Sulayman (AS) swore an oath about that night and left out two words. What the sources say the phrase was actually prescribed for.
Sulayman (AS) swore an oath about that night. He would go around to his wives, and every one of them would bear a horseman who would fight in the path of Allah. His companion said to him, say insha'Allah. He did not say it. Two of the routes that carry the narration give the reason in a single word. He forgot.
So the question sitting under the phrase has an answer, and it runs the opposite way from how the words often get used. Saying insha'Allah commits you to the thing. Al-Qurtubi lays out the mechanics in his tafsir on the verse it comes from. If a man says I will certainly do that, and then does not do it, he has said something untrue. If he says I will certainly do that if Allah wills, he has stepped out of asserting the thing as settled. The phrase never touches the intention, which the commentators assume is already sitting there. It takes away your claim on tomorrow and leaves your resolve exactly where it was.
Abu Hurayra (RA) carries the narration and the Prophet ﷺ is the one telling it. Sahih al-Bukhari has it in six places and Sahih Muslim in three, and Bukhari files two of them inside the chapters on oaths, one of those chapters titled on making the exception in an oath (Sahih al-Bukhari 6639 and 6720).
The number of wives is not the same in every route. Sixty in one, seventy in another, then ninety, ninety-nine, a hundred. Ibn Hajar sets them side by side in Fath al-Bari and offers a way of holding them together, that some routes count only part of the household, and that the real number sat between ninety and a hundred with one route dropping the fraction and another rounding it up.
He also catches something easy to walk past. The Arabic opens on the answer to an oath left unspoken, so the sentence is, by Allah, I will surely go around. His proof is the closing line about breaking, since only an oath can be broken.
Who prompted him is not fixed either. Most routes say his companion. Sufyan says the companion meant is the angel, and one route names the angel outright.
The ending does not move. Not one of them bore a child except a single woman, and what she bore was half a man. Then the Prophet ﷺ said, by the One in whose Hand is my soul, had he said insha'Allah he would not have broken his oath, and it would have been an attainment of his need.
Read the second half of that line again. Not, he would have been excused. He would have got the thing he was asking for.
Quraysh were coached. The commentators report, and al-Wahidi collects it, that they were handed three questions to put to him ﷺ. The Ruh. Some youths who went missing in an early age. A man who reached the east and the west of the earth. The test was built so that answering all three or none of them would count against him, and answering some would count for him.
He ﷺ told them, tomorrow I will tell you. He did not add insha'Allah.
Then nothing came. Al-Qurtubi says the scholars hold that Allah reproved His Prophet ﷺ over that sentence, that revelation was withheld until it weighed on him, and that the disbelievers made noise while it lasted. How long it lasted is not agreed. Muqatil says three days, Ibn Atiyya fifteen, al-Razi forty. Al-Alusi reports fifteen from Ibn Ishaq and records the other two as well.
What finally arrived was the verse itself.
And never say of anything, indeed, I will do that tomorrow, except when adding, if Allah wills (18:23-24).
Ibn Kathir reads it as instruction in adab: when he resolves on something to do in the future, he refers it back to the will of Allah. Look at the shape of that sentence. The resolve is already standing. The phrase is what gets attached to it.
And remember your Lord when you forget, and say, perhaps my Lord will guide me to what is nearer than this to right conduct (18:24).
Forget. The same word two of the Sulayman (AS) routes use.
Ibn Kathir reports the early reading of that clause from Abu al-Aliya and al-Hasan al-Basri: if you forget the exception, make it when you remember. Ibn Abbas (RA) said a man who swears may make it even a year later. On its own that sounds like a door left standing open, so Ibn Kathir carries Ibn Jarir's restriction along with it and says that is the reading to hold. Saying it late means you have kept the practice of the exception. It does not lift a broken oath and it does not cancel what you owe for it.
Ibn Atiyya adds the framing that keeps all this in ordinary life. People discuss this verse as though it were about oaths, he says, and the verse is not about oaths. It is about the habit of the exception outside of oaths. Al-Qurtubi closes the passage by noting that the address is to the Prophet ﷺ and then covers his whole community, because it is a matter that keeps recurring among people. Al-Razi puts it plainly. Saying it is recommended in every act a person wants to bring about, and inside it sit asking Allah for help, handing the matter over, and admitting that His power is what decides.
The clearest line in the whole file is a verse where the speaker is Allah.
Certainly has Allah showed to His Messenger the vision in truth. You will surely enter al-Masjid al-Haram, if Allah wills, in safety (48:27).
Nothing in that sentence is undecided. Al-Shawkani says the attaching is there to teach the servants what they are obliged to say, and then quotes Tha'lab in one line that ends the argument. Allah made the exception in what He knows, so that creation would make the exception in what they do not know.
The phrase was never a way of saying maybe.
Ibrahim (AS) told his son what he had seen in the dream and asked him what he thought. The answer is in the Quran.
He said, O my father, do as you are commanded. You will find me, if Allah wills, of the steadfast (37:102).
That is a boy agreeing to be slaughtered. Al-Shawkani says he attached it to the will of Allah seeking blessing through it. Al-Razi gives the same reading and adds a reason underneath it: there is no turning away from disobedience except by Allah's protection, and no strength for obedience except by His enabling. Isma'il (AS) is not softening the answer. He is saying he cannot hold still under a knife on his own strength.
Now go forward two surahs.
And mention in the Book, Ishmael. Indeed, he was true to his promise (19:54).
Al-Razi lists what earned Isma'il (AS) that description, and one of the items is this. He promised patience over the slaughter and he fulfilled it, where he said, you will find me, if Allah wills, of the steadfast. The promise the Quran holds up as kept is the promise that had insha'Allah written into it.
Yusuf (AS) uses it the same way. His parents are standing in front of him, the city right there, and he says, enter Egypt, Allah willing, safe (12:99). Nobody in that scene is being told maybe.
One man meant it completely and did not say it, and the sources say he forgot, and the Prophet ﷺ told his Companions the story so they would carry the words for life. Another said it over the hardest thing anyone has been asked to agree to, and went through with it.
In neither place is the phrase doing the job it often gets handed. It is not a maybe. It is not the exit from a sentence. It is the part of the sentence where a person who has already decided admits that tomorrow was never his to promise.
Silsila Research Desk
Grade: Sahih · 7 min read