The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 4) — Page 512
Date of Revelation CHAPTER 28 AL-QAŞAŞ (Revealed before Hijrah) It is generally agreed that this Surah belongs to the Meccan period. ‘Umar bin Muḥammad is reported to have been of the opinion that it was revealed while the Holy Prophet, during the Hijrah, was on his way to Medina. If this opinion of ‘Umar is accepted as correct, even then the Surah will have to be assigned to the Meccan period, because the Holy Prophet was yet on his way to Medina and the Hijrah had not become complete. Wherry believes that 'Umar bin Muḥammad's view is due to the fact that the Surah contains a prophecy about the return of the Holy Prophet to Mecca which is embodied in the verse; "Most surely He Who has made the teaching of the Quran binding on thee, will bring thee back to thy place of return" (28:86). But Wherry's assumption is uncalled for because the Companions of the Holy Prophet generally based the actual date of the revelation of a particular verse not on its subject matter but on sound historical data. Rev. Wherry's difficulty lies in the fact that he does not believe the Quran to be Divinely revealed and, therefore, when he comes across a certain verse embodying a prophecy which was later fulfilled in the most adverse circumstances, he is at a loss how to explain it away. He then vainly tries to show that the said verse contained no prophecy at all but only related to a certain incident. If the time of the revelation of a particular verse is to be determined by its subject matter, as Rev. Wherry does, then a Surah which deals with the conquest of Mecca will have to be regarded as having been revealed at the time of the conquest of Mecca. But such an inference would be manifestly wrong. It is a clumsy effort on the part of Mr. Wherry and some other Christian writers of his way of thinking that they seek to infer from the subject matter of the Quranic verses the time of their revelation. In this respect the practice of Companions of the Holy Prophet who were in a much better position than anybody else to assign the revelation of Quranic verses to a particular place or time was to fix it not according to the subject matter of the verses but by authentic historical evidence. The fact that the verse "Most surely He Who has made the teaching of the Quran binding on thee" occurs in a Meccan Surah (which the present chapter admittedly is) clearly shows that the Holy Prophet was yet in Mecca when he was foretold that at first he would have to leave Mecca as a fugitive and then he would come back to it as a conqueror. Incidentally, the fulfilment of this prophecy in a most remarkable manner and under circumstances quite 2426