Ibn Hisham

Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Hishām ibn Ayyūb al-Ḥimyarī (; died 7 May 833), known simply as Ibn Hisham, was a 9th-century Abbasid historian and scholar, known for authoring the Al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah.Kathryn Kueny, The Rhetoric of Sobriety: Wine in Early Islam, pg. 59. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. He grew up in Basra, in modern-day Iraq and later moved to Egypt.

Life

Ibn Hisham has been said to have grown up in Basra and moved afterwards to Egypt.Mustafa al-Suqa, Ibrahim al-Abyari and Abdul-Hafidh Shalabi, Tahqiq Sirah an-Nabawiyyah li Ibn Hisham, ed.: Dar Ihya al-Turath, pp. 23-4. 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.

Biography of Muḥammad

As-Sīrah an-Nabawiyyah (), 'The Life of the Prophet'; is an edited recension of Ibn Isḥāq's classic Sīratu Rasūli l-Lāh () 'The Life of God's Messenger'.Mahmood ul-Hasan, Ibn Al-At̲h̲ir: An Arab Historian : a Critical Analysis of His Tarikh-al-kamil and Tarikh-al-atabeca, pg. 71. New Delhi: Northern Book Center, 2005. Antonie Wessels, A Modern Arabic Biography of Muḥammad: A Critical Study of Muḥammad Ḥusayn, pg. 1. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 1972.Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, pg. 18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 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 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.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. p. 29-51.Cf., Ibn Ishaq (Guillaume's reconstruction, at pp. 165-167) and al-Tabari (SUNY edition, at VI: 107-112). Ibn Hishām gives more accurate versions of 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).

Translations and editions Later Ibn Hishām's As-Sira would chiefly be transmitted by his pupil, Ibn al-Barqī. This treatment of Ibn Ishāq's work 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 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). In 1955, the British orientalist Alfred Guillaume published an English translation with Oxford University Press titled The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Isḥāq's Sīrat Rasūl Allāh.

Other works Ibn Hisham also known as the author of the commentaries of The Book of Crowns on the Kings of Himyar.Sezgin, Fuat (1967). Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. Vol. 1. Leiden: Brill. Ibn Hisham reported that he acquired the book narrative from 'Abd al-Mun'im Idris. Ibn Hisham, who authored the commentaries of this book, also gave his own analysis that the Yemen region name were given from their primordial founder, Ya'rub (son of Qahtanالإيناس بعلم الأنساب - المغربي - ج١ - الصفحة 41.*), who also known by his other name, "Yaman".

Published editions English

Al falah foundation. Cairo, Egypt. online link

Arabic online link

Other works Kitab al-Tijan li ma'rifati muluk al-zamān fi akhbar Qahtān () 'The Book of Crowns, on the kings of yesteryear in the accounts of the Qahtān' (in Arabic); a genealogical work with historico-legendary accounts of the southern Arabs and their monuments in pre-Islamic times.Printed in Hyderabad (India), 1928.

Ibn Hisham

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