HADITHS AS HISTORICAL SOURCES FOR A BIOGRAPHY OF THE ...

HADITHS AS HISTORICAL SOURCES FOR

A BIOGRAPHY OF THE PROPHET

Akira GOTO*

I

The term hadith is used today in both a narrow and broad sense. In

the narrow sense of the term, hadiths are traditions that have been incorpo-

rated into Islamic law. It is well known that al-Shafi'i (d. 820) ranked

such hadiths in the highest position of legal authority next to the Qur'an to

guide his followers. As far as they have been admitted as the basis of law,hadith should be considered as valid and true (sahih) traditions, but by the

middle of the ninth century, hadith had multiplied into the hundreds of

thousands of items. Most of them were considered quite spurious, "weak"

or "infirm" so it is said, forcing legal scholars to develop a methodology for

selecting just which ones were valid for Islamic law. As a result, several

collections of "valid" hadiths were compiled, giving rise to the narrow, legal

meaning of the term referring to the traditions that were selected for these

authorized collections.

Hadith in the broader sense therefore indicates the whole body of nar-

ratives and commentary on Muhammad that have been handed down through

Islamic history. These traditions provide information about the Prophet, the

people who lived during his generation, and the society of the time. The

present paper will deal with hadiths in this latter sense as sources for study-

ing the life of Muhammad and his times. Originally oral in nature, these

hadiths have been collected without regard to validity in such work as al-

sira al-nabawiya by Ibn Ishaq.

Since the eleventh century in which the science of Islamic law became

a key part of Islamic learning, the value of valid hadith has been greatly

enhanced. Even Ibn Taymiya (d. 1328), a thinker who tried to understand

Islam by strictly going back to its starting point, undoubtedly recognized

*professor, the University of Tokyo

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HADITHS AS HISTORICAL SOURCES FOR A BIOGRAPHY OF THE PROPHET

hadiths recorded in al-sahihayn by al-Bukhari (d. 870) and Muslim (d. 875)

as true valid. On the other hand, western scholars of Islam have expressed

doubts from the standpoint of the modern science of history about valid

hadiths judged to be traditionally correct and some of them have criticized

these hadiths as inaccurate ones concerning the words and deeds of the

Prophet. Predating such doubts, however, were muslim intellectuals who

themselves did not agree with how valid hadiths were selected.

According to al-fihrist (The Bibliography) by Ibn al-Nadim (d. 990), the

works of Ibn Ishaq (d. 767), the biographer of Muhammad (sahib al-sira),

were not rated very highly. Ibn al-Nadim asserted that it was impossible

for Ibn Ishaq to get information directly from Fatima bint al-Mundhir, one

of his important "informants." Moreover, Ibn al-Nadim indicates that the

poems cited in Ibn Ishaq's works were written only for his works, that they

include many genealogical errors, and that there are many mistakes due to

over-reliance on information from Christians and Jews.

Ibn al-Nadim's criticism of Ibn Ishaq was in common with people like

al-Bukhari, who sought for valid traditions. Al-Bukhari would not admit a

hadith to be valid merely because the name of Ibn Ishaq was written in its

isnad. Most of the hadiths that passed through the hands of Ibn Ishaq were

estimated to be "weak" (da'if), or at most good (hasan). Therefore, the

authorized six collections of valid hadith contain few hadiths gathered by

Ibn Ishaq and recorded in his al-sira al-nabawiya.

In this way Ibn Ishaq was ignored by the editors of the authorized

collections of the ninth century and criticized severely by Ibn al-Nadim, a

bibliographer of the tenth century. Was Ibn Ishaq therefore forgotten by

Islamic society in the tenth century? The answer is no.

Five collections of valid traditions were compiled in the latter part of

the ninth century, and al-Nasa'i compiled the sixth at the beginning of the

tenth century. It was at this time that a great scholar, al-Tabari (d. 923)

became known to the world. In his al-fihrist, Ibn al-Nadim introduced al-

Tabari in the sixth chapter concerning legal scholars and called him, with

admiration, "a wise man," "a leader of the age," and "a legal scholar of

the age." He was appreciated highly as an authority on hadith even during

his lifetime (cf. Ibn Hajar) and also during the second half of the tenth

century. Today, however, al-Tabari is not generally known as a legal

scholar, but rather as the author of voluminous works, called tafsir (cf. al-

Vol. XXX-XXXI 1995 83

Tabari: Tafsir) and ta'rikh, which covered history from the time of Adam

to the beginning of the tenth century (cf. al-Tabari: Ta'rikh). It is also

true that he cited many hadiths recorded in Ibn Ishaq's al-sira al-nabawiya,

showing that this renowned legal scholar of the tenth century did not reject

Ibn Ishaq.

