Was a Quran verse still being recited when Muhammad died but omitted from the mushaf?

According to a report in Sahih Muslim, yes. Aisha says that ten sucklings were first revealed as a Quranic marriage rule, that ten was replaced by five, and that Muhammad died while five remained among what was recited of the Quran. The five-sucklings passage is not in the present mushaf. The standard doctrine of abrogated recitation can reconcile the report with preservation of God’s intended final text, but only by adding a further withdrawal that this report does not state. The hadith therefore contradicts the strong claim that every passage still recited as Quran when Muhammad died appears in the present text.

What the report says

Primary. Sahih Muslim, in the Book of Suckling, records Aisha saying that ten clear sucklings once made marriage unlawful, that this was abrogated and replaced by five sucklings, and that Muhammad died while the latter remained among what was recited of the Quran.¹Show source 11 Sahih Muslim, Kitab al-Rada’a, narrated Aisha; tr. Abdul Hamid Siddiqui (full text). “‘A’isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported that it had been revealed in the Holy Qur’an that ten clear sucklings make the marriage unlawful, then it was abrogated (and substituted) by five sucklings and Allah’s Apostle died and it was before that time (found) in the Holy Qur’an (and recited by the Muslims).” This concerns milk kinship: the reported revelation specifies how many sucklings establish a relationship that prohibits marriage.

The published translation is awkward, but the sequence is not difficult:

1. Ten sucklings were revealed.
2. Ten was abrogated and replaced by five.
3. Muhammad died while five remained among what was recited of the Quran.
4. The present mushaf contains neither passage.

The report explicitly names one abrogation: ten was replaced by five. It does not say that the recitation of five was later withdrawn. Its final clause points the other way by locating five within Quranic recitation when Muhammad died.

The standard reconciliation

The classical category naskh al-tilawa means abrogation of recitation. A passage can cease to be recited as Quran even though it once belonged to revelation; in some applications, its legal ruling may remain. Quran 2:106 supplies a general basis for abrogation or divinely caused forgetting,²Show source 22 Quran 2:106, tr. Pickthall (text). “Nothing of our revelation (even a single verse) do we abrogate or cause be forgotten, but we bring (in place) one better or the like thereof. Knowest thou not that Allah is Able to do all things?” while Quran 15:9 promises that Allah will guard the Reminder.³Show source 33 Quran 15:9, tr. Pickthall (text). “Lo! We, even We, reveal the Reminder, and lo! We verily are its Guardian.”

Applied here, the reconciliation must posit that the five-sucklings wording was withdrawn so late that Aisha or some reciters had not learned of its withdrawal when Muhammad died. Its absence from the mushaf would then be intentional rather than accidental. The preserved Quran would mean the final text God intended the community to retain, not every wording revealed during Muhammad’s lifetime.

That position is logically coherent. God could reveal a passage, replace it, and later withdraw the replacement. A preservation claim defined as retention of the intended final text can allow earlier revealed wording to disappear without allowing anything to be lost after revelation closed.

What the reconciliation has to add

Argued. The difficulty is evidential, not merely definitional. Muslim 1452a reports the replacement of ten by five but reports no later withdrawal of five. The further abrogation is inferred because five is absent from the present mushaf. If the absence is also the only evidence for that withdrawal, the reasoning is circular:

Why is a passage being recited when Muhammad died absent from the mushaf?
Because its recitation was withdrawn.
How is that withdrawal established?
Because the passage is absent from the mushaf.

Quran 2:106 establishes that abrogation can occur in general. It does not identify this particular passage as an instance, specify that its recitation was withdrawn after its ruling replaced ten, or explain why Aisha still placed it among Quranic recitation at Muhammad’s death.

The late-withdrawal explanation remains possible. Possibility, however, is not evidence that the withdrawal happened. It preserves the final-text doctrine by interpreting an authenticated report through the completeness of the later mushaf—the very completeness under examination.

What follows for preservation

Three positions remain available:

• Reject or reinterpret Aisha’s report.
• Accept an unreported late abrogation of the five-sucklings recitation.
• Accept the report at face value and conclude that material still recited as Quran when Muhammad died did not enter the final mushaf.

The standard reconciliation described above takes the second route. It is internally possible, but the hadith itself supplies the evidence for the third: five remained in Quranic recitation at Muhammad’s death. The second is supplied to reconcile that report with the later codex.

This does not show that the Quran is a late composition or that its post-standardization transmission was unstable. Those questions are tested against the manuscript evidence at What does the Sana’a manuscript show?. The report concerns an earlier and stronger claim: whether everything left as Quran at Muhammad’s death reached the mushaf.

Verdict

If Sahih Muslim 1452a is read in its ordinary sequence, the present mushaf does not contain every passage that remained in Quranic recitation when Muhammad died. Naskh al-tilawa can preserve a theological claim about God’s intended final text, but in this case it does so by positing a second abrogation that the report never mentions. The result is logically possible and historically unverified.

The narrower preservation claim survives: the Uthmanic text has an early and substantially stable transmission history. The stronger claim does not: an authenticated Sunni report places Quranic wording at Muhammad’s death that the present Quran does not contain.

Full treatments: Was the Quran perfectly preserved? · Are there different versions of the Quran? · Qadar, Agency, and the Pattern of Theological Relabeling in Islam · How this site works