The
History
of al-Tabari
VOLUME
VI
Muhammad
s.a.w at Mecca
TRANSLATED
AND ANNOTATED BY
W
MONTGOMERY WATT AND M V McDONALD
Muhammad
s.a.w at Mecca
Volume
VI
Translated
and Annotated by
W.
Montgomery Watt
and
M. V McDonald
The sixth volume of the translation of al-Tabar? s History
deals with the ancestors of Muhammad, with his own
early life, and then with his prophetic mission up to the
time of his Hijrah or emigration to Medina. The topics
covered mean that this volume is of great importance
both for the career of Muhammad himself and for the
early history of Islam. Al-jahari was familiar with, and
made use of, the main early source of these matters, the
Strmb or life of Muhammad by Ibn Ishiq, a work which is
still extant. Although his own treatment is briefer than
that of Ibn Isbaq. it complements the latter in
important ways by making use of other sources. Where
Ibn Ishiq gave only the version of an event which he
preferred, al-Tabari includes any variants which he
considered of value. Thus he mentions the dispute about
the first male to become a Muslim — *Ali or Abu Bakr or
Zayd — and has also several variant accounts of the call to
be a prophet. He has much material, too, about the
hostility toward Muhammad from many of the leading
Meccans and their attempts to put pressure on his family
to stop his preaching. The negotiations with the men of
Medina which eventually led to the Hijrah are fully
described, and there is then an account of how
Muhammad escaped an assassination attempt and
arrived safely in Medina. A concluding section discusses
some chronological questions. This volume does not
merely give a straightforward account of the earlier
career of Muhammad and the beginnings of Islam, bur
also contains valuable source-material not easily
accessible otherwise, or not accessible at all.
SUNY Series in Near Eastern Studies
Said Amir Arjomand, Editor
SUNY
PRESS
State University of
New York Press
www.sunypress.edu
ISBN 0-flA70b-707-7
THE HISTORY OF AL-TABARI
9
AN ANNOTATEDTRANSLATION
VOLUME VI
Muhammad at Mecca
The History of al-Tabari
Editorial Board
Ihsan Abbas, University of Jordan, Amman
C. E. Bosworth, The University of Manchester
Jacob Lassner, Wayne State University, Detroit
Franz Rosenthal, Yale University
Ehsan Yar-Shater, Columbia University (General Editor)
SUNY
SERIES IN NEAR EASTERN STUDIES
Said Amir Arjomand, Editor
♦
The general editor acknowledges with gratitude the support
received for the execution of this project from the Division of
Research Programs, Translations Division of the National En-
dowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency.
Bibliotheca Persica
Edited by Ehsan Yar-Shater
The History of al-Tabari
(Ta’rikh al-rusul wa’l-muluk)
Volume vi
Muhammad at Mecca
translated and annotated
by
W. Montgomery Watt
University of Edinburgh, Emeritus
and
M. V. McDonald
University of Edinburgh
State University of New York Press
The preparation of this volume was made possible by a grant from
the Division of Research Programs of the National Endowment for
the Humanities, an independent federal agency.
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 1988 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews.
For information, address State University of New York
Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N. Y. 12246
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Tabari, 8381-923.
Muhammad at Mecca
(The history of al-Tabari-=Ta'rikh al-rusul wa'l-
mulukj v. 6) (SUNY series in Near Eastern studies)
(Bibliotheca Persica)
Translation of extracts from: Ta'rikh al-rusul
wa-al-muluk.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1 . Muhammad, Prophet, d. 632. 2. Muslims — Saudi Arabia
— Biography. I. Watt, W. Montgomery (William Montgomery)
II. McDonald, M. V. (Michael V.) III. Title. IV. Series:
Tabari, 838?- 923. Ta'rikh al-rusul wa-al-muluk.
English ; v. 6. V. Series: SUNY series in Near Eastern
studies. VI. Series: Bibliotheca Persica (Albany, N.Y.)
DS38. 2.T313 1985 vol. 6 (BP 77. 4] 909'. 1 s 87-17949
ISBN 0- 88706- 706- 9
ISBN 0- 88706- 707- 7 (pbk.)
10 987654321
Preface
f
The History of Prophets and Kings ( Ta’rikh al-rusul wa’l-
muluk ) by Abu Ja'far Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari (839-923), here
rendered as the History of al-Tabari , is by common consent the
most important universal history produced in the world of Islam.
It has been translated here in its entirety for the first time for
the
benefit of the non-Arabists, with historical and philogical notes
for those interested in the particulars of the text.
Tabari's monumental work explores the history of the ancient
nations, with special emphasis on biblical peoples and prophets,
the legendary and factual history of ancient Iran, and, in great
detail,
the rise of Islam, the life of the Prophet Muhammad, and the
history of the Islamic world down to the year 915. The first volume
of translation will contain a biography of al-Tabari and a discussion
of the method, scope, and value of his work. It will also
provide information on some of the technical considerations that
have guided the work of the translators.
The History has been divided into 38 volumes, each of which
covers about two hundred pages of the original Arabic text in the
Leiden edition. An attempt has been made to draw the dividing
lines between the individual volumes in such a way that each is
to some degree independent and can be read as such. The page
numbers of the original in the Leiden edition appear on the margins
of the translated volumes.
Al-Tabari very often quotes his sources verbatim and traces the
chain of transmission (isnad) to an original source. The chains of
VI
Preface
transmitters are, for the sake of brevity, rendered by only a dash
( — ) between the individual links in the chain. Thus, according
to Ibn Humayd-Salamah-Ibn Ishaq means that al-Tabari received
the report from Ibn Humayd who said that he was told by Ibn
Ishaq, and so on. The numerous subtle and important differences
in the original Arabic wording have been disregarded.
The table of contents at the beginning of each volume gives a
brief survey of the topics dealt with in that particular volume.
It also includes the headings and subheadings as they appear in
al-Tabari's text, as well as those occasionally introduced by the
translator.
