Module Notes & Module Text:

Notes for this module can be found here, please download this and use for each class.
Prophetic Biography Arabia

The module draws on works that came to inform Islam’s traditional pedagogy and represent its’ normative expression. These works are cited below for reference followed by brief biography of the authors:

1. Ibn Hishām, 'Abd al-Malik. Al- sīrah al-nabawiyyah. 4vols. Edited by Muhammad Muhyi al-Din 'Abd al-Hamid.Cairo: Matba' al- Hijäzi, 1963
2. Trevor Le Gassick, Muneer Goolam Fareed and Ismāʻīl Ibn-ʻUmar Ibn-Kat̲hīr (2006). The life of the prophet Muḥammad : Al-Sīra al-nabawiyya.4. Reading: Garnet.
3. Al-Shāmī, Muhammad b.Yusuf al-Salihī. Subul al-Hudā wa al-Rashād fī sīrah khayr al-'Ibād. 12vols Edited 'Abd al-Mu'izz 'Abd al-Hamid Cairo:Ihyā al-turāth al-Islamiyy, 2002

(died 7 May 833), or Ibn Hisham, edited the biography of Islamic Prophet Muhammad written by Ibn Ishaq. The nisba Al-Baṣrī means "of Basra", in modern Iraq Ibn Hisham has been said to have grown up in Basra and moved afterwards to Egypt. His family was native to Basra but he himself was born in Old Cairo. He gained a name as a grammarian and student of language and history in Egypt. His family was of Himyarite origin and belongs to Banu Ma‘afir tribe of Yemen. As-Sīrah an-Nabawiyyah, 'The Life of the Prophet'; is an edited recension of Ibn Isḥāq's classic Sīratu Rasūli l-Lāh 'The Life of God's essenger'.Ibn Isḥāq's now lost work survives only in Ibn Hishām's and alTabari's recensions, although fragments of several others survive, and Ibn Hishām and alTabarī share virtually the same material....Read More

born in 70111302 in a village outside of Damascus, where he moved with his brother at the age of five. He later travelled in pursuit of Sacred Knowledge, becoming a principle Shafi'i scholar, hadith master (hafiz), and historian who authored works in each of these fields, though he is perhaps best known for his four-volume Tafsir al-Qur'an al-'Azim [Commentary on the Mighty Koran], which reflects its author's magisterial command of the sciences of hadith. He died in Damascus in (al-A 'lam (y136), 1.320).

(Keller, Nuh Ha Mim. Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law. Rev.ed. Beltsville, MD: Amman, 1996)