Guillaume--Life of Muhammad.pdf - Radical Truth

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Contents
Ibn Abu f.!.drad'. r.id on Iaq's authority. 4 On his retumto
Medina he went on with'the collection and arrangement of the material
he had collected. AI-Zuhri, who was in Medina in 123, is reported to have
said that Medina would never lack 'ilm as long as Ibn Is\>aq was there, and
he eagerly gathered from him the details of the prophet's wars. Unfortunately
Ibn Is\>aq excited the enmity of Malik b. Anas, for whose work he
showed his contempt, and it was not long before his own writings and his
orthodoxy were called in question. Probably it was our author's lost book
of Sunan' which excited Malik's ire, for it would have been in the field
of law based on the practice of the prophet that differences would be most
keenly felt. He was accused of being a Qadari and a Shi'i. Another man
attacked his veracity: he often quoted Fatima, the wife of Hishlim b.
'Urwa, as the authority for some of his traditions. The husband was
annoyed and denied that he had ever met his wife; but as she was nearly
forty years Ibn Is\>aq's senior it is easily credible that they often met
without occasioning gossip. It is not known whether Ibn Is\>aq was compelledto
leave Medina or whether he went away voluntarily. Obviously
he could not have the same standing in a pl.ce that housed his chief
1 I.S. VII. ii. p. 67.
~ On Musa and IslJaq see]. Fiick, Multammadibn Isluiq, Frankfurt a. M. 1925, p. 28.
~. See Biographien von Gewahrsmiinnnn d~s Ibn Ishaq .. " ed. Fischer, Leiden, x890.
WIth all those whose death-rates ranged from A.H. 27 to 1$2 he was in contact personally
or at second hand.
4 WOstenfeld, II. vii, from I. al-Najjar and Fiick, 30. 5 Hajji KhaUfa, ii. 1008.