Well-known place-names, such as, for instance, Mecca, Bagh-
dad, Jerusalem, Damascus, and the Yemen, are given in their English
spellings. Less-common place-names, which are the vast ma-
jority, are transliterated. Biblical figures appear in the
accepted
English spelling. Iranian names are usually translated according
to their Arabic forms, and the presumed Iranian forms are often
discussed in the footnotes.
Technical terms have been translated wherever possible, but
some, such as dirham and imam, have been retained in Arabic
forms. Others which cannot be translated with sufficient precision
have been retained and italicized as well as footnoted.
The annotation aims chiefly at clarifying difficult passages,
identifying individuals and place-names, and discussing textual
difficulties. Much leeway has been left to the translators to
include in the footnotes whatever they consider necessary and
helpful.
The bibliographies list all the sources mentioned in the annotation.
The index in each volume contains all the names of persons and
places referred to in the text, as well as those mentioned in the
notes as far as they refer to the medieval period. It does not
include
the names of modern scholars. A general index, it is hoped, will
appear after all the volumes have been published.
For further details concerning the series and acknowledgments,
see Preface to Volume i.
Ehsan Yar-Shater
Contents
*
Preface / v
Translator's Foreword / xi
The Lineage of the Messenger of God / 1
'Abdallah (His Father) / I
'Abd al-Muttalib (His Grandfather) / 9
Hashim / 16
f Abd Manaf / 18
Qusayy / 19
Kilab / 26
Murrah / 26
KaT? / 27
Lu'ayy / 27
Ghalib / 28
Fihr / 28
Malik / 29
Al-Nadr / 31
Kinanah / 32
Khuzaymah / 32
Mudrikah / 32
Ilyas / 33
Mudar / 34
Nizar / 36
viii Contents
Ma'add / 36
'Adnan / 37
'Adnan's Descent from Ishmael, Abraham, and Adam / 38
The Account of the Messenger of God
and His Life / 44
The Messenger of God Is Recognized by the
Monk Bahira / 44
The Messenger of God Is Protected by God from
Participating in Pagan Practices / 46
The Prophet's Marriage to Khadijah / 47
Events of the Life of the Messenger of God f 51
The Rebuilding of the Kabbah / 51
History of the KaT>ah / 51
The Rebuilding of the KaTjah (Continued) / 56
The Beginning of the Prophetic Mission / 60
The Day and the Month on Which the Messenger of God
Became a Prophet, and the Accounts Concerning This / 62
First Revelation of the Qur'an / 62
Signs of the Approach of Prophethood / 63
Predictions of the Appearance of the Prophet / 64
Proofs of Prophethood / 66
The Manner in Which the Qur'an Was First Revealed / 67
Khadijah the First to Believe in the Messenger of God / 76
The First Rituals of Islam Are Prescribed / 77
The Prophet Ascends to the Seventh Heaven / 78
The First Male to Believe in the Messenger of God / 80
Events of the Life of the Messenger of
God (Continued) / 88
The Messenger of God Begins to Preach Openly / 88
Other Events up to the Hijrah / 93
Quraysh Begin to Oppose the Messenger of God / 93
Contents
The Emigration to Abyssinia / 98
Quraysh Show Increased Hostility to the
Messenger of God / 101
Hamzah Accepts Islam / 103
'Abdallah b. Mas’ud Recites the Qur'an
Aloud to Quraysh / 104
Quraysh Boycott the Banu Hashim and
the Banu al-Muttalib / 105
Quraysh Attempt to Induce the Messenger of God
to Cease His Attacks on Their Gods / 106
Satan Casts a False Revelation on the Messenger
of God's Tongue / 107
The Boycott Is Repealed / 112
The Messenger of God Is Subjected to Further Insults / 114
The Deaths of Abu Talib and Khadijah / 115
The Messenger of God Goes to al-Ta'if / 115
The Messenger of God Returns to Mecca / 117
The Messenger of God Preaches to the Arab Tribes / 120
The First Madmans Said to Have Accepted Islam / 122
The First Deputation from al-Madlnah / 124
The First Pledge of al-'Aqabah / 126
Islam Begins to Spread in al-Madlnah / 127
The Second Pledge of al-'Aqabah / 130
The Messenger of God Commands the
Muslims to Emigrate to al-Madlnah / 139
The Quraysh Plot to Kill the Messenger of God / 140
The Messenger of God Escapes from the Attempt
to Kill Him / 142
The Messenger of God Emigrates to al-Madlnah / 145
The Messenger of God Arrives in al-Madlnah / 150
The Beginning of the Prophetic
Mission (Continued) / 153
The Institution of the Islamic Calendar / 15 7
The Date of the Institution of the Islamic Era / 157
Reports on This Subject / 157
X
Contents
Summary of Meccan Chronology / 162
Abbreviations / 163
Bibliography of Cited Works / 165
Index / 167
Translator's Foreword
t
The Sources and Their Reliability
The sources
In the latest and most complete history of Arabic literature by
Fuat Sezgin, nearly fifty pages are devoted to works on the
history
of pre-Islamic Arabia and the life of the Prophet, solely for the
period up to about the year 1000 A.D. 1 2
There are notices of over seventy writers, even if many of these
are now known only through quotations from them by later authors.
This gives some idea, however, of the large amount of written
material available to Tabari. For the present volume, he had
three main sources.
The earliest and most important of those sources is Ibn Ishaq,
whose book on the Prophet is usually known as the Sirah. This
has been preserved primarily in the recension of a later scholar,
Ibn
Hisham (d.21 8/833).^ It is known, however, that there were at
least
fifteen recensions of Ibn Ishaq's work by various pupils of his,
and
there is a little information about how these differed from that
of
Ibn Hisham. 3 Ibn Hisham derived his version mainly from Ziyad b.
'Abdallah al-Bakka'I (d.183/299). Tabari, on the other hand, knew
Ibn Ishaq through the recension of Salamah b. al-Fadl al-Abrash
1. Geschichte des aiabischen Schrifttums (GAS), vol. I,
Leiden 1967, pp.
257-302.
2. Ed. Ferdinand WUstenfeld, Gottingen 1858, 1859. For
other editions and further
details about Ibn Hisham, see Sezgin, 1:297-99.