There were other people besides al-Tabari who held Ibn Ishaq's works

in high estimation. Both Ibn Qutayba (d. 889) and al-Baladhuri (d. 892),

intellectuals in the days when the six collections were compiled, are often

found quoting Ibn Ishaq. In a period of one or two generations prior to

them, Ibn Ishaq was an important source of information for al-Waqidi (d.

822) and his follower Ibn Sa'd (d. 845), while Ibn Hisham (d. 833) revised

Ibn Ishaq's al-sira al-nabawiya, omitting unnecessary information and criti-

cizing the quoted poetry.

In sum, there were two different currents among muslim scholars in

the ninth century concerning the works of Ibn Ishaq, who was active in

the middle of the previous century. One was the group of people who

sought for valid hadiths and did not hold Ibn Ishaq in very high estimation.

The other group consisted of those who used Ibn Ishaq's works as sources

for the books they wrote.

Therefore, is it accurate to say that intellectuals like al-Tabari, who

quoted "weak" hadiths from Ibn Ishaq, totally believed in him? The answer

may be no.

At present, we can not find a complete version of Ibn Ishaq's al-sira

al-nabawiya. Many copies of the book must have existed for some time,

but now, all of them have become scattered or lost. We only have about

two-thirds of his works, through the al-sira al-nabawiya fortunately revised

by Ibn Hisham and quoted passages by al-Tabari and others. However, Ibn

Hisham himself seemed not to intend to hand down Ibn Ishaq's al-sira

al-nabawiya to posterity, but was intent on diminishing the bad effects

caused by the spread of the original versions. He eliminated doubtful, un-

believable and useless parts from the original and made notes on the quoted

poetry. Ibn Hisham seems not to have much appreciated the scholarship

of Ibn Ishaq.

It is clear that al-Tabari did not stress accuracy when writing his

tafsir and ta'rikh. In his tafsir, when explaining verses from the qur'an, he

would include various contradictory hadiths. In other words, it is impossible

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to pursue what may be the correct explanation of each verse of the qur'an

using al-Tabari's tafsir. On the contrary, one may find various interpreta-

tions of the qur'an through his work. His ta'rikh also contains various

hadiths describing various historical events, that are contradictory in regard

to such basic data as dates and the names of places and people. Hadiths

cited from Ibn Ishaq, in most cases, were recorded as possible contradictory

examples. In fact, al-Tabari quoted hadiths from Ibn Ishaq's works, not

because he judged them to be correct, but because he wanted his readers

to estimate the value of each hadith for themselves.

Both tafsir and ta'rikh by al-Tabari were voluminous works, but they

did not contain all of the hundreds of thousands hadiths which seemed to be

current at that time. Al-Tabari selected hadith carefully, though he does

not indicate his criteria for his selection. He probably chose them relying

upon his own experiential intuition. Al-Tabari's view about hadiths seemed

to be the same as Ibn Ishaq's. Ibn Ishaq often introduced a few contradic-

tory hadiths about a certain historical event, concluding that only God knew

which one was correct. He also did not apparently consider all of the hadiths

in his al-sira al-nabawiya to be correct. However, he did not discuss how to

select hadiths from among his extensive collection either. He must have

used what could be called his "synthetic judgement."

The present writer is in no position to evaluate the results of efforts

made by various people to put restrictions on the number and the contents

of hadiths in their eagerness to find legally valid hadith, but it may well be

that we will come across very few valid hadiths interesting enough to include

in a body of historical materials for the biographical study of Muhammad

and an investigation of the society in which he lived. On the other hand,

it is useful for us to know about the existence of such people as Ibn Ishaq

and al-Tabari, who gathered hadiths extensively without regard to their ac-

curacy when compiling books, even though they were selective according

to their own discretion. Many of those various and interesting hadiths will

be the subject of this paper.

II

Both western scholars of Islamic studies and present day muslim scho-

lars have relied on various hadiths recorded in Ibn Ishaq's al-sira al-nabawiya


and books of others including al-Tabari when studying the life of Muhammad

and Arab society of his time. It took Patricia Crone, however, to suggest

that such a pursuit may be all for naught in her Meccan Trade and the

Rise of Islam (cf. Crone: Meccan Trade, pp. 203ff., Part III: Conclusion, 9:

The Sources).

