, when Shāfi'ī, in his Risāla and in the somewhat later Ikhtilāf al-Hadīth was applying his considerable talents to resolving the serious problem of the apparent discrepancies between certain Qur'ānic verses and others; between certain hadīths and others; and, most serious of all, between certain Qur'ānic verses and certain hadīths.

More precisely:

Naskh as a technical term meaning 'abrogation' (although the precise sense of that must be left open) makes its appearance early on in exegesis, for example, in Muqātil's Khams mi'a āya (and, of course, his tafsīr).

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.