Chronology of Quranic chapters and verses, abrogation issue

numo400

Member
Assalmu alaikum brothers and sisters!

herewith, i would like to know whether anyone of you know a book about the chronology of revelation of the Quranic verses.

Last week I came across a book (using mathematics and computer things) on amazon.de, that apparently has managed to determine the year of revelation of every Surah and Verse of the holy Quran.

Could anyone of you let me know whether some islamic scholars have carried out this kind of research in the past?


Shukran lakum

Ma assalama

brother Amin.
 

Hassan

Laa ilaha ilaa Allah
Staff member
wa alaikum asalaam Brother Amin

Welcome to TTI!

I personally have not heard of such study, that does not in any way mean that it has never been done or attempted. But if nobody else has information, I think we can assume they have nothing solid to say on the matter either. Have you checked out the books authors, are they scholarly?
 

numo400

Member
Assalamu alaikum Hassan,

thanks for your reply.
I have checked the book a little bit, and it seems to be a scholarly one.
This is the back cover of the book:
"Reconstructing the chronology of the Quranic text has long been an important activity of traditional Islamic scholars and western orientalist researchers. Unfortunately, both traditional Islamic scholars as well as non-Muslims have so far failed to estimate the date of revelation of each verse of the Quran. This is obviously a challenging task, as the verses' order of revelations is neither mentioned in the written Qur an nor in the secondary sources of Islam. This book explains in detail how this challenge has been overcome, through the use of newly-emerging computational methods of machine learning algorithms along with existing traditional methods. Moreover, an explanation about the abandonment of the yearly chronology of revelation is also included. This book is intended to facilitate studying and understanding the philosophy of the Quran in general, and its genesis and preservation in particular."

However, I have not found any other book online tackling the problem of the order of revelation of the Surahs and the Ayats of the holy Quran.

We hope someone could let us know as soon as another book from muslims scholars dealing with this issue is found.

Shukran lakum

Ma assalama

brother Amin.
 

Hassan

Laa ilaha ilaa Allah
Staff member
wa alaikum asalaam

I was able to find the listing of the book and check out the author. He is a software engineer/programmer, so I am sure he is competent in his computational methods. However, if something contradicts something we know from the Sunnah, he may not know of it, so I think the book is of interest to those who already studied the chronology, but may be less useful to someone looking for an entry point into that knowledge.

I also found a few sites listing a 'traditional chronology of revelation' - I was a little surprised, I thought we only knew if a Surah was early Makkah, or late Madinah, and so on, and not that there was a definite order. None of those chronologies were on sites I know as trustworthy, and at least one site I actively distrust, so I would not give a link.

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable can give you better information, in shaa Allah.
 

Eman Yousuf

Junior Member
:salam:,

I think we should check out this book with some profound scholar, if this has not been done before then we should look into the matter seriously. Allahu alam

ma salaam
 
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