The sheep that ate the verse: 5 points on A’isha’s report

Critics quote a report in Sunan Ibn Majah. A’isha said that the verse of stoning and of suckling an adult ten times was revealed, that it was written on a paper kept under her pillow, and that a tame sheep came in and ate it after the Prophet died.^[1] The conclusion drawn is that verses of the Quran were lost, and that the claim of a preserved book fails.

The same A’isha is also reported in Sahih Muslim as saying that the Quran once stated ten known sucklings make marriage unlawful, that this was replaced by five known sucklings, and that the earlier wording was still being recited when the Prophet died.^[2] Her own words describe a ruling that was changed, which is a different thing from a chapter that disappeared.

Every version of the report traces back to A’isha through Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr ibn Hazm and Amra bint Abd al-Rahman. Yahya ibn Sa’id al-Ansari, whose version is in Sahih Muslim, and Malik, in the Muwatta’, both leave out the sheep. The version of al-Qasim ibn Muhammad, narrated by al-Tahawi, leaves it out as well. Only Muhammad ibn Ishaq includes it, and his version is the one in Ahmad’s Musnad and Ibn Majah.^[3]

A story that three other narrators from the same source do not mention, and that appears in a single line of transmission, is an exception in the record, which is how the hadith scholars treated it.

Ibn Hajar’s entry on Ibn Ishaq in Tahdhib al-Tahdhib records a mixed verdict, and the mixture matters. His admirers include Shu’ba, who called him the commander of the faithful in hadith, and Ali ibn al-Madini, who judged his hadith sound. The critics include Ahmad ibn Hanbal, who is reported to have said that Ibn Ishaq is not a proof (hujja) and, in the report of his son Abdullah, that he was not cited as proof in matters of the sunan, the legal reports. Yahya ibn Ma’in is reported on both sides: trustworthy but not a proof, and in one report weak. Al-Nasa’i said that he is not strong.^[4] The criticism therefore bears most on a report such as this one, which is used to settle a question of law and of the Quran’s text.

The editors of Ahmad’s Musnad state that the chain is weak because Ibn Ishaq alone narrated it.^[5] Ibn Qutayba went further in the third century of the Hijra. He judged the report of adult suckling ten times to be a mistake of Ibn Ishaq, observed that Malik narrated the same hadith from Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr with different wording, and added that Malik is the more reliable of the two in the view of the hadith scholars.^[6] The principle applied is that an odd report from a narrator of disputed strength, which differs from the more reliable narrators, is set aside.

Scholars did not all reach the same grading. The page of Ibn Majah 1944 on sunnah.com shows Darussalam’s grade of hasan, and the fatwa site Islamweb reports that al-Albani graded the report hasan.^[1][7] The editors of the Musnad call it weak, and the arguments of the previous point lead several scholars to the same view.^[5]

A fair reading states the disagreement. Where the grading is hasan, the argument in the next point answers the objection, and where the grading is weak, the objection never begins.

Ibn Hazm quoted the report with its chain and wrote that it is sound, but not in the sense the objectors take. The verse of stoning was memorised and acted on by the Prophet, but the scribes of the Quran did not write it in the codex, so its wording was abrogated, and the sheet that held it was no loss. The same holds for the verse on suckling. If the verses had still been part of the Quran, he argued, the eating of the sheet would not have prevented the Companions from writing them down from memory.^[8]

Al-Baqillani dealt with the report in his book defending the Quran. He wrote that the Prophet reviewed the Quran each year, and twice in the year he died, and that the Companions and scribes were appointed to preserve it, so it is not conceivable that a verse of the Book was kept only on a sheet under A’isha’s bed, where a household animal could eat it, while no one else remembered it.^[9] The Quran’s text rested on the community. The stoning ruling rests on the practice of the Prophet and his successors, as the previous article sets out.^[10]