Umar: 'The Verse of Stoning Was in the Quran' — A Lost Verse
Bukhari 6580 records the second Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab — one of the most authoritative companions in Sunni Islam — publicly affirming that the Quran originally contained a verse mandating death by stoning for married adulterers, that this verse was no longer in the written Quran, but that the legal ruling it established remained in force.
The hadith is one of the most theologically destabilising in the Sunni canon. It directly contradicts the doctrine of Quranic textual preservation. Q 15:9 promises 'we have sent down the reminder, and we will surely preserve it.' Sunni doctrine holds that the Quran has been preserved exactly as Muhammad recited it, in word and order. Umar's public statement is incompatible with this claim: he affirms that a verse, once recited as Quran, is no longer in the written text.
Classical Sunni jurisprudence accommodated this tension by inventing the doctrine of naskh al-tilāwa dūna l-ḥukm — 'abrogation of the recitation while retaining the ruling.' This is one of three categories of naskh (the other two being abrogation of both recitation and ruling, and abrogation of ruling while retaining recitation). The 'stoning verse' is the canonical example. Suyuti's Itqān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān preserves dozens of alleged verses in this category — material that supposedly was Quranic but is no longer, while remaining legally binding.
The broader picture is even more unsettling. Aisha (in Muslim 1452) reports that there was originally a verse establishing that 'ten clear breastfeedings make marriage forbidden' which was then 'abrogated by five clear breastfeedings,' and that the latter verse was 'still recited as Quran when the Messenger died.' This means that a verse Aisha specifies as Quran at the time of Muhammad's death is also not in the written Quran today. Multiple early sources (Tabari, Suyuti, Ibn Hajar) record additional 'lost' verses: about Bani Adam's descent, about wealth, about prophetic privileges, etc.
Furthermore, the consolidation of the Quran into a single official text was undertaken by Caliph Uthman (r. 644-656 CE), who reportedly burned competing codices. The codex of Ibn Masʿūd (which lacked Surahs 1, 113, and 114) and the codex of Ubayy ibn Kaʿb (which contained two extra surahs: al-Khalʿ and al-Ḥafd) were both suppressed in favour of the Uthmanic recension. Early reports (Itqān) preserve fragments of these alternative codices that differ from the standard text.
The consequences: 1. Q 15:9 (preservation of the Quran) is in tension with Bukhari 6580 (loss of a Quranic verse). One must yield. 2. The doctrine of naskh al-tilāwa concedes the existence of lost Quranic material, undermining the textual completeness claim. 3. The legal binding force of an unrecited verse (the stoning ruling) creates the paradox of 'binding scripture not in the scripture.' 4. The Aisha breastfeeding hadith places lost verses inside the Quran 'at the time of Muhammad's death' — meaning the loss occurred between Muhammad's death and the Uthmanic compilation, casting doubt on the compilation's fidelity.
- P1. Bukhari 6580 records Umar publicly stating that a verse mandating stoning for married adulterers was originally Quranic but is no longer in the written text.
- P2. Q 15:9 promises that Allah will preserve the Quran from corruption.
- P3. The doctrine of naskh al-tilāwa (abrogation of recitation) was developed by Sunni jurists to reconcile P1 with P2 — accepting that some Quranic material is no longer in the Quran while remaining legally binding.
- P4. Aisha (Muslim 1452) reports that the breastfeeding-equivalence verse was 'still recited as Quran' at the time of Muhammad's death — meaning textual loss occurred after Muhammad's death.
- P5. The Uthmanic compilation suppressed competing codices (Ibn Masʿūd, Ubayy ibn Kaʿb), each of which contained material differing from the standard text.
- P6. A claim that the Quran is perfectly preserved cannot be reconciled with the sahih reports of lost verses, naskh al-tilāwa, and competing codices — at least one of these claims is false.
- P7. If material was lost between revelation and the modern Quran, then the 'preserved' status of the modern Quran is uncertain: there is no principled way to know what else was lost.
Bukhari 6580 is one of the most damaging hadith in the Sunni canon for the doctrine of Quranic preservation. The second Caliph publicly affirms that a verse, once Quranic and once recited as scripture, is no longer in the written text. The Sunni response — naskh al-tilāwa — concedes the underlying problem and merely names it. Combined with the Aisha breastfeeding report, the Uthmanic suppression of competing codices, and the fragments preserved in classical literature, the textual record indicates that the Quran as it stands today is not identical to what Muhammad recited during his lifetime. The preservation claim of Q 15:9 is, on the texts' own evidence, false.
The stoning verse was abrogated in recitation but its ruling remains binding — this is naskh al-tilāwa, a recognised category, not a textual problem.
Naming a category does not solve the problem. Naskh al-tilāwa concedes the substantive claim: a verse once part of the Quran is no longer part of the Quran. Q 15:9 does not say 'we will preserve the Quran except for material we choose to abrogate from the recitation' — it says preservation simply. The doctrine of naskh al-tilāwa is exegetical contortion designed to manage embarrassment, not a theory the Quran itself proposes. And it generates the absurd category of 'binding scripture that is not in scripture' — a category no other religion's textual theory recognises.
The Quran's preservation refers to its meaning and core message, not to every word — minor textual variants are permitted in Allah's wisdom.
If preservation is only of meaning, then Q 15:9 is uninformative, since every reasonably preserved religious text preserves its core meaning. The verse uses al-dhikr ('the reminder'), referring specifically to the Quranic text. Sunni tradition has historically read this as textual preservation; only when challenged by hadith like Bukhari 6580 does the apologetic shift to 'meaning preservation.' This is a moving target.
Umar's report is about a private memorisation — not a public revelation. The verse may have been a personal recitation of Umar that he believed was Quranic but was not.
Bukhari 6580 records Umar speaking publicly from the pulpit, citing the verse as Quranic, and saying that 'Allah's Apostle carried out the Rajm and we did so after him.' He explicitly attributes the verse to revelation that the prophet recited and acted upon. If Umar — a senior companion, the second Caliph — was confused about what was and was not Quranic, the Sunni doctrine of companion reliability is in serious trouble. Either Umar was right (the verse was Quranic), or he was wrong on a major point (companion reliability fails). Both options are damaging.
Competing codices (Ibn Masʿūd, Ubayy) were oral variants and personal copies — the Uthmanic recension represents the consensus, divinely guided, true text.
The 'consensus' was achieved by Uthman ordering the burning of competing codices — i.e., by suppression, not by transparent textual scholarship. Ibn Masʿūd, who knew Muhammad personally and was praised by him as a master of Quranic recitation (Bukhari 5000), refused to surrender his codex. The Sunni tradition's later rationalisation of the Uthmanic recension as 'consensus' is post-hoc. And the existence of multiple codices in the first place — each claiming Muhammadan authority — undermines the claim that the Quran was perfectly preserved orally before written codification.
Modern Western scholarship (Sanaa palimpsest, etc.) has confirmed the Uthmanic Quran is largely the same text Muhammad recited.
The Sanaa palimpsest in fact shows variant readings against the Uthmanic standard, with evidence of erasure and overwriting. Modern academic scholarship (Behnam Sadeghi, Mohsen Goudarzi, et al.) treats Sanaa as evidence of textual diversity in the early period that was subsequently standardised. 'Largely the same' concedes 'not exactly the same' — which is incompatible with the strict preservation claim. The textual evidence supports textual variation, not perfect preservation.