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45-656: Ibn Ishaq, also known by the title ṣāḥib al-sīra , collected oral traditions that formed the basis of an important biography of the Islamic prophet Muhammad . His biography is known as the Al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah , and it has mainly survived through the recension of the work by Ibn Hisham . Born in Medina circa A.H. 85 (A.D. 704), ibn Isḥaq's grandfather was Yasār ibn Khiyar (according to some ibn Khabbar, Kuman or Kutan), one of forty Christian or Jewish boys who had been held captive in

90-513: A hadith and a khabar is that a hadith is not concerned with an event as such, and normally does not specify a time or place. Rather the purpose of hadith is to record a religious doctrine as an authoritative source of Islamic law . By contrast, while a khabar may carry some legal or theological implications, its main aim is to convey information about a certain event. Starting from the 8th and 9th century, many scholars have devoted their efforts to both kinds of texts equally. Some historians consider

135-468: A monastery at Ayn al-Tamr . After being found in one of Khalid ibn al-Walid 's campaigns, Yasār was taken to Medina and enslaved to Qays ibn Makhrama ibn al-Muṭṭalib ibn ʿAbd Manāf ibn Quṣayy. On his conversion to Islam, he was manumitted as " mawlā " (client), thus acquiring the surname, or " nisbat ", al-Muṭṭalibī . His three sons, Mūsā, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, and Isḥāq, were transmitters of "akhbār", i.e. they collected and recounted written and oral testaments of

180-621: A narrative that includes stories of earlier prophets , Persian Kings , pre-Islamic Arab tribes, and the Rashidun . Parts of sīrah were inspired by, or elaborate upon, events mentioned in the Qur'an . These parts were often used by writers of tafsir and asbab al-nuzul to provide background information for events mentioned in certain ayat . In terms of structure, a hadith and a historical report ( khabar ) are very similar; they both contain isnads (chains of transmission). The main difference between

225-511: A number of different grounds. He lists the following arguments against the authenticity of sīra, followed here by counter arguments: If one storyteller should happen to mention a raid, the next storyteller would know the date of this raid, while the third would know everything that an audience might wish to hear about. Nevertheless, other content of sīra, like the Constitution of Medina , are generally considered to be authentic. The following

270-438: A number of expressions to convey his skepticism or caution. Beside a frequent note that only God knows whether a particular statement is true or not (p. xix), Guillaume suggests that Ibn Isḥāq deliberately substitutes the ordinary term "ḥaddathanī" (he narrated to me) by a word of suspicion "zaʿama" ("he alleged") to show his skepticism about certain traditions (p. xx). Michael Cook laments that comparing Ibn Ishaq with

315-590: A number of written documents, such as political treaties (e.g., Treaty of Hudaybiyyah or Constitution of Medina ), military enlistments, assignments of officials, letters to foreign rulers, and so forth. It also records some of the speeches and sermons made by Muhammad, like his speech at the Farewell Pilgrimage . Some of the sīrah accounts include verses of poetry commemorating certain events and battles. At later periods, certain type of stories included in sīrah developed into their own separate genres. One genre

360-441: A reputation of being "sincere" or "trustworthy" ( ṣadūq ). However, a general analysis of his isnads has given him the negative distinction of being a mudallis , meaning one who did not name his teacher, claiming instead to narrate directly from his teacher's teacher. Others, like Ahmad ibn Hanbal , rejected his narrations on all matters related to fiqh . Al-Dhahabī concluded that the soundness of his narrations regarding ahadith

405-502: A single book and without integrating articles, short essays and unpublished manuscripts, with the researcher also precising that the literature in Arabic is even more important. The sīrah literature includes a variety of heterogeneous materials, containing mainly narratives of military expeditions undertaken by Muhammad and his companions . These stories are intended as historical accounts and are used for veneration. The sīrah also includes

450-509: A source. Thus can be reconstructed an 'improved' " edited " text, i.e., by distinguishing or removing Ibn Hisham's additions, and by adding from al-Tabari passages attributed to Ibn Ishaq. Yet the result's degree of approximation to Ibn Ishaq's original text can only be conjectured. Such a reconstruction is available, e.g., in Guillaume's translation. Here, Ibn Ishaq's introductory chapters describe pre-Islamic Arabia , before he then commences with

495-400: Is hasan , except in hadith where he is the sole transmitter which should probably be considered as munkar . He added that some Imams mentioned him, including Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj , who cited five of Ibn Ishaq's ahadith in his Sahih . Prophetic biography Al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya ( Arabic : السيرة النبوية ), commonly shortened to Sīrah and translated as prophetic biography , are