3. J. Fiick, Muhammed b. Ishaq, Frankfort 1925.
Translator's Foreword
xii
(d.191/206), which was transmitted to him by Ibn Humayd, but
he also sometimes consulted the recension of Yunus b. Bukayr
(d.199/214). The Slrah of Ibn Ishaq is accessible to English
readers
in the translation of Alfred Guillaume. 4 Guillaume aimed at reconsituting
the text of Ibn Ishaq as far as it still exists. He took out
of the main text the notes and editorial comments of Ibn Hisham
(of whom he had a poor opinion) and placed these in an Appendix.
Then he incorporated into his main text the passages omitted
by Ibn Hisham which he was able to recover mainly from Tabari,
though there are also one or two from other sources. 5
Muhammad b. Ishaq b. Yasar was born in al-Madinah about
85/704. His grandfather Yasar, who had been held as a prisoner
by the Persian emperor, was captured by the Muslims at 'Ayn
al-Tamr in Iraq in 12/633 and sent to al-Madinah as a slave. On
professing Islam, he was manumitted. His sons Ishaq and Musa
became scholars with special knowledge of the anecdotes about
the Prophet and the early history of Islam. Occasionally, Ibn
Ishaq
gives his father as the source for a piece of information. In
119/737,
when he was over thirty, he went to Alexandria to study under
Yazld b. Abi Habib. He seems to have returned to al-Madinah after
a year or two, but had to go away again, probably because of
the hostility of the jurist Malik b. Anas (though there are some
discrepancies in the accounts). He then taught for several years
in a number of places, including al-Kufah, al-Basrah, and al-Rayy,
before settling in Baghdad. His move to Baghdad can hardly have
been before 146/763, since it was only about that year that the
Caliph, al-Mansur, and his administration took up residence in
their new city. Ibn Ishaq died there, probably in 151/768.
Ibn Ishaq's great work was the Slrah of the Prophet, though there
are reports and fragments of other works. The Slrah as a whole
may have been called Kitab al-Maghdzi (The Book of the Expeditions),
but the name is also used for the third part dealing with
Muhammad's career from the hijrah to his death. The first part
was al-Mubtada ’ (The Beginning), and went from the creation of
the world through stories of early prophets to accounts of South
Arabian affairs up to the time of the Prophet. The second part,
4. The Life of Muhammad: a Translation of (Ibn) Ishaq's
“Sirat Rasul Allah,”
translated by A. Guillaume, London 1955.
5. Op.cit., xxxi-xxxiii.
Translator's Foreword
xiii
al-Mab'ath (The Sending, sc. of the Prophet), covered the period
from Muhammad's birth until his arrival in al-Madlnah.
The earlier section of al-Mubtada’ was omitted by Ibn Hisham,
though fragments of it are found in other authors. He retained
a genealogy of Muhammad back to Adam, but then passed immediately
to the Arab descendants of Ishmael (Ismail) through
'Adnan, with a reference to the parallel line through Qahtan. A
number of stories then follow about the kings of South Arabia,
but not much of this material is relevant to Mecca and Yathrib (as
al-Madmah was then called). The story of the expedition of the
Elephant, however, is told in some detail. This was an expedition
against Mecca led by Abrahah, the Abyssinian viceroy, or ruler, of
the Yemen, which included a fighting elephant to terrify the Arab
tribesmen. In Surah 105 of the Qur'an, the failure of the
expedition
is attributed to God. Muhammad is reported to have been born in
"the year of the elephant," which is usually taken to be
the year
A.D. 570.
In the second part of the Sirah, events are given a rough dating
according to Muhammad's age. Ibn Hisham has omitted some
anecdotes (n6if. ; 1171-73) which present 'All as playing an important
role in the earliest days of Islam (and so were felt to be pro-
Shi'ite), and also the story of the "satanic verses"
(1192-95), which
was perhaps thought to be slightly discreditable to the Prophet.
Ibn Hisham may well have omitted more passages of which we
are unaware, since Tabari does not report many of the minor topics
found in Ibn Ishaq.
The great reputation of Ibn Ishaq as a biographer of the Prophet
is due to his wide knowledge of the relevant material, to his wise
judgement in selecting the more reliable accounts of events, and
to his ability to form the whole into a single connected
narrative.
Criticisms of him by later Muslim scholars are not of his work
as a historian but of his collection of Hadith (anecdotes about
Muhammad's sayings and doings to be used for legal purposes).
Ibn Ishaq usually gives a source for his historical material,
though
not always with a complete isnad or chain of transmitters. In the
case of some major events he names several sources which he has
used, but does not specify the source or sources of each detail of
the account.
Tabari clearly regarded Ibn Ishaq very highly, and in many parts
xiv Translator's Foreword
of his narrative uses him as his main source, while inserting
variant accounts from other sources. Where Ibn Hisham omitted
passages from Ibn Ishaq which he thought unduly favorable
to Shl'ism (as noted above), Tabari retained such passages but balanced
them by other material. Thus, where Ibn Ishaq only had material
showing that 'All was the first male Muslim, Tabari added
other sources which claimed that honor for Abu Bakr or Zayd b.
Harithah.
In the section dealing with Muhammad's ancestry Ibn Ishaq follows
a chronological order, but, as already noted, introduces many
incidents from South Arabian history which have little relevance
to the Prophet's ancestors. It has been suggested that attention
was paid to South Arabia because this was a matter of pride for
the
Muslims of al-Madinah, who regarded themselves as descended
from the South Arabian or Yemenite tribes, whereas the Muslims
of Mecca, who by Ibn Ishaq's time held most of the power in the Islamic
state, belonged to the northern Arabs. Tabari includes some
of the South Arabian material from Ibn Ishaq at an earlier point
in his narrative. 6 When he comes to Muhammad's ancestors, he
reverses the chronological order; he begins with Muhammad's father,
then goes to his
grandfather, then to his great-grandfather,
and so on. The difference between the two historians may be seen
from the following table:
Ancestors
Ibn Ishaq
Tabari
Adam to 'Adnan
3
1 1 13-23
'Adnan, Ma'add
3-7
mi-13
Nizar
49
mi
Mudar, Ilyas
50
1 1 08-10
Mudrikah to Lu'ayy
60-62
1101-8
KaT to Qusayy
67-68
. 1092-1101
'Abd Manaf
68, 84
1091-92
Hashim
87
1088-91
'Abd al-Muttalib
88
1082-88
'Abdallah,
Muhammad's conception
98-101
1074-82
A second important source is Muhammad b. 'Umar (as Tabari
6. This will be found in the previous volume of the present
translation.
