Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vsgnj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-17T09:09:24.476Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Note on the Sīra of Ibn Isḥāq

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Extract

It would be all but impossible to compile a complete list of all the Arabic writers who used Ibn Isḥāq's Biography of the Prophet. In the Introduction to my translation of his work1 I endeavoured to collect and include anything of importance which other writers had quoted on the authority of Ibn Isḥāq. Among the writers whom I may have overlooked must now be mentioned Abū Nu‘aym Ahmad b. ‘Abdullah al-Ispahānī (d. 430)2 who wrote a book entitled Dalā’ilu'l-Nubၫwa.3

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1956

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 1 note 1 O.U.P., 1955, xxx-xxxiii.

page 1 note 2 Brockelmann, GAL, I, 362; Suppt., 1, 616–7.

page 1 note 3 2nd ed. Haydarabad, 1950.

page 1 note 4 Another Muhammad b. Ishāq, often quoted in this book, is not the author of the Sīra, but a certain al-Ahwāzī; cf. p. 12 where his nisba is given.

page 1 note 5 i.e. Wüstenfeld's edition of the Arabic text of Ibn Hishām's edition of Ibn Ishāq's work. VOL. XVIII. PART 1.

page 2 note 1 The name is given as ‘Utba throughout; but, as the editor points out, the apostle's daughter Ruqayya was married to ‘Utba who became a Muslim when Mecca was occupied, and her sister Umm Kulthū m, was married to this ‘Utayba who died as an unbeliever.

page 2 note 2 If the text is sound, the cry ‘ 0 dog! ’ must be addressed to ‘Utayba's companionṡ below, and so in English could almost be rendered by ‘ Damn you! ’ However, the version that follows, which Abū Nu'aym says was in Ibn Ishāq's book al-Maghāzī in the rīwāya of Yazīd b. Ziyād, simply has qatalanī thus it is not impossible that the two variants go back to an original reading qatalanīl-kalb.

page 3 note 1 Doubtless Ibn Hishām omitted this story because it recorded a gross insult to the prophet.

page 3 note 2 Nevertheless the story continues: ‘ And he said ’, and proceeds to quote the ‘ verses ’ he uttered.

page 3 note 3 This is an interesting addition. On the whole it seems to bear out the translation given in my edition, p. 304: ‘ Am I anything more remarkable than a man you have killed ? ’ See the footnote there.