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540-428: Is a list of some of the early Hadith collectors who specialized in collecting and compiling sīrah and maghāzī reports: Ibn Hisham Abu Muhammad Abd al-Malik ibn Hisham ibn Ayyub al-Himyari ( Arabic : أَبُو مُحَمَّدٌ عَبْدِ الْمَلِكِ بْنُ هِشَامٍ بْنُ أَيُّوبَ الْحِمْيَرِيِّ , romanized :  Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Hishām ibn Ayyūb al-Ḥimyarī ; died 7 May 833), known simply as Ibn Hisham ,

585-409: Is also credited with the lost works Kitāb al-kh̲ulafāʾ , which al-Umawwī related to him (Fihrist, 92; Udabāʾ, VI, 401) and a book of Sunan (Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Ḵh̲alīfa, II, 1008). In hadith studies , ibn Isḥaq's hadith (considered separately from his prophetic biography) is generally thought to be "good" ( ḥasan ) (assuming an accurate and trustworthy isnad , or chain of transmission) and himself having

630-414: Is concerned with stories of prophetic miracles, called aʿlām al-nubuwa (literally, "proofs of prophethood"—the first word is sometimes substituted for amārāt or dalāʾil ). Another genre, called faḍāʾil wa mathālib — tales that show the merits and faults of individual companions , enemies, and other notable contemporaries of Muhammad. Some works of sīrah also positioned the story of Muhammad as part of

675-516: Is now considered to be only a subset of sīra —one that concerns the military campaigns of Muhammad. Early works of sīrah consist of multiple historical reports, or akhbār , and each report is called a khabar . Sometimes the word tradition or hadith is used instead. The sīrah literature is important: in the Urdu language alone, a scholar from Pakistan in 2024 produced a bibliography of more than 10,000 titles, counting multivolume works as

720-585: The Isrā'īlīyāt . Furthermore, early literary critics, like ibn Sallām al-Jumaḥī and ibn al-Nadīm , censured ibn Isḥāq for knowingly including forged poems in his biography, and for attributing poems to persons not known to have written any poetry. The 14th-century historian al-Dhahabī , using hadith terminology , noted that in addition to the forged ( makdhūb ) poetry, Ibn Isḥāq filled his sīra with munqaṭiʿ (broken chain of narration ) and munkar (suspect narrator) reports. Guillaume notices that Ibn Isḥāq frequently uses

765-634: The Sîrah or biography of the Prophet, the rest was once considered a lost work , but substantial fragments of it survive. He died in Baghdad in A.H. 150. Ibn Isḥaq collected oral traditions about the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. These traditions, which he orally dictated to his pupils, are now known collectively as Sīratu Rasūli l-Lāh ( Arabic : سيرة رسول الله "Life of the Messenger of God") and survive mainly in

810-684: The Heidelberg professor Gustav Weil published an annotated German translation in two volumes. Several decades later the Hungarian scholar Edward Rehatsek prepared an English translation, but it was not published until over a half-century later. The best-known translation in a Western language is Alfred Guillaume 's 1955 English translation, but some have questioned the reliability of this translation. In it Guillaume combined ibn Hisham and those materials in al-Tabari cited as ibn Isḥaq's whenever they differed or added to ibn Hisham, believing that in so doing he

855-594: The Middle East. The German orientalist Gernot Rotter produced an abridged (about one third) German translation of The life of the Prophet. As-Sīra An-Nabawīya . (Spohr, Kandern in the Black Forest 1999). An English translation by the British orientalist Alfred Guillaume : The Life of Muhammad. A translation of Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah. (1955); 11th edition. (Oxford University Press, Karachi 1996). Ibn Hisham also known as

900-486: The Prophet'; is an edited recension of Ibn Isḥāq 's classic Sīratu Rasūli l-Lāh ( سيرة رسول الله ) 'The Life of God's Messenger'. Ibn Isḥāq's now lost work survives only in Ibn Hishām's and al-Tabari 's recensions, although fragments of several others survive, and Ibn Hishām and al-Tabarī share virtually the same material. Ibn Hishām explains in the preface of the work, the criteria by which he made his choice from

945-588: The Umayyad period, their reputation deteriorated because of their inclination to exaggerate and fantasize, and for relying on the Isra'iliyat . Thus they were banned from preaching at mosques. In later periods, however, works of sīrah became more prominent. More recently, Western historical criticism and debate concerning sīrah have elicited a defensive attitude from some Muslims who wrote apologetic literature defending its content. For centuries, Muslim scholars have recognized

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990-464: The age of 30, ibn Isḥaq arrived in Alexandria and studied under Yazīd ibn Abī Ḥabīb. After his return to Medina, based on one account, he was ordered out of Medina for attributing a hadith to a woman he had not met, Fāṭima bint al-Mundhir, the wife of Hishām ibn ʿUrwa . But those who defended him, like Sufyan ibn ʽUyaynah , stated that Ibn Ishaq told them that he did meet her. Also ibn Ishaq disputed with

