'the Qur'ānic 'they' which is frequently left ambiguous in the text' ) makes establishing pericopal boundaries difficult, however. This, combined with the Qur'an's allusive literary style (e.g. One theory of Qur'anic verse arrangement proposes a thematic/topical ordering of ther verses (ayat).

In other words, no process of spinning a narrative around a Quranic verse seems to have taken place. The basic narrative framework is always independent of Quranic verses and ideas the Quranic data seem to have been incorporated into the sīra story secondarily, for the sake of embellishment and authorization. Within the realm of the sīra, these traditions are still without an exegetic function, because none of them is built around the Quranic verses which occur in it.

These traditions only became asbāb when the Quran exegetes gleaned them from the sīra and recorded them in the tafsīr of the Quran. To begin with, one should bear in mind that although the traditions known as asbāb al-nuzūl occur in the collections of tafsīr- for example, al-Tabarī's- their birthplace is in the sīra, where they do not yet function as asbāb. In his extensive survey of early Muslim traditions regarding Muhammad, Rubin upends this consensus (while preserving Rippin's speculation about the ultimately qassaic/story-teller origins of these reports) by arguing that most asbāb originally started as prophetic biographical material into which Qur'anic verses were only later inserted: “ One thing common to all these theories is the assumption that the sabab is built around the Qur'ānic verse(s) embedded in it. I would tentatively trace the origins of this material to the context of the qussās, the wandering story-tellers, and pious preachers and to a basically popular religious worship situation where such stories would prove both enjoyable and edifying. the essential role of the material is in haggadic exegesis. The primary (i.e., predominant) function of the sabab in the exegetical texts is not halakhic. Rippin in turn rejected this, arguing that the sabab's primary function is in haggadic/ qissaic exegesis, and that this in turn hints at its origin: “ Wansbrough, on the other hand, noted their juridical function, particularly with regard to establishing a chronology of revelation for the purposes of such mechanisms as naskh. Watt, for example, stressed the narratological significance of these types of reports: '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.'. Modern scholarship has long posited an origin for the sabab al-nuzūl based largely on its function within exegesis.

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