Crone examines the hadiths related to Chapter 106 of the qur'an called

sura quraysh as follows:

For the ilaf of Quraysh

their ilaf of the journey in winter and summer,

so worship the lord of this house,

who fed them against a hunger, and gave them security from a fear.

In the first place, Crone decries, what is "their ilaf of the journey in

winter and summer?" A certain hadith says it means "the hajj in dhu al-

hijja and the 'umra in rajab". Another says it is "the migrations of Quray-

sh to Ta'if in the summer and their return to Mecca if in the winter."

However, many hadiths say they are "trading journeys." Then, where did

they go? Various hadiths say various things. For example, "Quraysh would

travel by the hot coastal route to Ayla in the winter and by the cool inland

route to Busra and Adhri'at in the summer." "Quraysh would go to Syria

in the summer and to the Yemen in the winter, when Syria was too cold."

Quraysh would go to "Syria in the winter and the Yemen in the summer,when the route to Syria was too hot." "They went to Syria and Ethiopia.""They went to Syria, the Yemen and Ethiopia; or to Syria and Rum, on

the one hand, and the Yemen and Ethiopia, on the other; or to Syria, the

Yemen, Ethiopia, and Iraq."

The third verse of the chapter, "so worship the lord of this house",

relates to "journeys" and various reasons are mentioned why they worship.

They say "Quraysh are being told to worship God because He enabled

them to go on their journeys, thereby securing provisions for Mecca.""They are being told to worship Him instead of travelling, the journeys

leaving them no time to do so." "They are being told to worship Him

because He put an end to these journeys, Ethiopians and/or others having

taken over the provisioning of Mecca."

What does it mean by "fed them against a hunger" in the fourth verse?

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It means "He enabled Quraysh to provision Mecca." And "this He did by

letting Hashim institute the two journeys, or by defeating the Ethiopans so

that they could continue to go on these journeys, at any rate by means of

these journeys." Others are "the verse refers to a specific famine in Mecca"

and "it was the pre-Islamic famine to which Hashim reacted by importing

bread from Syria". Or else it was the later famine with which Quraysh

were afflicted by God in response to Muhammad's prayer." "In Pre-Islamic

times when impoverished families would withdraw to the desert until they

died: Hashim put an end to this practice by instituting the two trading

journeys."What Crone wants to say here is that there is much variety in hadiths

even how to explain this short chapter of the qur'an. Therefore, she argues

that it is impossible to understand the phrases of the qur'an correctly and

to gather historical facts from hadiths

We should admit Crone's gallant efforts to collect various hadiths on

the theme, but we can easily find out that there are many contradictory

hadiths in explaining these verses of the qur'an, if we just open the related

pages of al-Tabari's tafsir. Al-Tabari of the tenth century, took it for

granted that he could not get the right meaning of each verse of the qur'-

an through the, hadiths. It was the premise of his learning.

It was also a matter of course among other muslim intellectuals at

that time. They understood that they could explain the verses of the qur'an

diversely by making most use of various hadiths. They noticed, on the

other hand, that it was difficult to define meanings of some terms appearing

in the qur'an (cf. Goto: Note II). In this context what Crone says is cor-

rect, but it does not mean that those hadiths or any other are of no value

as historical sources. Let us follow Crone's argument a little further.

It is needless to say that the motif of this chapter titled sura quraysh

is ilaf. Several hadiths concerning ilaf are recorded in the works of Ibn

Habib (d. 860) and al-Kala'i (d. 1237). According to these hadiths, Hashim, a

great-grandfather of Muhammad, went to Syria and received permission to

trade from the ruler there and then made ilaf agreements with people on

his way back home. Watt (cf. Watt: Mecca) and Hamidullah studied ilaf

on the basis of these hadiths. Watt considered the ilaf institution as the

basis of Meccan trade. And Hamidullah concluded that just before the rise

of Islam, Arabian society was unified under this institution and Mecca was


the center of financial operations. The present writer does not agree with

these assertions. Crone has also criticized them. She calls the above hadith

an "ilaf tradition" and doubts its value.

Crone says that most of the hadiths were created to interpret the

qur'an, and that the ilaf tradition was created by Ibn al-Kalbi (d. 820) in

order to explain the term ilaf which is contained only in Chapter 106. If

there were not the word ilaf in the qur'an, the "ilaf tradition" would not

have existed and later Islamicists would not have created the "ilaf institu-

tion".