1035-407: The authority of multiple persons without distinguishing the words of one person from another. This lack of precision led some hadith scholars to take any report that used a collective isnād to be lacking in authenticity. According to Wim Raven, it is often noted that a coherent image of Muhammad cannot be formed from the literature of sīra, whose authenticity and factual value have been questioned on

1080-528: The capital and found patrons in the new regime. He became a tutor employed by the Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur , who commissioned him to write an all-encompassing history book starting from the creation of Adam to the present day, known as "al-Mubtadaʾ wa al-Baʿth wa al-Maghāzī" (lit. "In the Beginning, the mission [of Muhammad], and the expeditions"). It was kept in the court library of Baghdad. Part of this work contains

1125-506: The century before Ibn Ishaq is something we can only guess at." Cook's fellow revisionist Patricia Crone complains that Sīrat is full of "contradictions, confusions, inconsistencies and anomalies," written "not by a grandchild, but a great grandchild of the Prophet's generation", that it is written from the point of view of the ulama and Abbasid , so that "we shall never know ... how the Umayyad caliphs remembered their prophet". In 1864

1170-405: The details over the centuries. Lawrence Conrad examines the biography books written in the early post-oral period and sees that a time period of 85 years is exhibited in these works regarding the date of Muhammad's birth. Conrad defines this as "the fluidity (evolutionary process) is still continuing" in the story. In the Arabic language the word sīrah or sīrat ( Arabic : سيرة ) comes from

1215-535: The following sources: According to Donner, the material in ibn Hisham and al-Tabari is "virtually the same". However, there is some material to be found in al-Tabari that was not preserved by ibn Hisham. For example, al-Tabari includes the controversial episode of the Satanic Verses , while ibn Hisham does not. Following the publication of previously unknown fragments of ibn Isḥaq's traditions, recent scholarship suggests that ibn Isḥaq did not commit to writing any of

1260-432: The later commentator Al-Waqidi — who based his writing on Ibn Ishaq but added much colorful but made-up detail — reveals how oral history can be contaminated by the fiction of storytellers ( qussa ). "We have seen what half a century of story-telling could achieve between Ibn Ishaq and al-Waqidi, at a time when we know that much material had already been committed to writing. What the same processes may have brought about in

1305-522: The narratives surrounding the life of Muhammad (in Guillaume at pp. 109–690). Notable scholars like the jurist Ahmad ibn Hanbal appreciated his efforts in collecting sīra narratives and accepted him on maghāzī , despite having reservations on his methods on matters of fiqh . Ibn Ishaq also influenced later sīra writers like Ibn Hishām and Ibn Sayyid al-Nās . Other scholars, like Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya , made use of his chronological ordering of events. The most widely discussed criticism of his sīra

1350-494: The original work of Ibn Isḥāq in the tradition of his disciple Ziyād al-Baqqāʾi (d. 799). Accordingly, Ibn Hishām omits stories from Al-Sīrah that contain no mention of Muḥammad, certain poems, traditions whose accuracy Ziyād al-Baqqāʾi could not confirm, and offensive passages that could offend the reader. Al-Tabari includes controversial episodes of the Satanic Verses including an apocryphal story about Muḥammad's attempted suicide. Ibn Hishām gives more accurate versions of

1395-409: The past. Isḥāq married the daughter of another mawlā and from this marriage Ibn Isḥāq was born. No facts of Ibn Isḥāq's early life are known, but it is likely that he followed in the family tradition of transmission of early akhbār and hadith . He was influenced by the work of ibn Shihab al-Zuhri , who praised the young ibn Ishaq for his knowledge of "maghāzī" (stories of military expeditions). Around

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1440-581: The poems he includes and supplies explanations of difficult terms and phrases of the Arabic language, additions of genealogical content to certain proper names, and brief descriptions of the places mentioned in Al-Sīrah . Ibn Hishām appends his notes to the corresponding passages of the original text with the words: "qāla Ibn Hishām" (Ibn Hishām says). Later Ibn Hishām's As-Sira would chiefly be transmitted by his pupil, Ibn al-Barqī. This treatment of Ibn Ishāq's work

1485-424: The problem of authenticity of hadith. Thus they have developed sophisticated methods (see Hadith studies ) of evaluating isnāds (chains of transmission). This was done in order to classify each hadith into "sound" ( ṣaḥīḥ ) for authentic reports, as opposed to "weak" ( ḍaʿīf ) for ones that are probably fabricated, in addition to other categories . Since many sīrah reports also contain isnād information and some of

1530-460: The rules of war and dealing with non-Muslims. The phrase sīrat rasūl allāh , or as-sīra al-nabawiyya , refers to the study of the life of Muhammad. The term sīrah was first linked to the biography of Muhammad by Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri ( d. 124/741–2), and later popularized by the work of Ibn Hisham ( d. 833). In the first two centuries of Islamic history , sīrah was maghāzī (literally, 'stories of military expeditions'), which

