صحيح أسباب النزول

Sahih Asbab al-Nuzul

A specialised contemporary study of the authentic reports concerning the occasions of Qurʾānic revelation, by the Palestinian-Jordanian ḥadīth scholar Ibrāhīm Muḥammad al-ʿAlī (d. 1425 AH). Unlike works that simply gather the numerous reports traditionally cited under Asbāb al-Nuzūl, the author approaches the subject primarily from the perspective of ḥadīth criticism, examining the chains and sources of the reports in order to distinguish material that can reliably be accepted from narrations that are weak or otherwise unsuitable as evidence.

The author gathered his material from a broad range of primary sources, including tafsīr bi’l-maʾthūr, specialised works on Asbāb al-Nuzūl, the major ḥadīth collections, musnads and muṣannafs, works of Sīrah, and biographical literature concerning the Companions. Each accepted report is accompanied by concise takhrīj, identifying its principal sources and explaining the basis upon which its authenticity is established. The reports are arranged according to the order of the sūrahs and verses of the Qurʾān, making the work convenient for use alongside a tafsīr.

An important feature of the book is the author’s distinction between two different categories of material often presented as Asbāb al-Nuzūl. The first comprises authentic reports that explicitly and genuinely describe an event as the cause or immediate context of a verse’s revelation. The second contains authentic explanations transmitted from the Companions which some scholars have counted among reports of revelation, although they are more properly understood as Companion tafsīr rather than statements identifying the actual occasion of revelation. This distinction makes the work particularly useful for understanding the methodological problems involved in interpreting early statements about why a verse was revealed.

The book is therefore both a collection of authenticated material and a ḥadīth-based critical study of Asbāb al-Nuzūl, providing students of Tafsīr with a more carefully filtered body of reports for understanding the historical circumstances surrounding Qurʾānic revelation.

Published by Dār al-Qalam, Damascus, with a foreword by the Qurʾānic scholar Dr. Ṣalāḥ ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ al-Khālidī, the work first appeared in 1424 AH / 2003; Dār al-Qalam subsequently issued a second edition in 2014.