Translator's Foreword
xv
usually calls him), generally known as al-Waqidl. 7 Al-Waqidi was
born in al-Madlnah in 150/747, and studied under the scholars
there, notably Musa b. 'Uqbah, Ma'mar b. Rashid and Abu
Ma'shar. 8 In 180/796 he went to Baghdad, obtained the support of
the wazlr Yahya b. Khalid al-Barmaki, and was appointed by the
caliph Harun al-Rashid as judge for the east side of Baghdad;
later
he had other similar posts. He died in Baghdad in 207/823. His
most important work is the Kitab al-Maghazi, which deals with
the "expeditions" of Muhammad, and thus covers most of
the
events of the period between the hijrah and Muhammad's death.
There are many references to this in the next two volumes of the
present translation of Tabari's history. Al-Waqidi paid special attention
to chronology, and his dating of the expeditions in general
is superior to that of Ibn Ishaq and to be accepted. He must
have known the work of Ibn Ishaq , but does not make use of it
in his Maghazi, though he uses it for earlier and later matters.
He was also regarded as an authority on the early Islamic conquests,
but was not so highly thought of in respect of pre-Islamic
history. Some of the historical material he collected has been preserved
not in his own works but in those of his pupil Ibn Sa'd.
There is now an excellent text of the Maghazi edited by Marsden
Jones. Previously scholars had to rely on the accurate summary of
the work in German by Julius Wellhausen entitled Muhammed
in Medina.
Muhammad b. Sa'd was born in al-Basrah in 1 68/ 784, but moved
to al-Madlnah and other centers of learning. It was presumably
in Baghdad that he studied under al-Waqidl. Though he had studied
under other scholars, including Hisham b. al-Kalbi, he became
specially attached to al-Waqidl and was known as his katib or
secretary. He died in Baghdad in 230/845. Virtually his only extant
work is the Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir (The Great Book of
Classes). 9 The "classes" are the various generations of
those who
transmitted anecdotes, historical or legal, about Muhammad. The
first "class" consists of the Companions (Sahabah),
those who
had known and conversed with Muhammad. Thus there are -
7. Sezgin, 1:294-97,- the notices of his three teachers
are on pp. 286, 290, and 291.
8. Kitab al-Maghdzi, ed. Marsden Jones, 3 vols., London
1966) Muhammed in
Medina, abbreviated German translation by J. Wellhausen,
Berlin 1882.
9. Sezgin, GAS, l:300f.
XVI
Translator's Foreword
biographical notices of all the 300-odd men who had taken part in
the battle of Badr. Altogether Ibn Sa f d has notices of some
4,250
persons, including about 600 women, though some of the notices
in the later “classes" are sketchy, occasionally only a name.
The
Tabaqdt proper are preceded by a collection of information about
the earlier part of Muhammad's life, but the MaghazI are not dealt
with in detail, presumably because of the existence of al-Waqidi's
book, though there are accounts of tribal deputations and texts of
treaties not found in al-Waqidi. The material relevant to the period
up to the hijrah is found in the first half of the first volume of
the European edition. Tabari quotes the Tabaqdt from al-Harith
b. Abi Usamah (d. 282/895).
A third important source is Ibn al-Kalbi, or more fully, Hisham
b. Muhammad b. al-Sa'ib al-Kalbi. 10 His father Muhammad
(d.i 46/763) was already an authority on pre-Islamic Arabia, and
the son added to his store of knowledge. He was born in al-Kufah
about 120/737, and died there in 204/819. Tabari's normal description
of this source is: Hisham b. Muhammad from his father. They
were regarded as the chief authorities on Arab genealogy and many
other aspects of the pre-Islamic history of Arabia. Two books relevant
to the life of Muhammad by the philologist Muhammad b.
Habib (d.245/860), al-Muhabbai and al-Munammaq, rely heavily
on Ibn al-Kalbi. 11
It may also be noted that from one of his minor sources Tabari
reproduces an early document, a letter from the scholar Urwah
b. al-Zubayr to 'Abd al-Malik (Caliph from 685 to 705). 12 TJrwah
was a son of al-Zubayr, who along with Talhah was defeated
by 'All at the Battle of the Camel in 35/656. His brother 'Ab-
dallah b. al-Zubayr, some thirty years his senior, set himself up
as counter-Caliph in Mecca from 61/80 to 73/692. Though 'Urwah
had supported his brother
in Mecca against the Umayyads,
he managed to have good relations with the Umayyad 'Abd al-
Malik. He was reckoned to have a wide knowledge of early Islamic
history, and some of this has been transmitted by later scholars
such as Muhammad b. Shihab al-Zuhri (d. 124/742) and Abu al-
io. Ibid., 268-71.
11. C. Brockelmann, Geschichte dei arabischen Literatur,
(GAL ) 1 Leiden 1943,
L105 (106J.
12. See u8of., 1284-88 below.
Translator's Foreword xvii
Aswad al-Asadi (d.131/748). 13 Al-Zuhri was one of the teachers of
Ibn Ishaq.
The reliability of the Materials used
For a century or so, some Western scholars have been sceptical
about the historical value of much of the material about the career
of Muhammad s.a.w. This scepticism may be said to have reached
its culmination in two works published in 1977. One was a book
on the Qur'an by John Wansbrough, in which he maintained that
the text of the Qur'an did not attain its present form until a century
and a half after Muhammad. 14 The other book was by two
pupils of Wansbrough's who attempted to show that all the early
Muslim sources for the life of Muhammad were to be rejected, and
that the earliest phase of his religion was not Islam as it is now
known but something different which they called
"Hagarism". 15
Neither book has been favorably received by scholars in general,
since both are based on many unjustified assumptions, and there
seems little point in offering a detailed criticism of them. Nevertheless,
since they allege that the entire contents of this and the
two or three following volumes of Tabari's history are without
historical value, it seems worth while to give some arguments to
justify the belief that most of the materials used by Tabari are
reliable.
