Asbab al-nuzul

Asbāb al-nuzūl (أسباب النزول), meaning occasions or circumstances of revelation, refers to the historical context in which Quranic verses were revealed. Though of some use in reconstructing the Qur'an's historicity, asbāb is by nature an exegetical rather than a historiographical genre, and as such usually associates the verses it explicates with general situations rather than specific events.

Asbāb is the plural of the Arabic word sabab, which means "cause", "reason", or "occasion", and nuzūl is the verbal noun of the verb root nzl, literally meaning "to descend" or "to send down", and thus (metaphorically) "to reveal", referring Allah sending down a revelation to his prophets. Though technical terms within Qur'anic exegesis often have their origins in the book itself (e.g. naskh), sabab/asbāb does not: Despite the appearance of the stem sbb over 11 times Quran (Q.2:166, Q.18:84, Q.18:85 Q.18:89, Q.22:15, Q.38:10, Q.40:36-37), none of the verses seem the least bit connected to a statement concerning the occasions of revelation.

Within exegetical literature, the use of sabab in a technical sense did not occur until relatively late: the material which would be later culled by asbāb writers used alternate phraseologies to introduce their reports, such as al-āya nazalat fī hādhā- "the verse was revealed about such and such"- or fa-anzala allāh- "so God revealed/sent down". The term "sabab" in its technical sense (meaning "occasion of revelation") seems to begin to make its appearance in the works of Tabari (d. 922 CE) and al-Nahhas (d. 950 CE). Al-Jassas (d. 981) was the first to use the term regularly in introducing reports about the revelation of the Quran.

One can find the translation of Asbab al-Nuzul (i.e. the contexts and occasions of the Revelation of the Qur'an)into English by 'Alī ibn Ahmad al-Wāhidī (d. 468/1075), who is considered to be the earliest scholar of the branch of the Qur'anic sciences known as Asbāb al-Nuzūl. Al-Wāhidī and subsequent scholars aimed to collect and systemize information concerning all the known reasons and contexts for the Revelation of particular Qur'anic verses.

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