How Many Verses Were Abrogated? Five, Twenty, or Two Hundred?

One Book, One Question, Answers From Zero to Two Hundred and Forty-Seven

There is one point on which every Muslim on earth agrees: the Quran is one Book, preserved, unchanged, letter for letter. And yet, open the classical works of tafsir and usul al-fiqh, and you find a dispute running through a thousand years of scholarship that most readers have never heard of: how many verses of this preserved Book are mansukh — abrogated — verses that are still recited today but which, according to the scholars, no longer legislate? One early scholar lists more than a hundred. A work attributed to Ibn Hazm reaches 214. Ibn al-Jawzi collects 247 claims. Al-Suyuti, examining the same lists, cuts them down to about twenty. Shah Waliullah of Delhi cuts them to five. And Abu Muslim al-Isfahani — whose position Imam al-Razi records in his tafsir — says the true number is zero: not one verse of the Quran has been abrogated. Same Book. Same verses. Same libraries. Counts ranging from zero to two hundred and forty-seven. This doctrine is called naskh — abrogation — and today we open the books on it.

This article does not mock any religion. It will do what we always do: open the books, present the texts exactly as they are, with references, and let you decide. The verdict, as always, is yours.