A form of these arguments has already been published under
the title "The Reliability of Ibn Ishaq's Sources", 16
and since Ibn
Ishaq was Tabari's main source, they will also apply to Tabari. It
will be useful, however, to show more particularly how this is so.
One of the earliest exponents of sceptical views was
Ignaz Goldziher, who in 1890, in the second volume of his Muhammedanische
Studien, suggested that much of what was
contained in the vast collections of Hadith was not
historically
13. Sezgin, 1:280-83, 284b
14. Quranic Studies, Sources and Methods of Scriptural
Interpretation, London
1977 -
15. Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism, the
Making of the Islamic
World, Cambridge 1977.
16. In La vie du prophbte Mahomet (Colloque de
Strasbourg, 1980), Paris 1983,
pp.31-43; see also Watt. "The Materials used by Ibn
Ishaq," in Historians of the
Middle East, ed. B. Lewis and P.M. Holt, London 1962,
pp.23-34.
xviii Translator's Foreword
true . 17 This line of thought was further elaborated by Joseph
Schacht in The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence . 18 The
corpus of Hadith is primarily concerned with legal and liturgical
matters, and to a lesser extent with theological concerns, but
other scholars expressed similar criticisms of the more purely historical
material. The leaders among them were Henri Lammens
and Carl Heinrich Becker, and their views were widely accepted
up to a point. Becker expressed his conclusions by saying that
the Sirah of Ibn Ishaq consisted primarily of "the already
existing
dogmatic and juristic Hadith ... collected and chronologically
arranged," and he held that to these had been added expanded
ver-
sions of historical allusions in the Qur'an 19 Following Lammens
and Becker, Regis Blachere argued that the only reliable source
for
the life of Muhammad was the Qur'an itself . 20
One serious defect of the Lammens-Becker view is that it does
not explain where the chronology comes from. Hadith do not normally
give an indication of chronology, and there are no "chronological"
Hadith. Thus Hadith cannot be used to arrange Hadith
chronologically. The other serious defect is that "the
already existing
dogmatic and juristic Hadith," even if they are true, have no
importance for the historian of Muhammad's career. They do not
convey the sort of information which the historian requires. It is
plausible to suppose that "anecdotes about what Muhammad said
and did" must be at the heart of his biography, but this is
not so
with those in the corpus of Hadith. A saying which is of dogmatic
or juristic interest is usually irrelevant to the historian. Thus
there
is a well-known story about how Muhammad passed a man beating
a slave and told him not to
do so because "God made Adam
in his (the slave's) image." This is dogmatically important,
since
it replaces the usual Jewish and Christian interpretation of the
phrase "God made Adam in His image" as being God's image
— a
phrase which, in other Hadith, Muhammad is said to have uttered.
For the historian, however, this story is of no importance.
It is essential to realize that, though originally there may have
17. Halle 1890; English translation edited by S.M.
Stern, Muslim Studies London
1971.
18. Oxford 1950.
19. C.H. Becker, Islamstudien, Leipzig 1924, 1:520b
(reprinted from Dei Islam,
IV [1913]: 263H)
20. Le piobl&me de Mahomet. Paris 1952.
Translator's Foreword
xix
been some overlap between the study of Hadith and the study of
the Sirah, the two studies soon became distinct disciplines with
different methodologies. This is made obvious by a glance at Arent
Jan Wensinck's Handbook of Early Muhammadan Tradition . 11 At
the beginning of the work he lists the titles — about four hundred
in all — of the separate "books" or sections in eight
standard collections
of Hadith. Most of these books deal with legal or liturgical
matters such as "marriage" or "ablutions." A
few deal with
dogmatic questions under such headings as "faith" {iman)
and
"predestination" (qadar). Only three "books"
could be regarded
as historical, two in the collection of al-Bukhari (d. 256/870) entitled
"expeditions" ( maghazi ) and "the merits of the
Companions"
[fada’il al-sahabah), and one in the collection of Muslim
(d.261/875) with the latter title. Bukhari's "book" on
the "expeditions"
is lengthy, but the difference between his methodology and
that of the historians can be illustrated from his first
paragraph.
He quotes both a Companion and a later scholar as saying that the
first expedition in which Muhammad took part personally was
that of al-TJshayrah, but then he gives the statement of Ibn Ishaq
that Muhammad had taken part in two expeditions before that of
al-TJshayrah. 22 Bukhari thought it worthwhile retaining the assertion
of the Companion and the later scholar, although it seems to
be valueless after that of Ibn Ishaq. Historians like Ibn Ishaq,
on
the other hand, did not repeat assertions they held to be clearly
mistaken. When Tabari gives alternative views, as he sometimes
does, it is probably because he is not sure which is correct. The
conclusion to which these considerations lead is that the critique
of Hadith by Goldziher, Schacht, and others does not necessarily
apply to the materials used in the Sirah. Most of these materials
may be brought under four headings: a chronological framework
and outline of events, anecdotes other than Hadith, Qur'anic elaborations,
and poetry.
The first type of material consists of a basic chronological
framework and an outline of the main events. This applies particularly
to the period after the hijrah where the framework is
the chronological order of the expeditions and is accompanied by
brief account of what happened in each. (A word will be said later
21. Leiden 1927.
22. Cf. Ibn Hisham, Sirah, 4isf., 421!.; Tabari,
1:1269-71.