1575-428: The sīrah and maghāzī literature to be a subset of Hadith. During the early centuries of Islam, the sīrah literature was taken less seriously compared to the hadiths . In Umayyad times, storytellers ( qāṣṣ , pl. quṣṣāṣ ) used to tell stories of Muhammad and earlier prophets in private gatherings and mosques , given they obtained permission from the authorities. Many of these storytellers are now unknown. After

1620-410: The sīrah compilers ( akhbārīs ) were themselves practicing jurists and hadīth transmitters ( muḥaddiths ), it was possible to apply the same methods of hadīth criticism to the sīrah reports. However, some sīrah reports were written using an imprecise form of isnād, or what modern historians call the "collective isnād" or "combined reports". The use of collective isnād meant that a report may be related on

1665-478: The text of Ibn Ishaq, according to Guillaume (at p. xvii). Interpolations made by Ibn Hisham are said to be recognizable and can be deleted, leaving as a remainder, a so-called " edited " version of Ibn Ishaq's original text (otherwise lost). In addition, Guillaume (at p. xxxi) points out that Ibn Hisham's version omits various narratives in the text which were given by al-Tabari in his History . In these passages al-Tabari expressly cites Ibn Ishaq as

1710-514: The traditional Muslim biographies of the Islamic prophet Muhammad from which, in addition to the Quran and Hadiths , most historical information about his life and the early period of Islam is derived. The most striking issue about the life of Muhammad and early Islamic history is that the source information emerged as the irregular products of the storytelling culture and the increasing progress of

1755-575: The traditions now extant, but they were narrated orally to his transmitters. These new texts, found in accounts by Salama al-Ḥarranī and Yūnus ibn Bukayr, were hitherto unknown and contain versions different from those found in other works. The original text of the Sīrat Rasūl Allāh by Ibn Ishaq did not survive. However, much of the original text was copied over into a work of his own by Ibn Hisham ( Basra ; Fustat , died 833 AD, 218 AH). Ibn Hisham also "abbreviated, annotated, and sometimes altered"

1800-444: The verb sāra, which means to travel or to be on a journey. A person's sīrah is that person's journey through life, or biography , encompassing their birth, events in their life, manners and characteristics, and their death. In modern usage it may also refer to a person's resume . It is sometimes written as "seerah", "sirah" or "sirat", all meaning "life" or "journey". In Islamic literature, the plural form, siyar , could also refer to

1845-555: The young Malik ibn Anas , famous for the Maliki School of Fiqh . Leaving Medina (or forced to leave), he traveled eastwards towards " al-Irāq ", stopping in Kufa , also al-Jazīra , and into Iran as far as Ray , before returning west. Eventually he settled in Baghdad . There, the new Abbasid dynasty , having overthrown the Umayyad dynasty , was establishing a new capital. Ibn Isḥaq moved to

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1890-651: Was a 9th-century Muslim historian and scholar. He grew up in Basra , in modern-day Iraq and later moved to Egypt. Ibn Hisham has been said to have grown up in Basra and moved afterwards to Egypt . His family was native to Basra but he himself was born in Old Cairo . He gained a name as a grammarian and student of language and history in Egypt. His family was of Himyarite origin and belonged to Banu Ma‘afir tribe of Yemen . As-Sīrah an-Nabawiyyah ( السيرة النبوية ), 'The Life of

1935-621: Was circulated to scholars in Cordoba in Islamic Spain by around 864. The first printed edition was published in Arabic by the German orientalist Ferdinand Wüstenfeld , in Göttingen (1858-1860). The Life of Moḥammad According to Moḥammed b. Ishāq , ed. 'Abd al-Malik b. Hisham. Gustav Weil (Stuttgart 1864) was the first published translation. In the 20th century the book has been printed several times in

1980-467: Was restoring a lost work. The extracts from al-Tabari are clearly marked, although sometimes it is difficult to distinguish them from the main text (only a capital "T" is used). Ibn Isḥaq wrote several works. His major work is al-Mubtadaʾ wa al-Baʿth wa al-Maghāzī —the Kitab al-Mubtada and Kitab al-Mab'ath both survive in part, particularly al-Mab'ath , and al-Mubtada otherwise in substantial fragments. He

2025-565: Was that of his contemporary Mālik ibn Anas . Mālik rejected the stories of Muhammad and the Jews of Medina on the ground that they were taken solely based on accounts by sons of Jewish converts. These same stories have also been denounced as "odd tales" (gharāʾib) later by ibn Hajar al-Asqalani . Mālik and others also thought that ibn Isḥāq exhibited Qadari tendencies, had a preference for Ali (Guillaume also found evidence of this, pp. xxii &xxiv), and relied too heavily on what were later called

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