may Allah bless him and grant him peace, on the day of Uhud, when I was fourteen years old, but he did not allow me to take part. I was presented to him on the day of the Trench, when I was fifteen years old, and he allowed me to take part.”

No one may argue for abrogation on the basis of the report in the two Sahīh collections from Ibn ʿUmar that he “heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, when he raised his head from bowing in the final rakʿah of Fajr, say: ‘O Allah, curse so-and-so, so-and-so, and so-and-so,’ after saying: ‘Allah hears whoever praises Him; our Lord, to You belongs all praise.’ Then Allah revealed:

‘You have no say in the matter—whether He turns to them in mercy or punishes them, for they are wrongdoers.’”

This indicates only that he was to stop invoking curses upon them, since he had no say in the matter and they might yet repent. If this constitutes a prohibition, it applies equally within prayer and outside it. The discussion, however, concerns supplications that are permissible outside prayer, such as supplicating for particular oppressed individuals and supplicating against particular disbelievers by asking for victory over them, rather than invoking curses upon them, and similar supplications.

The second view is that held by some followers of al-Shāfiʿī and Ahmad, and others: that speaking during prayer was prohibited in Mecca. They base this on the position that abrogation is established by the hadith of Ibn Masʿūd, relying on what Ibn Ishāq mentioned in his account of the Prophet’s life. He said: “News reached the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, who had departed for Abyssinia that the people of Mecca had embraced Islam. They therefore returned upon hearing this report that the people of Mecca had embraced Islam—a report that was false. None of them entered except under someone’s protection or in secret. Among those who returned