XX
Translator's Foreword
about the chronology of the period before the hijrah.) Ibn Ishaq
usually introduces each expedition with a description of it in his
own words, without naming any source. Thus for the first expedition
in which Muhammad participated he says
Then he went out raiding in Safar (August) at the beginning
of the twelfth month from his arrival in al-Madinah,
and proceeded as far as Waddan. This is the expedition of
al-Abwa' against Quraysh and Banu Damrah, ...during which
Banu Damrah made an agreement with him through their
chief Makhshi b. 'Amr, Then the Messenger of God returned
to al-Madinah without meeting hostile action, and
remained there for the rest of Safar and the first part of Rabf
I (September ). 23
This account raises the question: What was the source of Ibn
Ishaq's information, and why does he not name a source? The answer
is almost certainly that these were matters of widespread
and generally accepted common knowledge, and a little reflection
will show how this came to be so. At the time Muhammad
died, all Muslims of long standing and many more recent Muslims
presumably knew the order of the main events since the
hijrah, namely: the battle of Badr, the battle of Uhud, the siege
of al-Madinah, the expedition of al-Hudaybiyah, the conquest of
Khaybar, the conquest of Mecca, the battle of Hunayn, and the
expedition to Tabuk. Those who had taken part in some of the
other expeditions presumably knew more or less how these fitted
into the basic framework, because Arab society was primarily
an oral and not a literate society. This common knowledge would
be carefully treasured. As the Islamic state expanded into a more
literate world, literacy must have grown. There are grounds for
thinking that a few men had begun to write down something of
the early history within about thirty years of Muhammad's death;
perhaps even before then. Fuat Sezgin's list of early historians
has
already been mentioned; and it is noteworthy that of those dealing
with the Sirah, the first two were born a year or two after the
hijrah, and the next four within ten years of Muhammad's death;
2.3. Ibn Hisham, Sirah , 415!. As Guillaume assumes, the
statement that Sa'd b.
Ubadah was left in charge of al-Madinah is probably from
Ibn Hisham, though it
is not indicated as such in the text.
Translator's Foreword
xxi
and these men appear to have left written reports. They may, even
before they were twenty years old, have heard informal lectures
or talks in the mosques about the early days of Islam; there cer-
tainly were such lectures on the history of pre-Islamic times. If
by
the time they were twenty they were interested in studying the
subject, there would be great numbers of older men whom they
could ask about points they found obscure.
Of the scholars described above, TJrwah b. al-Zubayr would
reach the age of twenty about 46/665 and al-Zuhri about 71/690.
These dates are important for comparative purposes. A person
aged eighty today (1987) probably remembers something of the beginning
of the First World War in 1914, perhaps also of the sinking
of the "Titanic" in 1911, and of the order of the two
events; and
these happened over seventy years ago. Such a person would have
heard parents and elders talking about events twenty or thirty
years earlier still. If we apply this consideration to early
Islam,
then TJrwah could certainly have spoken to a number of men who
had lived through the events of the first ten years after the
hijrah,
and even al-Zuhri might have met one or two. Moreover, TJrwah
and al-Zuhri by the time they were twenty would already have
learnt something of the Sirah from older scholars, so that their
work was not the construction of a chronological framework but
the refining of one that already existed. Thus when Ibn Ishaq
gives
a statement about an expedition such as the one quoted, he will
have learnt most of it from al-Zuhri and his other teachers, and
it
will represent the distillate of the work of several generations
of
scholars. It cannot be attributed to a single source, since it is
the
result of many scholars sifting masses of evidence from dozens or
even hundreds of informants. The final result of this process is
what is meant by "the basic chronological framework and
outline
of events", and the bulk of it must have been accepted by all
scholars,
though some might have had fuller knowledge than others of
certain parts, and there might have been divergencies on minor
matters. For the period after the hijrah, Tabari has the
chronology
of both Ibn Ishaq and al-Waqidi to follow, and he also notes where
they differ, as in respect of some of the earlier expeditions.
For the period between Muhammad's birth and the hijrah, there
is only a meager chronological framework. Doubtless this was because
there were fewer outstanding events and fewer people -
xxii Translator's Foreword
capable of giving information by the time the scholars were
beginning
to ask questions. Some dating is provided by Muhammad's age:
the war of the Fijar took place when he was twenty, his marriage
to Khadijah when he was twenty-five, the rebuilding of the Kabbah
when he was thirty-five, and the beginning of his prophethood
when he was forty or forty-three. The fact that these are multiples
of five suggests that they are only approximations. For the
period after the call to be a prophet, there is virtually no attempt
to give dates, though the order is probably correct in the case of
such events as the emigration to Abyssinia and the boycott of the
clan of Hashim. Tabari sometimes introduces an event by a brief
statement in his own words — presumably saying what is generally
accepted — before going on to quote sources. An example of this is
in his introduction to the rebuilding of the Kabbah where
he notes that it happened ten years after Muhammad's marriage
to Khadijah; he then quotes Ibn Ishaq as saying that it was when
Muhammad was thirty-five, and he follows with a longer account
also from Ibn Ishaq.
The importance of genealogy for the Arabs will be further discussed
below, but it may be noted here that it provided a rough
chronological structure for pre-Islamic events, as can be seen in
the Shah of Ibn Ishaq. Tabari disregards genealogy in this
respect,
since he treats Muhammad's ancestors in reverse order; and in the
previous volume, he mixed in a few events in Arabian history with
the accounts of the Persian kings.
A second type of historical material is provided by anecdotes
other than Hadith. It would be only natural that families would
remember with pride the exploits of their older members in the
battles of Badr and Uhud and similar events. A notable example is
the story of a man called Qatadah b. al-Nu'man, who was beside
Muhammad in the battle of Uhud when he was wounded. When
Muhammad's bow broke, Qatadah picked it up and kept it. At the
same time, his own eye was partly pulled out, but Muhammad replaced
it and in later life Qatadah declared that this eye was better
than the other. 24 This is the sort of anecdote which would be
treasured
within a family, especially if the bow had become a family
heirloom. It is in fact recorded by Qatadah's grandson, Asim b.
24. Tabari, pp. i, 1414, from Ibn Hisham, Shah, 573^
Translator's Foreword
xxiii
TJmar b. Qatadah (d.120/737), who was a student of the Siiah and
produced some written works. 25 The story may well have been
touched up in the course of transmission; for example, the wound
to the eye may have been less serious than the description suggests,
but Qatadah may well have claimed that he saw better with
it. The story tells us nothing about the course of the battle,
except
that at one point Muhammad used a bow, but Ibn Ishaq may have
included it because it seemed to show that Muhammad had unusual
healing powers.
