Treatise on Abrogation of the Law

The first chapter of this [book] is the declaration of what abrogation [naskh] is. [ . . . ] We say “the abrogation occurred” in two ways in Arabic. The first way is what happened in actuality, and that is how it is defined according to the original language of the Arabs. It denotes “elimination.” The scholars inferred it [i.e., this meaning] in the language of the Arabs, from their [the Arabs’] saying: “The wind erased [nasakhat] the vestiges of the people, and the sun abolished [wa-nasakhat] the shade,” if it did away with it. And one of them said that abrogation is “transference” [naql], and he proved this by their [other] saying, “The [matter of the] book was transferred [nusakha],” if its content was transferred [nuqila] to another. The truth concerning this in the view of their scholars of their language is what we mentioned first. Regarding the second saying, they apply to it the name of abrogation only metaphorically. They said: “Don’t you see that elimination occurs regarding the vestiges that were erased by the wind? But transference does not occur regarding ‘copying [naskh] of the book,’ since what is in the book is not transferred when it is copied [nusikha]; rather, its equivalent is written in another place.”

They said: “One should not say that if abrogation [naskh] in its basic meaning is elimination [izāla], then it would necessarily follow that everything eliminated would be ‘abrogated.’” But we know that the people of this language did not term any elimination “abrogation,” because it is said: It is not impossible that the true meaning of abrogation [naskh] is what we have said earlier, even if they specified for it some of what was derived as to the meaning [of the term] abrogation. [This is] just like a fissure: if it is on the nose, it is called “a nostril,” even though it is not termed this if it is not on the nose, according to its true meaning.

The second way that the term abrogation is used is metaphorically, referring to what was eliminated, like a divine legal judgment. Some people made additions to this definition, saying: “It [i.e., abrogation] is the elimination of a divine legal judgment after its establishment.” This is an erroneous addition, since a divine legal judgment might be established before its time, as it indicates an initiation, and necessitates that God prohibited a good thing and commanded a vile thing, as we will explain in the chapter on the discussion of initiation. That is not correct, because initiating does not apply to God.

Others have defined it as a divine legal judgment that was transferred [nuqila] to another [case]. That is not correct either because it might be abrogated even if it is not transferred to another [case], through preventing it from acting in the way it did before its abrogation. Summing up, the abrogation indicates that one should not devote himself to divine service by means of the abrogated thing in the future in the same way as he devoted himself to divine service in the past.