Guillaume--Life of Muhammad.pdf - Radical Truth

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The Life of Muhammad
informants as he would hold elsewhere, and so he left for the east, stopping
in Kiifa, al.Jazira on the Tigris, and Ray, finally settling in Baghdad. While
Man~iir was at Hashimiya he attached himselfto his following and presented
him with a copy of his work doubtless in the hope of a grant from the cahph.
Thence he moved to Ray and then to the new capital of the empire. He
died in ISO (or perhaps IS I) and was buried in the cemetery of l;Iayzuran.
THE S]RA
Its precursors
It is certain that Ibn Isl,taq's biography of the prophet had no serious
rival; but it was preceded by several maghazi books. We do not know when
they were first written, though we have the names of several first·century
worthies who had written notes and passed on their knowledge to the rising
generation. The first of these was Aban the son of the caliph 'Uthman.'
He was born in c. 20 and took part in the campaign of Tall,ta and Zubayr
against his father's slayers. He died about 100. The I.anguage used by
a1.Wilqidi in reference to Ibn al·Mughira, 'he had nothmg wntten down
about hadith except the prophet's maghazis which he had acquired from
Aban', certainly implies, though it does not demand, that Ibn aI·Mughira
wrote down what Ahlin told him. It is strange that neither Ibn Isl,tilq nor
a1.Waqidi should have cited this man who must have had inside knowledge
of many matters that were not known to the public; possibly as a follower
of Ali he preferred to ignore the son of the man the Ahds regarded ~ a
usurper. However, his name often appears in the isniids of the c.anomc~l
collections of hadith. (The man named in Tab. 2340 and LS. IV. 29 IS
Aban b. 'Uthman a1.Bajali who seems to have written a book on maghazi.')
A man of much greater importance was 'Urwa b. al·Zubayr b. al·
'Awwam (23--