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Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Yasar, or simply Ibn Ishaq (, meaning "the son of Isaac", the "sh" part being pronounced as two different sounds), was a Muslim historian (died 768). Ibn Sa'd calls him "the first to collect the accounts of the expeditions of the Messenger of Allah and record them". The Messenger of Allah is, of course, the prophet Muhammad. Ibn Ishaq was born in Medina approximately 85 years after Hijra, which is approximately 704. He is thus considered one of the Tabi‘in and he is reported to have met Anas ibn Malik. He worked in Medina until the Abbasids replaces the Umayyads in the caliphate (750). After that he is reported at various places in Iraq and Iran and he died in Bagdad in 768.
Work Ibn Ishaq probably never wrote a "book" in the ordinary sense of book . What has come down to us seems to be from the notes taken by his pupils. The standard source is now the "Sirat al-Nabi" ("Life of the Prophet") of Abd al-Malik ibn Hisham (died 830, 835 or perhaps much later) which is a systematic presentation of Ibn Ishaq's material with a commentary by Ibn Hisham. This should be supplemented by the extracts in al-Tabari and other authors. For example, the infamous story about the Satanic Verses was not reported by Ibn Hisham. But it was repeated by al-Tabari and others. Ibn Hisham makes no secret of the fact that he omitted some of the material Ibn Ishaq included. The part of Ibn Hisham's work due to Ibn Ishaq is now usually called the "Sirat Rasul Allah" ("Life of Allah's Messenger"). Ibn Ishaq's work originally consisted of three almost equal parts. The first was a history of the world up until the beginning of Muhammad's ministry. The second was an account of Muhammad's work in Mecca and the third was an account of his work in Madina and his death. The first part did not interest Ibn Hisham and much of it is lost. What remains is based on Arabic traditions and the Jewish scriptures. The second part is a collection of prophetic hadiths, especially about the events behind the revelation of one or another verse in the Quran (the division between Meccan surats and Medinan surats seems to very old and these verses are verses from Meccan surats), lists of significant persons (for example, the earliest Muslims) and poetry. Ibn Ishaq does not attempt a chronology, but he does arrange his material in a logical sequence. The third consists of a careful month-based chronology (which falls apart at the end) and the campaigns (Ibn Ishaq counts 27, but he stretches the meaning of campaign) made by Muhammad from his base of operations in Medina are carefully embedded in this chronology. But before this campaign literature there is a copy of the document called the Constitution of Medina and an extensive section of tafsir and hadiths. Tafsir also occurs several times embedded in the campaign literature. The campaign literature itself includes extensive poetry and lists of persons involved as well as description of battles or why no battle took place. The tafsir is among the earliest in Islam and the American Qu'ran scholar John Wansbrough classifies it as haggadic in his most primitive subset of the tafsir. That is, it is primarily devoted to passing on a narrative. The campaign literature is followed by an appendix describing campaigns made by other Muslims under Muhammad's directions and a relatively brief account of his death and succession by Abu Bakr. There are about 600 hadiths in Ibn Ishaq's collection and most of them have what appears to be acceptable isnads. But the later hadith collectors rarely used any material from the Sirat. There are almost as many poems as hadiths, but later commentaries tend to view them as worthless because they feel so many of them were forged. | ||||||||
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