Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Hisham, Tabari: how reliable is the Sira? 5 facts

The objection starts with a fact. Ibn Ishaq died around 150 AH (about 767 CE), and his life of the Prophet is not preserved as he wrote it. It reaches us mainly in the edition of Ibn Hisham (died around 218 AH). In his introduction Ibn Hisham says he left out some material, including matters that would distress certain people and reports that his own informant, al-Bakka’i, doubted.^[1] That is an editor’s admission of omission, and it should be stated plainly.

The omission can be measured, though. Other students’ versions of Ibn Ishaq’s work survive in part, including that of Yunus ibn Bukayr, and later authors quote him with their own chains of narrators. Al-Tabari (died 310 AH) preserved passages of Ibn Ishaq that Ibn Hisham did not carry.^[2] Tabari does write roughly three centuries after the Hijra, but he names the earlier narrators behind each report instead of writing from his own memory. The gap belongs to one edition, and other sources let us see its edges. Muhammad Mustafa al-Azami gives a related finding from the reverse side. In the appendix to his reply to Schacht he shows Ibn Ishaq leaving out a link he knew: one report runs Zuhri to Ibn al-Musayyab in al-Waqidi, and Ibn Ishaq passes it on from Zuhri without the link. In another case Ibn Ishaq gives the full chain for an incident on one page and quotes the highest authority alone for the same incident later in the same book.^[3] A missing link in a biographer is therefore not good evidence that no link existed.

Critics often treat these names as a single source. They are different kinds of work. Ibn Ishaq wrote a continuous life of the Prophet, drawing on earlier narrators such as Urwa ibn al-Zubayr and al-Zuhri. Ibn Hisham edited and annotated it. Al-Waqidi (died 207 AH) wrote detailed accounts of the campaigns, and his secretary Ibn Saʿd (died 230 AH) placed the life of the Prophet beside biographical entries for the Companions and the generations after them.^[4]

Al-Tabari did something different again. His history sets competing reports side by side, each with its chain, and he says in his introduction that he is passing on what was transmitted to him.^[5] That method keeps the awkward and the contradictory along with the rest, which is why scholars can argue about it today.

Muslim scholars use these books as material to be weighed with the tools of hadith criticism. Western historians such as W. Montgomery Watt also use them with caution and generally accept the broad outline of the Prophet’s career, though other Western scholars doubt that the early period can be recovered.^[6] See 7 scholars who shaped how Islam is studied.

The critique offers a choice: if the hadith are accurate, Muhammad stands condemned, and if they are not, Islam has no basis. The choice treats the reports as one block. Muslim scholars never did. A report is graded by its chain of narrators (isnād) and by its text: sound (ṣaḥīḥ), good (ḥasan), weak (ḍaʿīf) or fabricated (mawḍūʿ). Whole books of narrator criticism exist to sort them.^[7] Ibn Ishaq himself was debated: some early critics doubted his transmission, while others, al-Shafiʿi among them, praised his command of the campaigns.^[8]

The charge of circularity also fails to follow. The authority of the Quran rests on its own transmission, recited and memorised by many people, and no single hadith carries it (see Uthman’s copies: 5 facts about the Quran’s earliest manuscripts). The Quran itself tells believers to obey the Messenger (3:32; 59:7).^[9] For details such as the form of the salah (the daily prayer), the practice of the community around him was handed on by action before it was written in reports. Whether the Prophet’s conduct stands up to moral scrutiny is a separate question, and it has to be argued report by report, in context.

The critique says the Prophet’s first scribe resigned and was killed. The sources do record a scribe who left. Abdullah ibn Saʿd ibn Abi Sarh wrote down revelation, abandoned Islam and went to Mecca, where he is reported to have claimed that he could change what Muhammad dictated.^[10] He was not the first scribe. At the conquest of Mecca he was among those excluded from the general amnesty, but Uthman, his foster brother, brought him to the Prophet, who hesitated and then accepted his return.^[11]

He lived on, governed Egypt under Uthman and took part, as governor of Egypt, in the naval Battle of the Masts.^[12] The sources record a different man, Ibn Khatal, put to death at Mecca; the reports give his offence as killing a man in his company and then leaving Islam.^[13] A boast of the first kind could not alter the text, since the revelation was memorised and written by many others, as the next entry shows.

The critique says the Quran mentions a pen and a book but was only recited, and never written while Muhammad lived. The sources agree on one point: the Quran was gathered between two covers after his death, first under Abu Bakr and then in the copies of Uthman.^[14] Writing, however, began earlier. The Quran swears by the pen (68:1) and speaks of a book inscribed on unrolled parchment (52:2 and 52:3).^[15]

The reports describe written pieces in his lifetime. Zayd ibn Thabit is quoted as saying that the Companions put the Quran together from pieces of writing in the presence of the Prophet. Muslim records the Prophet telling people to write nothing from him except the Quran, and Bukhari records his ban on carrying the Quran into enemy territory, which only makes sense if written copies were in circulation. Ibn Ishaq tells of Umar reading a written sheet in his sister’s house before the Hijra.^[16] Memory and writing worked together, and Abu Bakr’s collection drew on both. See Does a preserved text prove it is true? 5 answers for the further question.