As Crone insists, among a great number of the hadiths explaining

Meccan trader movements in the time of Muhammad, we find no hadith

concerning trade carried out under the "ilaf institution." Hadiths concerning

ilaf are only the "ilaf tradition" which Crone points out, though its story

varies slightly from book to book (cf. Kister: Tamim). There is no eviden-

ce that Ibn al-Kalbi created the "ilaf tradition", but it may well be that

someone collected various hadiths and made a story from them.

In the hadiths the word ilaf is used in the context of the activities of

Hashim and people of his generation. Therefore, in the time of Muhammad

ilaf was probably not an established institution for Meccan people. Intellec-

tuals such as Ibn Ishaq and al-Tabari do not cite the ilaf tradition in their

works, because they might not have judged it to be a trustworthy criterion

in selecting their hadiths.

Crone assumes that storytellers (qass) were behind Ibn al-Kalbi's crea-

tions. She says that the qur'an exegesis in the early period was not a

product of learning, like al-Tabari's tafsir in the later days, but merely acollection of narratives told by storytellers. And she takes tafsir by Muqatil

b. Sulayman (d. 767) or al-Kalbi (d. 763), Ibn al-Kalbi's father, as a typical

qur'an exegesis in the early period. She thinks that the words of storytell-ers have no value as historical materials, the "ilaf tradition" being a typical

example.

J. Wansbrough has already pointed in his book Quranic Studies thatmost of the hadiths interpreting the qur'an were completed in a certain form

by storytellers. Jones also demonstrates that the hadiths of Ibn Ishaq and

al-Waqidi were mostly based on storytellers (of Jones).

Some hundreds of thousands of hadiths with a certain length and nar-

rative style in the ninth century might have been arranged by storytellers

88 ORIENT


in the seventh and eighth centuries. Crone's argument is valid so far, but

it would be rash to conclude that qass created stories without foundation,

and that their stories have no value as historical sources.

III

After the ninth century, biographies of people who handed down hadiths

began to be complied in a form arranged by generation. According to at

least one such collection written by Ibn Sa'd, the first and second genera-

tions of tabi'un had not yet edited any tafsir or any maghazi, but they

started gathering traditions composed mainly of genealogies.

Ibn al-Nadim introduced books on "history" in Chapter 3 of his al-fihri

st. He named Ziyad b. Abihi as the first person who wrote a book on "his-

tory." Ziyad b. Abihi was a famous bureaucrat in the time of Mu'awiya

and was borne by a prostitute. It was known later that Mu'awiya confessed

that his father, Abu Sufyan, was Ziyad b. Abihi's real father. Ibn al-Nadim

said that Ziyad b. Abihi wrote a book about his birth for his offspring.

Ibn al-Nadim continued to introduce many persons, such as Daghfal, a

genealogist (al-nassab) who was already active at the time of Muhammad

and visited Mu'awiya as a delegate, al-Bakri, a Christian genealogist, Wiqa'

b. al-'Ash'ar, the most proud genealogist, 'Ubayd b. Sharya who was from

the Jurhum tribe of Yemen and invited by Mu'awiya, Suhar al-'Abdi who

belonged to the 'Uthman party then to the Khariji sect, al-Shargi b. al-

Qatami, and Ibn al-Kawwa' of the 'Ali party.

Under such titles as al-nassabun and ashab al-akhbar, Ibn Qutayba named

almost the same people as Ibn al-Nadim chose. In the latter part of the

seventh century, nobody was active among people grouped under the names

of ashab al-hadith, ashab al-qira'at and ruwat al-shi'r by Ibn Qutayba. They

took an active part later.

In the time of political chaos and transition during and after the first

and second civil wars, each muslim must have wanted to establish his own

social identity. For an Arab a genealogy was most important to prove his

identity. Since the names of his father and ancestors were a part of his

name, he thought he would become one with his father and ancestors. He

tried to survive in a changing society by showing who he was. If his

father was a muslim from an earlier time and participated in battles with


Muhammad, he could make the most use of his background to strengthen

his political and social status. Then, he could ask for protection of rights

which could be easily taken away in a disordered society. A nomadic

Arab whose father had participated actively in a battle of conquest could

attempt to secure various rights including receiving a pension according to

his family record.

