it then becomes clear that the words were never meant to stand. This is a rule that serves you well in the chapters on oaths and on divorce: whenever a ruling is built upon a particular cause, and that cause is later found to have vanished, the ruling itself lapses. If, however, the oath-taker were to say, “By Allah, I intended never to visit So-and-so under any circumstance— I will not visit him for his very person, whether he be wicked or upright,” then should he visit him he has broken his oath, for in that instance we know exactly what he meant.

The maxim, then, is: every utterance that is conditioned upon a cause loses all legal effect once that cause is shown to be absent.

Here, the “effect” (al-musabbab) is the verse that was revealed or the hadith that was transmitted. For example, the reason for revealing the verse on liʿān was that Hilal b. Umayyah accused his wife of adultery with Sharik b. Sahmaʾ⦗1⦘—that accusation is the cause (sabab), while the verse that descended because of it is the effect (musabbab). In other words, the appearance of the hadith or the descent of the verse is the effect, and at times the meaning of a verse or hadith remains hidden until one knows the occasion of its revelation.

When they say, “This verse was revealed concerning such-and-such,” what they sometimes mean is that this event was the very cause of its revelation.

Explanation

The author—may Allah have mercy on him—often digresses in his writings. Here he digresses to explain the occasions of revelation, which fall into three categories: