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85 Muhammad b. Muslim al-Zuhri and Asim b. uUmar b. Qatada and u Abdullah b. Abu Bakr and Yazid b. Ruman from uUrwa b. alZubayr , and other scholars of ours from Ibn u Abbas, each one of them told me some of this story and their account is collected in what I have drawn up of the story of Badr. (Ibn Ishaq, 289) This list of names cannot be properly called a bibliography. Ibn Ishaq does not mention any book, or any document, that he read about the Battle of Badr. Instead, he gives the names of some (but not all) of the scholars from whom he has heard the story of the battle. At various points in the first part of this book, I reflect on the uncertain quality of the story of Islam’s origins that I tell there. This uncertainty is a product of the Islamic sources on which this story is based. Ibn Ishaq, the earliest Islamic biographer of Muhammad, is said to have died in 767 ce, well over a century after the Prophet’s death. Yet the earliest version of his biography is available to us only through the quotations of it by Ibn Hisham, who died in 833. Now Ibn Ishaq often attributes his narratives on the life of the Prophet to elders from the Prophet’s own day. For example, before telling the story of the Battle of Badr, he relates, Introduction to Part 2: History and Literature v The Emergence of islam 86 Some of them (whom he leaves unnamed) attributed their account to Ibn u Abbas, who is said to have been born three years before the Prophet’s migration to Medina; he would have thus been only a young boy of five when the Battle of Badr took place and could hardly have been an eyewitness to it. However, Ibn uAbbas later gained the reputation of being a great (if not the greatest) authority on the life of the Prophet and the meaning of the Quraan. Other scholars from whom Ibn Ishaq heard about Badr (and whom he mentions by name) attribute their account to uUrwa b. al-Zubayr. According to tradition, uUrwa was well known as the son of al-Zubayr, a companion of the Prophet (and Asmaa, the daughter of Abu Bakr), and a well-respected reporter of traditions. Thus Ibn Ishaq here means to tell the reader that he has diligently listened to how the best scholars of his own day tell the story of Badr, and how he has confirmed that these scholars have a connection to uUrwa b. al-Zubayr and Ibn uAbbas, two masters of Islamic traditions on the Prophet. This introduction to the account of the Battle of Badr, in other words, is meant to show that Ibn Ishaq has done his homework and that the reader can have confidence in the story he is about to tell. Such declarations are also a common feature in the “Book of Raids,” of Waqidi (d. 822), a second biography of the Prophet mentioned in the first part of the present volume. However, an interesting development appears in a third biography of the Prophet, that of Waqidi’s student Ibn Saud (d. 845). At the opening of his description of the Prophet’s raids, Ibn Saud presents a general list of his authorities similar to that of Ibn Ishaq above. However, when he comes to Badr itself, Ibn Saud adds a long series of specific reports (forty-one in all), preceded in each case by a precise list of transmitters. Regarding the date of Badr, for example, Ibn Saud recounts, u Affan Ibn Muslim and Sauid Ibn Sulayman informed us: they said: Khalid Ibn u Abdallah informed us: uAmr Ibn Yahya informed me on the authority of uAmir Ibn u Abdallah Ibn Zubayr, he on the authority of his father, he on the authority of u Amir Ibn Rabiuh alBadri ; he said:“The Battle of Badr took place on Monday the seventeenth of [the month of] Ramadan.” (Ibn Saud, 21) In providing this list of transmitters, or isnad, Ibn Saud does not mean to show the reader that he has relied on the best-known scholars to investigate the question of the date of the Battle of Badr. Instead, he means to prove that he has a statement from an eyewitness. The isnad leads to a figure named u Amir Ibn Rabiuah al-Badri. Unlike uUrwa or Ibn u Abbas , al-Badri has no...

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