As for a tabi'un, who had nothing to do with Muhammad, no other

information was more important than a genealogy traced back to ance-

stors who had some connection with Muhammad, his companions, or the

leaders in the time of conquest.

In the same way, it was necessary for political leaders like Mu'awiya,

who tried to manage an disordered Arab society, to have information on

each Arab's genealogy. Abu Bakr, the first caliph, was famous for his large

personal body of information on Arab genealogies. He was the one who

had to organize Arabs for the battle of ridda. After the wars of conquest,

when muslim society was split, leaders-to-be wanted experts on genealogy

around them.

Authorities on nasab mentioned in al-fihrist were at the same time also

experts on both akhbar and poetry. Nasab not only means genealogy, but

also a collection of records concerning ancestors' achievements (akhbar)

and poetry, the form in which genealogies and akhbar were explained and

confirmed.

We can not find any books written by the early authorities on the

nasab recorded in al-fihrist. However, it is known that a part of Ibn Ishaq's

al-sira al-nabawiya, written in the middle of the eighth century, consisted

of hadiths that included genealogies, akhbar and poetry. On the other hand,

in the works of Ibn Sa'd and Ibn Qutayba in the ninth century, most gene-

alogies were separated from akhbar and poetry. So it may well be said

that the form of early nasab remains in Ibn Ishaq's work.

Nasab was necessary for all muslims of that era. They desired nasab

to trace their ancestors back as early as possible and to find akhbar on the

battle of conquest after Muhammad's death. It is a matter of course that

the most important thing among akhbar were items about the battles led by

Muhammad and those of ridda and conquest, which have given muslims

proof of their various rights.

Since every muslim wanted his own nasab, there were many nasabs full

90 ORIENT


of contradictions. One can always see a certain event from a different angle

owing to one's situation. Early oral tradition therefore, was not intended

to relate Muhammad's words and deeds, or the meaning of verses in the

qur'an. Rather, they were nasabs consisting of poems and historical infor-

mation, of which each muslim intended to make good use for confirming

his identity in a time of political turmoil. Therefore, as a whole, oral

tradition was inconsistent, but by no means incoherent.

IV

In the middle of the Umayya period, people still had an interest in

nasab due to social concerns apart form each muslim's personal and actual

interest. It was fashionable to choose information on some certain special

topics from the nasabs and compiled the information into one hadith. For

example one would choose the names from each akhbar which had something

to say about who had participated in battles led by Muhammad. A complete

list of names could be compiled, because every descendant of the participants

proudly recorded the fact in his nasabs. Thus, lists of participants, thatseem to have been compiled by some storeytellers through nasab of each

muslim as above mentioned, in various battles under the command of Muham-

mad have been handed down to the present.

It is known that in the first half of the eighth century several collections

of traditions called maghazi were compiled. Maghazi is a record of a battle

(ghazwa), but it does not mean that only. The original title of the main

part of Ibn Ishaq's al-sira al-nabawiya was probably maghazi. Likewise,

akhbar on Muhammad's life or his ancestors was called maghazi. Some

maghazis seemed to have embraced events from the time of Muhammad at

least to the era of conquest (cf. E. I. n. e. qv. al-maghazi). Maghazi is, as

it were, "historiography" of muslim society.

Before Ibn Ishaq, the following persons are known as the writers of

maghazis: 'Urwa b. al-Zubayr (d. 712); Wahb b. Munabbih (d. 728); Shurahbil

b. Sa'd (d. 741); al-Zuhri (d. 742); and Musa b. 'Uqba (d. 758). Their works

have been lost. However, Ibn Ishaq obtained information from their maghazis

(except Musa b. 'Uqba, his rival), when he compiled his al-sira al-nabawiya.

Muslim intellectuals of the first half of eighth century wrote "histories"

of various groups of tribes based on the nasab of each muslim. They were


composed of descriptions of the movements of each group in the battlefield

in Arabia before Islam, at the time of Muhammad and in the days of

conquest.

Rearrangement of nasabs also meant rearrangements of akhbar and poetry.

People called ruwat al-shi'r by Ibn Qutayba began to be active at this period.

Naturally, people from various districts spoke various dialects, so that it

was necessary to understand the languages correctly in order to rearrange

akhbar or poetry of each group. The second chapter of al-fihrist is an

introduction to books on grammar (nahw). According to this chapter, Abu

al-Aswad al Du'ali (d. 688), who learned nahw from 'Ali, the fourth Caliph,

established Arabic grammar, and the first authors of written books on gram-

mar were his followers from the first half of the eighth century on.

