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490conclusionwhich såra was abrogated by what verse. But there is no explicittext about such a thing. And apart from a few hints scatteredaround in the texts of Islamic fiqh, which do not do justice tothe importance of the subject, we do not have a theory of abrogationfirmly rooted in the Book. All we have are flimsy justificationsof abrogation that reflect the ideologies and particularpolitical interests of historical periods in which political rulersdemanded to get rid of certain verses that challenged their un-Islamic morality and aggressive worldviews.13. Our understanding of the Book required us to introduce the twocategories of ‘historicity’ and ‘historicality’. The first categoryrefers to passages of the Book that narrate the stories of the qur"§n.These are historic narratives, that is, stories about events thatreally happened in human history. Such stories only containmoral lessons and no legal injunctions, for example, reportsabout events in the life of God’s messenger, references to thebattles of Badr, UÈud, Tabåk, the battle of the ditch, the seizureof Mecca, and so forth. 1 Such reports, as they can befound in Sårat al-Tawba, are ‘historic texts’ (nußåß ta"rÊkhiyya),narratives of events that took place in history. No human legislationcan ever be derived from them. They do not belong toMuÈammad’s (ß) messengerhood since their revelation was theresult of specific historic circumstances as they are reflected inthe so-called occasions of revelation.The second category of ‘historicality’ is a hermeneuticalterm that refers to the context-based nature and historical biasof our understanding and interpretation of texts. Our understandingfor instance of the verses of messengerhood, such as,the injunctions about inheritance law and the different ritualobligations, is ‘rooted in history’, due to both the historicity ofthe text (ta"rÊkhiyyat al-naßß) and the historicality of our understanding(ta"rÊkhiyyat al-fahm). Thus, if we read the ‘stories’ of theBook we need to understand them as being historic (events that1MS refers here to the events of the so-called first fitna (temptation) and the fightof the Ahl al-Quraish against the newly formed Muslim community after theProphet’s Hijra from Mecca in the year 622. These were the battles of Badr (624),UÈud (625), Khandaq, or the battle of the ditch (627), the seizure of Mecca (630).Also included is one of the first military expeditions to regions outside the areas ofthe Ahl al-Quraish, to Tabåk (630), while the other two most important expeditions,to Mu"ta (629) and \unayn (630), are not mentioned.