Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: R. S. O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint: Ahmed 

Ibn Idris and the Idrisi Tradition (Evanston, Ill.: North-

western University Press, 1990); ———, “The writings 

by, attributed to, or on Ahmad Ibn Idris.” Bibliotheca 

Orientalis 43, nos. 5/6 (1986): 660–669; John O. Voll, 

“Two Biographies of Ahmad Ibn Idris al-Fasi (1769–

1837).” International Journal of African Historical Studies

6 (1973): 633–645.

Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad

 

(704–767)  author of 

the leading biography of Muhammad

Details about the early years of Ibn Ishaq’s life are 

lacking, other than that he was born in m

edina

to an Arab family and that his grandfather had 

converted to Islam after having been taken cap-

K  332  

Ibn Idris, Ahmad

---

tive in southern i

raq

. His father and uncle were 

known as early collectors of Islamic oral tradi-

tion. As an adult, Ibn Ishaq lived both in Medina 

and  e

gypt

, becoming famous for his mastery of 

hadith

 and accounts of Muhammad’s battles and 

raids (maghazi). He returned to Medina where 

m

alik

 

ibn

 a

nas

 (d. 795), the eponymous founder 

of the m

aliki

  l

egal

  s

chool

, became his enemy, 

possibly because of Ibn Ishaq’s Shii sympathies, 

his use of 

hadith

 transmitted by Jewish converts, 

or his questioning of Malik’s authority as a hadith 

expert. Another respected scholar in Medina, 

perhaps defending his wife’s reputation, accused 

Ibn Ishaq of citing her falsely as one of his hadith 

informants. In this stormy climate, he moved on 

to b

aghdad

, the new capital of the a

bbasid

 c

aliph

-

ate

, where he became a tutor to the son of the 

caliph al-Mansur (r. 754–775).

While in b

aghdad

, Ibn Ishaq wrote his famous 

biography

 of m

Uhammad

, known as Sirat rasul 

Allah (The biography of God’s prophet), or simply 

Al-Sira  (The biography). It appears to have been 

part of a larger project on the history of the world 

that was intended for the edification of the caliph’s 

son. The larger work, known as The Book of the 

Beginning (Kitab al-Mubtada), included accounts 

about the creation of the world and the lives of 

the pre-Islamic prophets and culminated with the 

biography of Muhammad. Ibn Ishaq may also have 

wanted to add a history of the caliphate up to his 

own time, but this part of the project was never 

completed. The Sira emphasized the campaigns 

Muhammad conducted against his opponents dur-

ing the Medina phase of his career (622–632), 

but it also provided valuable information on 

Muhammad’s ancestry, the history of m

ecca

 before 

Islam, his life before the h

iJra

 of 622, his encoun-

ters with pagan Arabs, Jews, and Christians, the 

occasions when the q

Uran

 was revealed, and the 

conversion stories of his early followers. The Sira

was later edited by Ibn Hisham (d. 833), who 

removed material he believed to be objectionable 

to the emerging Sunni consensus, but some of 

the censored material can be gathered from later 

sources. There was no other early source for the 

life of Muhammad like Ibn Ishaq’s Sira, and all 

other biographies of the Prophet have had to rely 

on it, including biographies written by modern 

scholars.

Ibn Ishaq attracted many students of early 

Islamic biography and history during his years in 

Baghdad. They transmitted his work to later gen-

erations after his death in 767.

See also a

rabic

 

langUage

 

and

 

literatUre

.