Occasions of revelation (asbab al-nuzul)

The occasions of revelation are the events and questions on account of which verses were revealed; al-Zarkashi made them the first type of the Qur'anic sciences in al-Burhan. ¹ He notes that exegetes attended to them in their books and wrote separate works on them, among them Ali ibn al-Madini, al-Bukhari's teacher, the best known being that of al-Wahidi. ¹

Al-Zarkashi rejects the claim that they are useless because they are merely history, and lists their benefits: knowing the wisdom that prompted a ruling; restricting the ruling to the occasion for those who hold that the occasion governs; grasping the meaning — he quotes Abu al-Fath al-Qushayri that explaining the occasion is a strong path to understanding the Book; and that the case of the occasion may not be excluded from a general wording by reasoning, since its inclusion is certain. ¹ Another benefit is removing a false impression of restriction, illustrated by al-Shafi'i's reading of the verse on forbidden foods in al-An'am and Imam al-Haramayn's praise of it. ² Another is removing a difficulty, as in Ibn Abbas's answer to Marwan ibn al-Hakam that a verse of Al Imran was revealed about the People of the Book. ^{3 4}

Al-Zarkashi cites verses all agreed to extend beyond their occasions — the verse of zihar about Salama ibn Sakhr, the verse of li'an about Hilal ibn Umayya, the penalty for slander about those who accused A'isha. ² He holds that an occasion may be particular and the wording general to show that the general wording governs, quoting al-Zamakhshari on Surat al-Humaza that the occasion may be particular and the threat general. ^{5 6} He distinguishes an occasion from a thematic link: timing is a condition of an occasion, not of a link. ³

A verse may be revealed again as a reminder when an event it covers occurs, and al-Zarkashi thinks many of the multiple occasions exegetes give are of this kind; when a Companion or Successor says 'this verse was revealed about such-and-such', he often means that the verse covers that ruling, not that it was the cause of revelation. Some hadith scholars treat such statements as reports traced to the Prophet ﷺ, while Ahmad, Muslim and others did not include them among such reports and counted them as inference. ⁵ Revelation may also precede the ruling, as al-Baghawi answered about a Meccan verse used for the alms of fast-breaking. ⁶