People called ashab al-qira'at by Ibn Qutayba also began to take an

active part at the same time. Al-Kalbi, the father of Ibn al-Kalbi and

a contemporary of Ibn Ishaq, belonged to the same generation of the first

ashab al-qira'at. Al-Kalbi, was called sahib al-tafsir by Ibn Qutayba and the

creator of "ilaf tradition" by Crone. According to the episodes cited in

al-fihrist and other works, he was ordered to be a teller of al-tafsir in al-

Basra by its governor-general at the time of the establishment of the 'Abbas

dynasty. He was, so to speak, a qass that Crone suggested.

Al-Kalbi, who is supposed to be the first muslim to arrange tafsir

systematically, was also a genealogist. He learned genealogies of the Quraysh

from Abu Salih, those of the Kinda from Abu al-Kannas al-Kindi, those of

the Ma'add b. 'Adnan from al-Najjar b. Aws al-'Adwani, and those of the

Iyad tribes from Adi b. 'Waththab al-Iyadi.

Unfortunately, biographies of the genealogists who taught al-Kalbi can

not be found at present, but it may well be proved that every tribe had an

authority on genealogy from the second half of the seventh century to the

first half of the eighth century. However, Al-Kalbi and his son, Ibn al-Kalbi,

were not authorities for specific genealogical groups. They investigated all

Arab genealogies (cf. Ibn al-Nadim; E. I. n. e. qv. Ibn al-Kalbi). Therefore,

it can be said that al-Kalbi's al-tafsir and Ibn al-Kalbi's voluminous works

were produced from much reliance on their knowledge of nasab.

Some muslim intellectuals at this time also started to gather legal hadith.

For example, Malik b. Anas who was hostile toward Ibn Ishaq, wrote al-

muwatta'. Hadtihs gathered by him seemed to have been chosen among

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nasabs of people whose ancestors had personal contact with Muhammad.

Ibn Ishaq and Malik b. Anas were completely different in their intellectual

interest and were consequently confronted each other; but they gathered

the same materials containing personal and fragmentary information derived

from nasab of each muslim.

V

If "history" means chronology (ta'rikh), it would be difficult to compose

such history from the akhbay contained in nasab. Akhbar is basically a record

of events that an individual and his ancestors took part in. Akhbar, however,

tells only that the events happened during one's lifetime or the lifetime of

his ancestor, and does not indicate any specific date. Therefore, even akhbar

telling of someone's bravery in a battle does not tell about an exact time

or place, though it does indicate names of battles, such as "the battle of

so-and-so camel", "the battle of so-and-so entrance to so-and-so valley" or"the battle of the neighing horse". It is needless to say that poetry, another

component of nasab, is not useful either to fix the time or name of a bat-

tlefield.

Crone cites two descriptions of an expedition of muslims to Kharrar,

in order to explain the reasons why she does not rely on hadiths of muslims

as a whole.

Ibn Ishaq tells about the expedition as follows:

Meanwhile the messenger of God sent Sa'd b. Abi Waqqas on compaign

[sic.] with eight men from among the muhajiyun. He went as far as Kharrar

in the Hijaz, then he returned without having had a clash with the enemy.

And al-Waqidi describes about the same event as follows:

Then the messenger of God (may God bless him and give him peace)

appointed Sa'd b. Abi Waqqas to the command against Kharrar-Kharrar

being part of Juhfa near Khumm-in dhu-l-qa'da, eighteen months (sic.

nine months) after the hijra of the messenger (may God bless him and give

him peace). Abu Bakr b. Isma'il b. Muhammad said on the authority of his

father then on 'Amil b. Sa'd, then on his father (sc. Sa'd b. Abi Waqqas):

the messenger of God (may God bless him and give him peace) said, "O

Sa'd, go to Kharrar, for a caravan belonging to Quraysh will pass through

it." So I went out with twenty or twenty-one men, on foot. We would hide


during the day and travel at night until we arrived there on the morning

of the fifth day. We found that the caravan had passed through the day

before. The messenger had enjoined upon us not to go beyond Kharrar.

Had he not done so, I would have tried to catch up with it.

