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THE FOREGOING CHAPTERS have shown that the text of the Quran plays a dominant role in the traditions about the Prophet's life. A closer examination of this role will reveal that the usual approach of Islamicists towards the function of the Quran in the sīra calls for modification. As a rule, these scholars are of the conviction that the sīra stories were designed to provide asbāb al-nuzūl, the “occasions of revelation” of the Quran. These stories represent, in their view, no more than an exegetic elaboration on the often-obscure text of the Quran. Watt, for instance, in his study of the materials of which the early biography of Muḥammad consists, states: “The Quranic allusions had to be elaborated into complete stories and the background filled in if the main ideas were to be impressed on the minds of simple men.” Wansbrough has a similar view. He is able to detect in the early biographies of Muḥammad an “exegetic” narrative technique “in which extracts (serial and isolated) from scripture provided the framework for extended narratio….” A similar observation has been made by Rippin, who declares: “Narrative expansion of a Qur'ānic verse is a more frequent feature in the sabab, ranging from the most simple setting of the scene to a full elaboration, spinning an entire narrative structure around a Qur'ānic verse.” Following Wansbrough, Rippin is particularly certain of the exegetic nature of those asbāb which deal with pre-Islamic conditions in Arabia, the ḥums, for example. He says that this type of information “is totally exegetic: what has been ‘preserved’ is only what is relevant to understanding the Qur'ān and hadith.”

The view that what came to be known as the asbāb al-nuzūl material is merely the product of an exegetic elaboration on the Quranic text, actually repre sents the consensus among Western Islamicists. This would imply that all traditions in the sīra alluding to the Quran had their origin in the Quranic verse itself, round which they were supposedly built as an exegetic expansion.

But there is much that is misleading in this outlook. To begin with, one should bear in mind that although the traditions known as asbāb al-nuzūl occur in the collections of tafsir—for example, al-Tabari's—their birthplace is in the sīra, where they do not yet function as asbab.