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Ibn Ishaq
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Mu?ammad ibn Is?aq ibn Yasar (or simply Ibn Is?aq ??? ?????, 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").
rding to Guillaume (pp. xiii-xiv), Ibn Is?aq was born circa AH 85, or roughly 704 CE, in Medina.
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Encyclopedia
Mu?ammad ibn Is?aq ibn Yasar (or simply Ibn Is?aq ??? ?????, 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 Is?aq was born circa AH 85, or roughly 704 CE, in Medina. He was the grandson of a man, Yasar, who had been captured in one of Khalid ibn al-Walid's campaigns and taken to Medina as a slave. Yasar converted to Islam and was freed. Yasar's son Is?aq was a traditionist, who collected and recounted tales of the past. Mu?ammad ibn Is?aq 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 Yazid ibn Abu Habib. He later traveled eastwards, towards what is now ‘Iraq. There, the new Abbasid dynasty, having overthrown the Umayyad caliphs, was establishing a new capital at Baghdad. Ibn Is?aq 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 Is?aq 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 Is?aq'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 Is?aq has been accused of being a Qadari, as some have questioned his dependability. Because of this, highly notable scholars including Imam Bukhari hardly ever used his narratives.
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