Al-Waqidi (d. 822) was younger than Ibn Ishaq (d. 767) by a few gen-

erations. Regarding their accounts of the event, al-Waqidi is far superior

to Ibn Ishaq in details. Crone says that "unlike Ibn Ishaq, Waqidi knows

the exact date of the expedition, and also the whereabouts of Kharrar; he

knows that the purpose of the expedition was to intercept a caravan, that

the men went on foot, but travelled only at night, that it took them five

days, and that the reason why no fighting took place is that the caravan

had come and gone; he even knows that the number of participants in the

raid was larger than hitherto assumed".

Al-Waqidi's description almost satisfies what historians wish to know,

but Crone raises the question as to whether we can believe the part of his

description which Ibn Ishaq did not cover. She also says, "if spurious

information accumulated at this rate in the two generations between Ibn

Ishaq and Wagidi, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that even more must

have accumulated in the three generations between the Prophet and Ibn

Ishaq".

In fact, al-Waqidi tried to write ta'rikh, though it is hard to judge

whether his attempt was successful or not. On the other hand, Ibn Ishaq

did not write ta'rikh. His al-sira al-nabawiya was, so to speak, the nasab of

Muhammad. He gathered and compiled various information on Muhammad

and his ancestors, relatives, companions and enemies, which was compiled

in the forms of genealogy, akhbar and poetry.

He naturally cited the verses of the qur'an frequently. However, he

did not intend to compile his book as an interpretation of the qur'an. On

the contrary, it is used as a material to identify an event by citing the related

verses of the qur'an in addition to presenting genealogy, akhbar and poetry.

Authors of maghazis (not only Ibn Ishaq but also his seniors) made the most

use of the verses of the qur'an for compiling their nasabs of Muhammad.

In Muslim society from the latter part of the seventh century to the

first half of the eighth century, intellectuals did not ignore the knowledge

of ta'rikh. As for Ibn Ishaq, he seemed to try to chronologize events happened

after Hijra. Abu Mikhnaf (d. 774) and 'Awana (d. 764), whose descriptions

94 ORIENT


of events in the time of conquest are cited by al-Tabari and others, stuck

to exact dates. However, it is hard to say that they were historians who

adhered to precise information about dates, place names and people and so

forth. Historians in this sense may have first appeared during al-Waqidi's

generation.Al-Waqidi made an effort to collect information which Ibn Ishaq did not

transmit. He may well have carried out field surveys of old battlefields.

He gathered over and over again hadiths derived from nasabs handed down

by descendants of the participants in battles. Eventually he fixed dates,

locations, participants and other details of each battle.

So, should we accept the results of his efforts? For this question, we

find the answer in al-Tabari's works of the tenth century. For example, he

cites al-Waqidi's description of the battle of Yarmuk, in which the Arab-

Islam army won a decisive victory over the Roman army. But, at the same

time, he also quotes from the works of Abu Minkhnaf, 'Awana and al-Mada'ini

(d. 830). As a result, we find that there were various views on the date of

the battle of Yarmuk, and al-Waqidi's view was only one of them.

VI

People must have talked much about Muhammad, the community led

by him during his lifetime, and also the time just after his death. However,

dispassionate, objective and comprehensive information about him and his

community was not handed down as hadith. Hadiths available as historical

sources are composed merely of personal, subjective and fragmentary infor-

mation, saying that someone met and heard Muhammad at a certain time

and/or place, or that someone took part in the same event as Muhammad.

Muslim intellectuals in the ninth century provided answers through such

information to such questions as who, when, where, why, and how. We

must indeed accept their answers grudgingly, but we must not but despair

like Crone. Let's look again at the "ilaf tradition" that Crone criticizes.

The theme of the "ilaf tradition" is that Hashim, Muhammad's great-

grandfather, went to Syria; and after obtaining permission to trade there,

concluded ilaf agreements with various tribes on the way back to Mecca.

From this tradition, modern scholars assume that the "ilaf institution" existed

and assert that the institution was the basis of Meccan trade. However, the


"ilaf tradition" tells nothing about the institution itself. It is only modern

scholars who discuss "the institution". In fact, Crone criticizes both "the

ilaf tradition" and "the ilaf institution" together. They should be separated,

however.

We have no way of drawing from the "ilaf tradition" what ilaf means.

In practice, it was not easy to trade by caravan in Arabia. It may easily

be imagined the high risk of caravans being attacked and plundered of their

merchandise. Actually, Muhammad, after leaving Mecca, intercepted Meccan

caravans frequently.

Various traditions say that the Meccans tried to form various relation-

ships with the Arabs, in order to avoid trouble. We may suppose that from

the "ilaf tradition", ilaf (according to surat quraysh of the qur'an) may

indicate a certain aspect of the human relations established by Muhammad's

predecessors.