Joseph Schacht regarded what he called a "family isnad” as an
invention to give an appearance of authenticity to Hadith where
there was no proper isnad. 26 This may well be so in legal Hadith
where there is no question of family pride, but there seems to be
no reason why it should apply to historical anecdotes, especially
when these were of incidents which a family took pride in remembering.
An example from the present volume is found in the long
accounts from Abu Bakr's daughters of how Muhammad told Abu
Bakr that the time for his hijrah had come and how they arranged
things. 27 These accounts are fitted into the narrative of the
hijrah
and the events leading up to it, which belong to the basic framework.
This is in part a family isnad, since A/ishah, from whom
Urwah heard the story, was his maternal aunt, while her sister
Asma' was his mother. When 'A'ishah died in 58/678 Urwah was
over thirty, so that he may have heard the story from her many
times. Whether such anecdotes about minor incidents come with
a family isnad or some other form, they cannot be rejected out of
hand. Each, however, should be considered on its merits and examined
for inherent improbabilities and the presence of distorting
motives. Many of these anecdotes, however, appear to be genuine,
and they may serve a useful purpose in adding flesh to the basic
framework.
The third type of material is the text itself of the Qur'an, together
with expansions of it. When C. H. Becker spoke of "exegetical
elaborations of Qur'anic allusions," he presumably meant
chiefly what Muslim scholars know as "occasions of
revelation"
( asbdb al-nuzul), that is, accounts of the particular occasion on
25. Sezgin, I:279f.
26. Origins, 170.
27. Tabari, pp. 1237-41.
xxiv Translator's Foreword
which a certain passage was revealed. Thus Surah 80 begins with
the words "He frowned and turned away, because the blind man
came to him," and the occasion of this is said to have been
that
Muhammad was talking to one or two important Meccan merchants
(who are named), trying to convince them of the truth of
Islam, when a blind man, already a believer, came and asked some
questions. The blind man was Ibn Umm Maktum, who came from
a good family and was later adjudged a suitable person to be left
in charge of al-Madlnah once or twice when Muhammad was absent
on an expedition. This incident must have happened in the
earlier part of Muhammad's prophethood at Mecca, but no date is
assigned, and Tabari neglects the story in his history. As historical
material, the "occasions of revelation" are in a similar
posi-
tion to the anecdotes just considered; they are possibly true, but
each must be examined separately. An example may be given from
Tabari where the alleged "occasion" has to be rejected.
28 In a passage
where he speaks in his own person, he states that Muhammad
received permission for himself and the Muslims to fight the pagans
by the revelation of the verse: "Fight them until there is no
more fttnah (persecution), and the religion is God's alone"
(Qur'an
8:39). This appears to have been just before the Muslims from al-
Madlnah took the Pledge of War at the pilgrimage of 622 A.D. The
dating of passages of the Qur'an is notoriously difficult, but
this
verse occurs in a group of verses which were almost certainly revealed
after the battle of Badr. 29 This means that the Pledge of War
and the impending hijrah cannot have been the "occasion"
for its
revelation.
Ibn Ishaq quotes many verses from the Qur'an in respect of important
events like the battles of Badr and Uhud, also paraphras-
ing and otherwise expanding them; but Tabari is sparing in such
quotations, and indeed there are hardly any which are relevant
to the period before the hijrah, apart from some which speak of
the character of Muhammad's prophethood, which is not really a
matter for a history such as the present. Any use of the Qur'an
for historical purposes necessarily presupposes the chronological
framework of events, so that verses with a clear historical -
28. 1:i227 ; See also 1225, where the emphasis is on
fitnah.
29. The almost identical verse 2:193 seems to have been
revealed shortly before
the conquest of Mecca.
Translator's Foreword
xxv
reference can be fitted into that. Most of the information to be
derived
from the Qur'an concerns not the outward shape of events but the
attitudes of the participants. Apart from this, however, much can
be learnt from the Qur'an about various aspects of the background
of the events described by the historians. 30
Not much need be said about a fourth type of material, the
poetry. There has been much discussion, from the days of Ibn
Hisham down to modem times, of the authenticity of the poetry
quoted by Ibn Ishaq and Tabari. 31 A proportion of the poetry
would seem to be by the persons to whom it is attributed, but by
no means all. The poetry, like the Qur'an, does not tell us much
about the outward events, but it gives some insight into people's
feelings and attitudes, including the attitudes of a tribe or clan
toward
its rivals. Even when poems are not by the authors to whom
they are ascribed, the information they give about attitudes may
still be accurate.
This review of the types of material used by historians like Ibn
Ishaq and Tabari points to the conclusion that their presentation
of the career of Muhammad and the early history of the Islamic
state is largely sound. The historians are, of course, subject to
various
limitations imposed by the general intellectual outlook of
their time, as well as by personal idiosyncrasies, and for these,
allowance must be made. To suggest, however, that the whole
corpus of material found in the historians was invented several
generations after the events is ludicrous when one becomes aware
of the vastness of this corpus. Thus besides the biographical notices
of the more important Companions of Muhammad found in
Ibn Sa'd, there are later biographical dictionaries of Companions
by Ibn al-Athlr (d. 630/1233) and al-Dhahabi (d. 748/1348) which
contain something like 10,000 names with longer or shorter biographical
notices. Naturally in all this plethora of material there
are differences and discrepancies, but it is amazing how much of
it
fits together in an interlocking whole. The problem facing scholars
today is how to use all this material critically and creatively so
30. Some of this background information has been
collected in Watt, The Meccan Prophet in the Qur'an, Edinburgh 1987.
31. See Guillaume, Life of Muhammad, Introduction,
xxv-xxx, W. Arafat, "Early
Critics of the Authenticity of the Poetry of the
Sira," in Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African Studies, xxi (1958)1453-63.
xxvi
Translator's Foreword
as to gain an understanding of the beginnings of Islam which will
be relevant to the needs of Muslims in the twenty-first century
Comment on the Events
The present volume of the translation of al-Tabari's history is
the
first of four dealing with the life of Muhammad. In this volume
al-
Tabari first describes the ancestors of Muhammad, and then the
main events in his life until his Hijrah or emigration to Medina
in 622. The following comments deal with the chief points and
issues involved.
