Page:Thomas Patrick Hughes - Notes on Muhammadanism - 2ed. (1877).djvu/59

 38 tory, and are often made the subject of attack; but it is part of the theological belief of the Muslim doctor that certain passages of the Qurán are mansúkh, or abrogated by verses afterwards revealed. This was the doctrine taught by the Arabian prophet in the Súra-i-Baqr (ii.), 105, "Whatever verses we (i. e. God) cancel or cause thee to forget, we bring a better or its like." This convenient doctrine fell in with that law of expediency which appears to be the salient feature in Muhammad's prophetical career.

In the Tafsír-i-ʾAzízí it 1s written, that abrogated (mansúkh) verses of the Qurán are of three kinds: (1) Where the verse has been removed from the Qurán and another given in its place; (2) Where the injunction is abrogated and the letters of the verse remain; (3) Where both the verse and its injunction are removed from the text. This is also the view of Jalál-ud-Dín, who says, that the number of abrogated verses has been variously estimated from five to five hundred, and he gives the following table of twenty verses which most commentators acknowledge to be abrogated,