We do not have reliable materials to judge the actual meaning of the

phrase "their ilaf of the journey in winter and summer". But we may well

infer from hadiths on Quraysh trading journeys that the Quraysh often went

in the direction of Syria and very rarely went in the direction of Yemen.

Here is difference from many modern scholars, who conventionally assume

that a Quraysh trading journey meant that they visited southern Arabian

ports when trading ships arrived from India to purchase luxurious imported

goods and carry them to Syria.

We can also suppose that the number of persons who took part in each

expedition was probably from several to scores according to a hadith on the

expedition to Kharrar and others on expeditionary forces led by Muhammad

to attack Meccan caravans. This means that most Quraysh caravans were

not as large as those with thousands of camels and hundreds of guards.

From all the hadiths we know of, it is impossible to reproduce a

chronicle of Muhammad in which dates, places and names of events are

specified. Moreover, it would be difficult to revive fully the political and

economic systems of those days. For a scholar who wants to find established

institutions of the time or its historical facts, hadiths are not valid. However,

the study of history does not stop there.

Hadiths as sources for the biography of Muhammad are based on sub-

jective, personal and fragmentary information derived from the nasab of each

muslim who lived in a chaotic period after Muhammad's death. Hadiths,

96 ORIENT


as a whole, are full of contradictions and inconsistencies. Fortunately, muslim

intellectuals such as Ibn Ishaq and al-Tabari understood this character of the

hadith. That is why various hadiths remain today. The study of history

requires in a flexible attitude in digesting such information.

References

This article is a revised version of a paper which was submitted

to the Sixth International Colloquium on: From Jahiliyya to

Islam organized by the Institute for Advanced Studies, Hebrew

University, Jerusalem, September 5-10, 1993. This is also based

on the author's Japanese paper published in 1992,

Crone: Meccan Trade Patricia Crone: Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, Princeton,1987

E. I. n. e. Encyclopaedia of Islam, Leiden, 1960-Goto: II Goto, Akira: "al-qur'an as historical source for the Prophet

Muhammad," Yamagata Historical Studies, vol. 5 1987 (in Japa-nese)

Guillaume A. Guillaume: The Life of Muhammad; a Translation of Ishaq'ssirs rasul allah, London, 1955

Hamidullah Muhammad Hamidullah: "Al-ilaf. ou les rapports economico-diplomatique de la Mecque pre-islamique," Melange Louis Mass-ignon, vol. 2, 1959

Ibn Habib Muhammad b. Habib: kitab al-munammaq, Hyderabad, 1964Ibn Hajar Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani: tahdhib al-tahdhib, 12 vols., Beirut, 1325-

27Ibn Ishaq al-sirs al-nabawiya li-ibn hisham, 2 vols., al-Qahira, 1955Ibn al-Nadim Abu Faraj Muhammad b. Ishaq: al-fihrist, Beirut, 1974;

English Tr. by Bayard Dodge: 2 vols., New York, 1970Ibn Qutayba 'Abd Allah b. Muslim b. Qutayba: al-ma'arif, n. p., 1970Ibn Sa'd Muhammad b. Sa'd: al-tabaqat al-kubra, 8 vols., Beirut, 1957-60

Jones J. M. B. Jones: "Ibn Ishaq and al-Waqidi," Bulletin of the Schoolof Oriental and African Studies, vol. 22, 1959

al-Kala'i Sulayman b. Salim al-Kala'i: kitab al-iktifa', Algiers, 1931Kister: Tamim M. J. Kister: "Mecca and Tamim (Aspects of their relation),"

Journal of the Economic and Social History of Orient, vol. 8, 1965Malik b. Anas Malik b. Anas: kitab al-muwatta', n. p. n. d.Shaban M. A. Shaban: Islamic History; A. D. 600-750 (A. H. 132),

Cambridge, 1971al-Tabari: Tafsir Abu Ja'far Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari: jami' al-bayan 'an

ta'wil ay al-qur'an, 20 vols., al-Qahira, 1953al-Tabari: Ta'rikh do: ta'rikh al-rusul wa-l-muluk (Annales), 16 vols., Leiden, 1879-

1901al-Waqidi Muhammad b. 'Umar al-Waqidi: kitab al-magazi, 3 vols., Oxford,

1966Watt: Mecca W. M. Watt: Muhammad at Mecca, Oxford, 1953


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