The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 2) — Page 638
Hijāz. The question which naturally arises here is that when the Quran was reduced to writing in the form of a book in the time of Abu Bakr, what was the arrangement of these Surahs in that copy. If, because of the smallness of its size, Anfal was placed by Abu Bakr among the later Surahs which are generally small in size, and if Abu Bakr also wrote Bismillah in the beginning of Taubah, and it was ‘Uthmān who changed the arrangement decided upon by Abu Bakr and who dropped the Bismillah, then this important fact should have certainly been mentioned by Ibn 'Abbās. Nay, he should have surely raised his voice against the omission of Bismillah in the beginning of Taubah and against the discrepancy in the arrangement of the Surahs. But he did nothing of the kind. This shows that the above statement, as quoted by Tirmidhi, has been attributed to Ibn 'Abbās either owing to some misunderstanding on the part of one of the intermediary narrators or is a later interpolation. The truth is, as stated above, that Anfāl and Taubah or Bara'at both make one Surah and Taubah is called a Sūrah, which literally means a piece, because it has been treated as a distinct portion of Anfāl, otherwise it is not a Surah in the sense in which other Surahs are known by this name. Date of Revelation Both Anfal and Taubah or Bara'at are Medinite Surahs. Anfal was revealed about the time of the Battle of Badr in the first or second year after Hijrah. As, however, mention has been made in seven verses of this Surah of the machinations of the disbelievers which they hatched at the time of the Hijrah (Flight), some commentators have regarded those verses as of Meccan origin. But this is evidently a wrong inference, because the Quran has in similar words mentioned events in the lives of Adam, Abraham and Moses. If a particular verse can be taken to have been revealed at Mecca because it mentions some incident that occurred at Mecca, the verses which describe the events that occurred in the time of Adam or Abraham or Moses will then have to be regarded as having been revealed in the times of these Prophets, which is evidently wrong. According to Imām Bukhārī, chapter Taubah or Barā'at was among the last portions of the Quran to be revealed as against chapter Anfal which was among the first to be revealed after Hijrah. A Collective Note on both Sūrahs In Anfal, the prophecy was made that God would give to Muslims a great victory and the possession of their enemies would fall into their hands. This prophecy continued to prove a constant source of mockery for disbelievers at the expense of the Faithful, because God, out of His infallible wisdom and in conformity with His eternal law, delayed its fulfilment along with the revelation of that portion of chapter Anfal which contained a mention 1078