“He (Ibn-Abbas) said, ‘I asked Ali-ibn-Abi Talib, why was not the Bismilla written in Sūra Barāt’. He said, ‘Because the Bismilla is for faith, but Sūra Barat was sent down for the sword (war). And there is a tradition from Mālik that when the first portion of Sūra Barat was destroyed, then the Bismilla was lost with it; but if it had been proved, then verily it would have been equal in length to Sūra Bakr’.”
In the traditions collected by Muslim, in the book Al-Jakāt, there is a tradition to the effect that a Qurān reader named Abū-Mūsā-Ashāri addressing a number of Qurān readers at Busra said,
“We used to read a Sūra equal in length and threatenings to Sūra Barat, then I forgot it wholly except one verse . . . . . . and we also used to read another Sūra that was equal to one of the Musabbehāt; so I forgot that too, saving one verse which I recollect.’’ Needless to say, none of these chapters appears in ʿUsmān’s collection.
In the history of the famous traditionist Al-Bukhārī another tradition affirms the total loss of a large number of verses from Sūra Akhrāb. It runs as follows,
"And Bukhārī has written in his history a tradition from Hazīfta that he said, I was reading Sūra Al-Akhrāb before the prophet, but I forgot seventy verses from it, and I did not obtain them (again).”
Yet one other tradition deserves to be inserted here before we bring this little book to a close. It concerns, not the past,
