النسخ في القرآن الكريم للدكتور مصطفى زيد، طبعة ١٤٢٧هـ ٢٠٠٦م
I just finished reading and quoting this book. It is simply a must-have for any serious student of the abrogation doctrine. It is scholarly (a Ph.D. thesis), detailed and comprehensive.
It is a bit too long though. It could have easily been reduced in size, if the author had left out the discussion about abrogation in prior scriptures, since he named the book "Abrogation in the noble Quran." If I were on his advisory committee, I'd certainly have suggested that to him, since we have no authentic reference to prior scriptures, other than the Quran.
I also found the section about the linguistic meaning of the word naskh to be lacking, especially the part that shows the corresponding word in Hebrew. How can that be of value to this discussion? The irony is that the translations from Hebrew of all the examples he quoted mentioning the Hebrew word for naskh, none of these translations have actually used the Arabic word naskh!
Dr. Zayd, may God bless his soul, divided up his thesis nicely into categories of reasons why abrogation claims are bunk. That is a good approach, but it makes looking up a particular case in his book harder.
I think that his conclusions about the five cases he approved are mistaken, especially the prohibition of intoxication (5:90/4:43) case, which he seems to have added in a hurry as an afterthought. IMHO, the reason he had to find a few cases to approve is what he stated in his book in the beginning (volume 1, page 18), namely that he did not want to appear as an imitator of prior authors and adding nothing to their opinions, but he also did not want to upset his teachers, who believed in the abrogation doctrine!
BTW, the title of the Ph.D. thesis, according to Abu-Abdillah Muhammad Yusri, who helped Dr. Zayd, was المصلحة في التشريع الإسلامي (Benefit, as taught in Islamic law). Yusri hints at the sensitivity of the abrogation subject by saying, "Abrogation, in reality, is a cancellation of part of the law, when the foundation is to take the law as is from God!"
I did notice that one member of his advisory and examining doctoral committee was Ali Al-Khafeef, who was against the abrogation doctrine
Dr. Zayd acknowledges that he was
shocked by what he read as he was researching the exegesis of Chapter 8! It was then that he decided to research the abrogation subject closely. He found that there were too many conflicting opinions about it and
no consensus on any claim. He acknowledges that the reason he wrote such a long thesis was to fully analyze all the claims, since, he says, "abrogation cannot be based on analysis!" He is right, of course, but why then did he approve five claims based on analysis of narrations, none of which is attributed to the Prophet (PBUH)?
May God bless his soul, and reward him for his most valuable addition to the abrogation subject, according to his good intention.