Ibn Ishaq

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Ibn Ishaq
ٱبْن إِسْحَاق
Prophetic biography
Notable work(s)al-Sira al-nabawiyya ('Life of the Prophet')
Teachers
  • Al-Bakka'i
  • Salama ibn al-Fadl
Muslim leader
Students
    • Al-Bakka'i
    • Salama ibn al-Fadl

Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Yasar al-Muttalibi (

biography of the Islamic prophet Muhammad
.

Life

Born in

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 the past. Isḥāq married the daughter of another mawlā and from this marriage Ibn Isḥāq was born.[2][4][5]

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

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.[7]

Ibn Isḥaq moved to the capital and found patrons in the new regime.[8] 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.[9] Part of this work contains the Sîrah or biography of the Prophet, the rest was once considered a lost work, but substantial fragments of it survive.[10][11] He died in Baghdad in A.H. 150.[5][12][13]

Biography of Muhammad (Sīrat Rasūl Allāh)

Original versions, survival

Ibn Isḥaq collected oral traditions about the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. These traditions, which he orally dictated to his pupils,

Arabic
: سيرة رسول الله "Life of the Messenger of God") and survive mainly in the following sources:

According to Donner, the material in ibn Hisham and al-Tabari is "virtually the same".[14] 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.[9][17]

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 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.[18]

Reconstruction of the text by Guillaume

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).[19]

Ibn Hisham also "abbreviated, annotated, and sometimes altered" the text of Ibn Ishaq, according to Guillaume (at p. xvii).

History.[20][21] In these passages al-Tabari expressly cites Ibn Ishaq as a source.[22][23]

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.[24] Here, Ibn Ishaq's introductory chapters describe pre-Islamic Arabia, before he then commences with the narratives surrounding the life of Muhammad (in Guillaume at pp. 109–690).

Reception

Notable scholars like the jurist

Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya, made use of his chronological ordering of events.[25]

The most widely discussed criticism of his sīra was that of his contemporary

chain of narration) and munkar (suspect narrator) reports.[27]

Guillaume notices that Ibn Isḥāq frequently uses 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 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).[28] "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 the century before Ibn Ishaq is something we can only guess at."[29]

Cook's fellow revisionist Patricia Crone complains that Sīrat is full of "contradictions, confusions, inconsistencies and anomalies,"[30] 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".[31]

Translations

In 1864 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.[32]

The best-known translation in a Western language is Alfred Guillaume's 1955 English translation, but some have questioned the reliability of this translation.[33][34] 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 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).[35]

Other works

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 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).[9][36]

Reliability of his hadith

In

isnad, or chain of transmission)[37] and himself having 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.[38]

Others, like Ahmad ibn Hanbal, rejected his narrations on all matters related to fiqh.[2] Al-Dhahabī concluded that the soundness of his narrations regarding ahadith 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.[27]