Genealogy
The first section of this volume (pp.1073-1123 of the Leiden
text) deals with the ancestry of Muhammad. Where Ibn Ishaq
deals with the individual men more or less in chronological order,
Tabari reverses this and works backwards from Muhammad's
father to his grandfather, then to his great-grandfather and so
on. 32
Genealogy played an important part in the cultural tradition
of the Arabs. It was the basic structure which was then clothed
with stories and memories, or, to vary the metaphor, it was the
skeleton for which particular events and incidents provided the
flesh. Thus, for the Arabs of the period round about 600 A.D.,
genealogy was the heart of their traditional lore. Every
individual
wanted to be sure that the tribe of which he was a member was an
honorable one, and its honor was bound up with the great names
in its past. Maintaining the honor of the tribe was a deep spring
of action among the Arabs of the desert.
Abu Bakr, Muhammad's chief lieutenant, was an expert genealogist,
and this probably meant that he also had a thorough knowledge
of the internal politics of the various tribes. Genealogy continued
to be studied by the early Muslim scholars, and they collected
material from all available sources. What had been oral tradition
was set down in writing. The matter was naturally complicated,
since groups often made conflicting claims about their
ancestry. By about the year 8oo, largely due to the work of Ibn
al-Kalbl, the genealogical system had been established in a way
32. See the table on p. xiv above.
Translator's Foreword xxvii
that satisfied most people. On points of detail, of course, there
were still many disagreements and uncertainties. Western scholars
of the late nineteenth century were inclined to think that some
parts of this genealogical system had been manipulated in order
to justify alliances between tribes which developed in parts of
the
Umayyad empire during the first Islamic century. There may be
some truth in this at one or two points, but scholarly opinion now
tends to think that the standard system is, broadly speaking, a
true
reflection of genealogical facts.
According to this system, the existing Arab tribes are descended
from two distinct ancestors, 'Adnan and Qahtan. The descendants
of 'Adnan are spoken of as northern Arabs, and those of Qahtan
as southern Arabs or Yemenites. 33 The southern Arabs had at one
time lived as a settled population in the Yemen, but as the result
of a great disaster they had had to give up settled life and
had taken to the desert; many had moved northwards. 34 In Arabian
tradition the disaster is spoken of as the breaking of the dam
of Ma'rib, and is mentioned in the Qur'an (34:16). Remains of the
great dam are still extant, and inscriptions have been found
recording
breakings in the middle of the fifth and sixth centuries A.D.
It is now thought, however, that the breaking of the dam, which
really means a breakdown of the irrigation system, was not the
cause but rather the effect of a general decline of the
civilization
of South Arabia owing to economic and social factors. 35
With Arab interest in genealogy being strong, it was natural
that attempts should be made to link the traditional Arab system
with the genealogies in the Bible, especially since the Qur'an
had associated Abraham and Ishmael with Mecca. The Biblical genealogies
are found as follows: Genesis 5, Adam to Noah; Genesis
10:1-11:26, descendants of Noah; Genesis 25:12-16, descendants of
Ishmael; 1 Chronicles 1:1-31, Adam to the sons of Ishmael. The
Muslim scholars held 'Adnan to be a descendant of Ishmael either
through his son Nabit (Nebaioth) or through his son Qayd-har
(Kedar).
Qahtan is sometimes held to be descended from Ishmael,
but is usually identified with Joktan son of Eber and Noah's
33. The best short account is in El, s.v. 'Arab
{Djazlrat al-), sect. vi.
34. There is a reference to this on p. 1132 (Leiden);
see also n. 68 to the text.
35. Philip R. Hitti, History of the Arabs, London 1960,
p. 64L
xxviii Translator's Foreword
great-great-great-grandson. 36 At some points Tabari admits that
these genealogies have been taken from "the people of the
first
Book/' but most Muslim scholars disliked admitting borrowings
from Jews and Christians and omitted any mention of the ultimate
source. The Hebrew names are mostly recognizable in Arabic
despite the fact that they may not have been taken directly
from Hebrew but through either Syriac or Greek.
The early history of Mecca
In the course of his description of Muhammad's ancestors,
Tabari gives some stories and other material relevant to the early
history of Mecca. It is not known when the Ka'bah was first regarded
as sacred. The earliest statement with even a modicum of
historical value is that the tribe of furhum exercised some sort
of
control over the Ka'bah, presumably benefiting in some way from
the visits of pilgrims. Jurhum probably had no houses but lived in
tents, and were not necessarily at Mecca throughout the year. The
statement (on p. 1131) that Ishmael married a woman of Jurhum
seems to be no more than an attempt to fill the gap between Ishmael
and Jurhum. Tabari tells (1132) how the control of the Ka'bah
passed from Jurhum to Khuza'ah after the latter had come from
the Yemen; and this suggests a date in the fifth or sixth century
A.D., and it seems unlikely that Jurhum would have been in control
for more than a century of two. Ishmael, on the other hand,
is now dated by scholars at about 1800 B.C., so that the gap between
him and Jurhum is considerable. Muslim scholars thought
that Jurhum had completely disappeared, but there are one or two
traces of it in the early Islamic period.
In his account of Qusayy (1092-99) Tabari tells how Khuza'ah
in their turn were deprived of control of the Ka'bah by Qusayy and
his allies. This was the real founding of the town of Mecca, since
Qusayy brought his supporters and settled them in the area round
the Ka'bah, presumably in permanent dwellings. In
the"valley"
or torrent-bed ( batha ') immediately round the Ka'bah, he gave
land to the more important groups of supporters, and these became
known as Quraysh al-Bitah, while less important groups,
Quraysh al-Zawahir, were at a greater distance. These supporting
36. Genesis 10:25-30; I Chronicles r.19-23.
Translator's Foreword xxix
groups were probably related to Qusayy, but possibly not so precisely
as the standard genealogy suggests (of which an abbreviated
version is given below).
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