Ibn Ishaq was the grandson of a slave who was given
his freedom upon converting to Islam. His father
and two uncles were professional traditionists—
preservers of the oral traditions that had been
passed down concerning the life of Muhammad.
Based originally in Medina, Ibn Ishaq himself became an expert on Muhammad, specifically on the
prophet’s military career. Accused of too rationalist
an approach in his study of Muhammad’s life, Ibn
Ishaq left Medina in 733. He studied in Alexandria
and eventually traveled to Baghdad, collecting all of
the traditional stories he could find and compiling
them into a single narrative, Sirat Rasul Allah (The
biography of God’s prophet). Written about a century after the death of the prophet, Ibn Ishaq’s text
was the earliest biography of Muhammad. His original work is no longer extant, but the text was revised in the ninth century by one Ibn Hisham, and
that version has survived, along with extensive quotations and allusions to Ibn Ishaq’s text in other historical works.
Oral tales, memories, and legends about
Muhammad’s life began to circulate immediately
after the prophet’s death, and these were preserved
(sometimes orally, sometimes in writing) by professional traditionists like Ibn Ishaq’s father and
uncles. These scholars preserved not only the stories but also their sources, so that it was known
which eyewitness had passed his or her version of
the event down to which storyteller. In this way, the
authority of the tales could be verified.
When Ibn Ishaq collected these tales, he preserved their attributions as well, so that his text is
filled with phrases like “Abdullah told me that . . .”
Thus Ibn Ishaq felt free to at least imply his own
doubts about certain stories that had been passed
down: He begins one section with the disclaimer
“It is alleged in popular stories (and only God
knows the truth).” As such, the biography provides
a helpful insight into how medieval narratives
grew out of oral sources. But for the most part the
biography is valuable particularly to Muslims, because it is the chief source for detailed information
about the life of God’s messenger.
Ibn Ishaq’s biography preserves a far more detailed picture of Muhammad than we have for the
founders of any other major religious traditions.
The text is a collage of short anecdotes, genealogy,
poems, long lists of supporters or opponents of
Muhammad, and more detailed narratives. It begins by tracing Muhammad’s descent from Adam
through Abraham and his son Ishmael. Ibn Ishaq
then relates the history of Arabia until the time of
Muhammad. He then includes stories concerning
the prophet’s birth, his visions in the desert, his
preaching and building his community of believers, his exile to Medina and triumphant return to
Mecca, and subsequent religious wars, concluding
with Muhammad’s death and details of the burial
of the prophet.
In addition, Ibn Ishaq is careful to show
Muhammad’s life in the context of the community of faith he established, so that other members
of the community, such as Salman the Persian, the
first non-Arab convert to Islam, are given prominent stories of their own within the larger arc of
the prophet’s life-story.
Little more is known of Ibn Ishaq’s life or the
circumstances of his death (in Baghdad), but his
legacy is the biography that is still the best authority we have for the life of one of the world’s most
significant religious figures.
Bibliography
Guillaume, Alfred, ed. and trans. The Life of
Muhammad: Translation of Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul
Allah. 1955. Karachi: Oxford University Press,
1997.
Newby, Gordon Darnell. The Making of the Last
Prophet: A Reconstruction of the Earliest Biography
of Muhammad. Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 1989.