Sometimes he will say, “Such-and-such took place, so Allah revealed such-and-such”; at other times, “The reason this particular verse was sent down was such-and-such”; and still at other times, “This verse was revealed concerning such-and-such.” These are three distinct wordings.

When he says, “The reason the verse was revealed was such-and-such,” the statement is explicit: that incident is the actual occasion of revelation.

When he says, “Such-and-such happened, so Allah revealed…,” the phrase is likewise clear—though not as explicit—that the event is the cause of revelation, for construing the faʾ (“so”) in this context as causal is more appropriate than taking it as a mere sequential conjunction. The obvious sense, therefore, is that the incident triggered the revelation.

The third wording is, “This verse was revealed concerning such-and-such.” This expression is evenly balanced between two possibilities: either it means that the purport of the verse relates to that matter—thus serving as an interpretation of the verse—or it is naming the occasion of revelation. On the first possibility, the preposition fī (“in, concerning”) is locative, the “location” here being conceptual; on the second, fī carries a causal meaning, i.e., “because of such-and-such.” It is well known that fī can denote causation, as in the hadith, “A woman entered the Fire because of (fī) a cat she had confined.” Here fī means “because of,” not that she physically entered the cat.

In short, the phrases used to speak of occasions of revelation fall into three categories: explicit, apparent, and ambiguous. The explicit formula is, “The reason the verse was revealed was such-and-such”; the apparent one, “Such-and-such happened, so it was revealed”; and the ambiguous one, “It was revealed concerning such-and-such.”

For this reason the author—may Allah have mercy on him—says: “And their statement, ‘This verse was revealed concerning such-and-such…’ ”