ʿUrwa ibn az-Zubair

ʿUrwa ibn az-Zubair ibn al-ʿAuwām (عروة بن الزبير بن العوام / ʿUrwa ibn az-Zubair ibn al-ʿAuwām * 634 or 635 in Medina ; † 712 or 713 at Rabadha ) is one of the most famous traditionarians and historiographers in the early days of Islam .

Origin and life

His brother was the "counter caliph" ʿAbdallāh ibn az-Zubair ibn al-ʿAwwām, known in Islamic history , his mother was Asmā 'bint Abī Bakr , the daughter of the first caliph Abū Bakr , the sister of Aisha bint Abi Bakr , the wife of Prophet Mohammed . His father fought in the first civil war, in the so-called camel battle waqʿat al-jamal  /وقعة الجمل / waqʿatu ʾl-ǧamal at Basra on the side of his aunt Aisha against ʿAlī ibn Abī Tālib . According to Islamic lore, he could not take part in the battle himself because he was then a minor. After the death of his father, he returned to Medina with Aisha. ʿUrwa died around 712 on his estate near Rabadha, 200 km east of Medina.

Work and effect

After his return to Medina, 'Urwa devoted himself to collecting historical news from the time of the prophets; His most important source is said to have been his aunt Aischa, who was able to pass on first-hand statements not only from Muhammad ( Hadith ) but also reports about his campaigns to him. Thus, the traditions of ʿUrwa, both in the traditional collections of al-Bukhari , Muslim ibn al-Hajjādsch , Ahmad ibn Hanbal and others. a. as well as the historical compilations of Ibn Ishāq , At-Tabarī and other input. ʿUrwa's reports are regarded in contemporary Islamic research as the first systematic and written account of early Islamic history. Above all, those reports from the early period are considered authentic, most of which are preserved in the tradition of his son Hisham in the later compilations from the early 9th century.

His most important accounts of the life of the Prophet ( Sira ) are preserved in those letters which he addressed to the caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan and which are extensively preserved in At-Tabarī's annalistic history. The Austrian orientalist Aloys Sprenger translated these letters into German as early as 1861 ; the latest study is Görke / Schoeler, 2008. With the news he collected from the time of the prophets, ʿUrwa laid the foundations for maghazi literature, the climax of which can be seen in the writings of al-Wāqidī and Muhammad ibn Saʿd . Numerous fragments in his tradition suggest that he also dealt extensively with the Koran exegesis . His explanations of the Koran text can be found in one of the oldest Koran exegetical works that has survived, in the Tafsīr by ʿAbdallāh ibn Wahb and in the monumental exegesis of At-Tabarī, also in the somewhat later Ibn Kathir .

In the science school in Medina, the collected materials were initially recited by heart. Nevertheless, some sources indicate that ʿUrwa recited his hadiths with legal content based on written documents; he is said to have already owned “legal books” (kutub fiqh).

literature

• Gregor Schoeler: ʿUrwa b. al-Zubayr in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Vol. X, Leiden 2000, pp. 910-913.
• Gregor Schoeler: Character and authenticity of the Muslim tradition about the life of Muhammad . Walter de Gruyter. Berlin, New York 1996. pp. 28-32 and passim . ISBN 3-11-014862-5
• Andreas Görke and Gregor Schoeler: Reconstructing the Earliest sīra-Texts: the Hiǧra in the Corpus of 'Urwa b. al-Zubayr . In: Der Islam 82 (2005), 209–220
• Andreas Görke: The Historical Tradition about al-Ḥudaybiya. A Study of Urwa b. al-Zubair's account. In: Harald Motzki (Ed.): The Biography of Muḥammad. The Issue of the Sources. Pp. 240-275. Brill, Leiden 2000. ISBN 90-04-11513-7
• Andreas Görke and Gregor Schoeler: The oldest reports on the life of Muhammad. The corpus ʿUrwa ibn az-Zubair , Darwin Press, Princeton 2008. ISBN 978-0-87850-172-4 .
• Fuat Sezgin: History of Arabic Literature . Vol. IS 278-279. Brill, Leiden 1967
• Aloys Sprenger: The life and teachings of Mohammad based on largely unused sources. Nicolai'sche Verlag Buchhandlung. Berlin 1861

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gregor Schoeler (1996), p. 29