The unnamed in the Qur'an (al-mubhamat)

The unnamed in the Qur'an is the sixth type in al-Zarkashi's al-Burhan, which he likens to the unnamed persons treated in the hadith sciences. ¹ He notes that Abu al-Qasim al-Suhayli wrote al-Ta'rif wa-l-I'lam on it and his student Ibn Asakir followed with al-Takmil wa-l-Itmam, and that some early authorities cared for it: Ikrima said he spent fourteen years seeking the name of the emigrant overtaken by death on his way. ¹

Al-Zarkashi states that one does not inquire into what God has said He keeps to His own knowledge, and wonders at those who ventured to name people whom God says He alone knows (al-Anfal 60). ¹

He gives reasons: first, that the matter is made clear elsewhere or in the verse's context; second, that it is evident because well known, so it needs no name — Adam's wife, the one who disputed with Abraham (Nimrod), the one who bought Joseph (the Aziz), Adam's two sons; he reports the saying that wherever the Qur'an reports the idolaters calling it the stories of the ancients, as in al-An'am 25, the speaker is al-Nadr ibn al-Harith ibn Kalada; third, to cover the person, the better to win him over. ^{1 2} On the mosque founded on piety he says the stronger view is that it is the mosque of Quba', that a hadith explains it as the mosque of Medina, and that the two have been reconciled by taking both as meant. ²