Ibn Ishaq

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Muḥammad ibn Isḥaq ibn Yasār (Arabic: محمد بن إسحاق بن يسار‎, or simply Ibn Isḥaq ابن إسحاق, meaning "the son of Isaac") (died 767, or 761 (Robinson 2003, p. xv)) was an Arab Muslim historian. He collected oral traditions that formed the basis of the first biography of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. This biography usually called Sirat Rasul Allah ("Life of God's Messenger").

Life

According to Guillaume (pp. xiii-xiv), Ibn Isḥaq was born circa AH 85, or roughly 704 AD, in Medina. He was the grandson of a man, Yasār, who had been captured in one of Khalid ibn al-Walid's campaigns and taken to Medina as a slave. Yasār converted to Islam and was freed. Yasār's son Isḥaq was a traditionist, who collected and recounted tales of the past. Muḥammad ibn Isḥaq was thus carrying on the work of his father.

At the age of thirty, he traveled to the Islamic province of Egypt to attend lectures given by the traditionist Yazīd ibn Abū Habīb. He later traveled eastwards, towards what is now ‘Irāq. There, the new Abbasid dynasty, having overthrown the Umayyad caliphs, was establishing a new capital at Baghdad. Ibn Isḥaq moved to the capital and likely found patrons in the new regime. (Robinson 2003, p. 27) He died in Baghdad in 767 CE.

Work

Ibn Isḥaq wrote several works, none of which survive. His collection of traditions about the life of Muhammad survives mainly in two sources:

• an edited copy, or recension, of his work by his student al-Bakka'i, as further edited by Ibn Hisham. Al-Bakka'i's work has perished and only Ibn Hisham's has survived, in copies. (Donner 1998, p. 132)
• an edited copy, or recension, prepared by his student Salamah ibn Fadl al-Ansari. This also has perished, and survives only in the copious extracts to be found in the volumimous historian al-Tabari's. (Donner 1998, p. 132)
• fragments of several other recensions. Guillaume lists them on p. xxx of his preface, but regards most of them as so fragmentary as to be of little worth.

According to Donner, the material in Ibn Hisham and al-Tabari is "virtually the same". (Donner 1998, p. 132) However, there is some material to be found in al-Tabari that was not preserved by Ibn Hisham. The notorious tradition of the Satanic Verses, in which Muhammad is said to have added his own words to the text of the Qur'an as dictated by a jinn is found only in al-Tabari but Tabari was a collector of all reports regardless of its validity.

The English-language edition of Ibn Ishaq currently used by non-Arabic speakers is the 1955 version by Alfred Guillaume. 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).

Criticism

Ibn Isḥaq has been accused of being a Qadari, as some have questioned his dependability.^[3] Because of this, highly notable scholars including Imam Bukhari hardly ever used his narratives.^[4]

References

• Donner, Fred -- Narratives of Islamic Origins, The Darwin Press, 1998
• Guillaume, A. --The Life of Muhammad, Oxford University Press, 1955, reprinted in 2003. ISBN 0-19-636033-1
• Robinson, Chase -- Islamic Historiography, Cambridge University Press, 2003, ISBN 0521588138
• Wansbrough, John --Quranic Studies, , 1977, as reprinted in 2004, ISBN 0197135889
• Wansbrough, John -- The Sectarian Milieu, , 1978, as reprinted in 2005, ISBN 019713596X