“Al-Mahdawī (1) said: ‘This is the correct view: every messenger is a prophet, but not every prophet is a messenger.’ Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ likewise mentioned this in al-Shifāʾ, saying: ‘The correct view, held by the overwhelming majority, is that every messenger is a prophet, but not every prophet is a messenger.’ He cited the hadith of Abū Dharr as evidence...”

I say: The distinction in the verse is further confirmed by what Abū Bakr al-Anbārī narrated in his book al-Radd, through his chain of transmission from Ibn ʿAbbās (may Allah be pleased with him), that he recited: “We never sent before you any messenger, prophet, or a muḥaddath (one to whom revelation comes in sleep).” Abū Bakr said: “This report cannot be taken as establishing that this is Quran. A muḥaddath is one to whom revelation comes in his sleep, for the dreams of the prophets are revelation.”

I say: If this is authentically established from Ibn ʿAbbās, it further confirms the distinction we have mentioned, even though it cannot establish Quranic text. It is also supported by the fact that this distinction was reported from his student Mujāhid (may Allah have mercy on him). Al-Suyūṭī mentioned in al-Durr (4/366), through the narration of Ibn al-Mundhir and Ibn Abī Ḥātim from Mujāhid, that he said: “A prophet is one with whom Allah speaks and upon whom revelation descends, but who is not sent.” This is an explicit statement from this imām of exegesis, supporting what the scholars have consistently maintained regarding the distinction, in accordance with the apparent meaning of the Quran and the explicit wording of the Sunnah.

What prompted me to set this matter out was that I came across a collection of treatises by one of the distinguished scholars of the present age. It included a treatise entitled, “A Gift to the Devoted concerning the Messengership of the Prophets,” in which he argued that there is no distinction between a messenger and a prophet. His discussion therein makes clear to any critical investigator acquainted with the scholars’ researches and statements that its author—may Allah preserve him—composed it off the cuff, without troubling himself to examine the scholars’ views on the matter. Otherwise, how could he have permitted himself to say (vol. 1, p. 429): “The earliest one we have seen to speak of this distinction is the eminent Ibn Kathīr...”?