See also

References

  1. ^ Mustafa al-Saqqa, Ibrahim al-Ibyari and Abdu l-Hafidh Shalabi, Tahqiq Kitab Sirah an-Nabawiyyah, Dar Ihya al-Turath, p. 20.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Jones, J. M. B. (1968). "ibn Isḥāḳ". Encyclopaedia of Islam. Vol. 3 (2nd ed.). Brill Academic Publishers. pp. 810–11.
  3. .
  4. ^ Gordon D. Newby, The Making of the Last Prophet (University of South Carolina 1989) at 5.
  5. ^ a b Robinson 2003, p. xv.
  6. ^ Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Taqdima al-maʿrifa li kitāb al-jarḥ wa al-taʿdīl, at "Sufyān ibn ʿUyayna".
  7. ^ Gordon D. Newby, The Making of the Last Prophet (University of South Carolina 1989) at 6–7, 12.
  8. ^ Robinson 2003, p. 27.
  9. ^ a b c d Raven, Wim, Sīra and the Qurʾān – Ibn Isḥāq and his editors, Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an. Ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe. Vol. 5. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers, 2006. pp 29-51.
  10. ^ Gordon D. Newby, The Making of the Last Prophet (University of South Carolina 1989) at 7–9, 15–16.
  11. . Retrieved 15 November 2017.
  12. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Ibn Ishaq". Retrieved 13 November 2019.
  13. ^ Oxford Dictionary of Islam. "Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Yasar ibn Khiyar". Archived from the original on January 19, 2016. Retrieved 13 November 2019.
  14. ^ .
  15. ^ Guillaume, A. The Life of Muhammad, translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sira Rasul Allah, (Oxford, 1955), p. 691.
  16. ^ W. Montgomery Watt and M. V. McDonald, "Translator's Forward" xi–xlvi, at xi–xiv, in The History of al-Tabari. Volume VI. Muhammad at Mecca (SUNY 1988). Regarding al-Tabari's narratives of Muhammad, the translators state, "The earliest and most important of these sources was Ibn Ishaq, whose book on the Prophet is usually known as the Sirah". Discussed here are Ibn Ishaq and his Sirah, the various recensions of it, Guillaume's translation, and Ibn Hisham.
  17. ^ Cf., Ibn Ishaq (Guillaume's reconstruction, at pp. 165–167) and al-Tabari (SUNY edition, at VI: 107–112).
  18. ^ .
  19. ^ Dates and places, and discussions, re Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Hisham in Guillaume (pp. xiii & xli).
  20. ^ Al-Tabari (839–923) wrote his History in Arabic: Ta'rikh al-rusul wa'l-muluk (Eng: History of Prophets and Kings). A 39-volume translation was published by State University of New York as The History of al-Tabari; volumes six to nine concern the life of Muhammad.
  21. ^ Omitted by Ibn Hisham and found in al-Tabari are, e.g., at 1192 (History of al-Tabari (SUNY 1988), VI: 107–112), and at 1341 (History of al-Tabari (SUNY 1987), at VII: 69–73).
  22. ^ E.g., al-Tabari, The History of al-Tabari, volume VI. Muhammad at Mecca (SUNY 1988) at p. 56 (1134).
  23. ^ See here above: "The text and its survival", esp. re Salamah ibn Fadl al-Ansari. Cf, Guillaume at p. xvii.
  24. ^ Ibn Hisham's 'narrative' additions and his comments are removed from the text and isolated in a separate section (Guillaume at 3 note, pp. 691–798), while Ibn Hisham's philological additions are evidently omitted (cf., Guillaume at p. xli).
  25. .
  26. ^ .
  27. ^ a b Al-Dhahabī, Mīzān al-iʿtidāl fī naqd al-rijāl, at "Muhammad ibn Ishaq". [1], [2]
  28. .
  29. .
  30. ^ Crone, Patricia (1980). Slaves on Horses (PDF). Cambridge University Press. p. 12. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  31. ^ Crone, Patricia (1980). Slaves on Horses (PDF). Cambridge University Press. p. 4. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  32. ^ See bibliography.
  33. .
  34. ^ Tibawi, Abdul Latif (1956). Ibn Isḥāq's Sīra, a critique of Guillaume's English translation: the life of Muhammad. OUP.
  35. ^ E.g., Guillaume at pp. 11–12.
  36. ^ Gordon D. Newby, The Making of the Last Prophet (University of South Carolina 1989) at 2–4, 5, 7–9, 15–16.
  37. ^ M. R. Ahmad (1992). Al-sīra al-nabawiyya fī dhawʾ al-maṣādir al-aṣliyya: dirāsa taḥlīlīyya (1st ed.). Riyadh: King Saud University.
  38. .
Books and journals

Bibliography

Primary sources

Traditional biographies

  • Ibn Sayyid al-Nās, ʿUyūn al-athar fī funūn al-maghāzī wa al-shamāʾil wa al-siyar.
  • Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī
    , Tārīkh Baghdād.
  • Al-Dhahabī
    , Mīzān al-iʿtidāl fī naqd al-rijāl.
  • Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī
    , Irshād al-arīb fī mʿrefat al-adīb.

Secondary sources

External links