Delivering the Repudiation (Barāʾah)

Qur'an 9:1 · Al-Tawbah

بَرَآءَةٌ مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِۦٓ إِلَى ٱلَّذِينَ عَـٰهَدتُّم مِّنَ ٱلْمُشْرِكِينَ

(9:1) [This is] a [declaration of] repudiation by Allah and His Apostle [addressed] to the polytheists with whom you had made a treaty:

The question

Why did the Prophet take the verses of Barāʾah back from Abū Bakr and send ʿAlī to proclaim them — and what does “No one can deliver it on your behalf except you or a man from yourself” mean?

Views answered: Ibn Kathīr and others who explain it as an Arab custom, Tafsīr al-Manār (Rashīd Riḍā)

Al-Mizan's argument

The narrations agree that the Prophet first gave the verses of repudiation to Abū Bakr, then sent ʿAlī after him to take them and proclaim them, after Gabriel brought the command that “no one can deliver it on your behalf except you or a man from yourself.” Al-Mizan shows that this statement is general: it concerns delivering a divine command the Prophet was charged to convey himself. It rejects the explanation of Ibn Kathīr and others that this followed a pre-Islamic Arab custom of treaties being revoked only by the man himself or a kinsman, and answers Tafsīr al-Manār at length: it confuses the Prophet's political authority, under which he could appoint anyone to lead the pilgrimage, with the delivery of revelation, which he could not entrust to someone lesser; it claims a consensus where the reports in fact disagree; and its reading of “a man from myself” as “from my household” in general ignores that at that time there was no man of the Prophet's Household but ʿAlī.

Reading guide

Each part opens the commentary at that point.

1. The narrations: the verses taken from Abū Bakr and given to ʿAlī
2. What all these narrations have in common
3. The justification offered by Ibn Kathīr and others
4. “No one can deliver it… except you or a man from yourself”
5. Was it an Arab custom?
6. Tafsīr al-Manār's view
7. Political authority and the delivery of revelation
8. How the reports in fact disagree
9. “ʿAlī went as a follower of Abū Bakr”
10. Rashīd Riḍā on “a man from myself”
11. Four problems with his claim

Read the whole commentary on 9:1 →