as-Sīra an-Nabawīya
As Sīra , shortened from as-Sīra an-nabawīya ( Arabic السيرة النبوية 'The biography of the prophet'), is a literary genre of Islamic historiography that deals exclusively with the life of the prophet Mohammed . The most important work of this genre is the sīra of Ibn Ishāq (d. 767), which is only preserved in a later arrangement by Ibn Hishām (d. 834).
History of research
The problem of the authenticity of the early Islamic historical tradition, especially the life of the prophet, was already controversially discussed in research at the beginning of the 20th century. According to Henri Lammen , the Sira literature is a fictitious interpretation material on certain passages of the Koran, whereby he admits that the Medinan period of prophecy in the Sira can certainly have a historical core in the representation of Muhammad's life. Régis Blachère - with his work Leproblemème de Mahomet - and Joseph Schacht , who tried to transfer his results in the field of Fiqh research to the Sira , were also under H. Lammen's influence .
The source-critical investigations into the biography of the prophets by Frants Buhl , William Montgomery Watt and Rudi Paret followed the moderate stance of Theodor Nöldeke , Josef Horovitz and others in this regard . Representatives of the revisionist school of Islamic studies such as Patricia Crone trust the Sira far less, but this position is only represented by a minority among Western scholars. According to the current state of research, the Sira is at its core as a largely authentic, historical source - with the exception of only a few passages that want to glorify Mohammed instead of providing historical information and which are therefore part of devotional literature.
Origin of the Sira literature
Sira literature encompasses a wide range of material, such as political treaties, military listings, appointments of civil servants, etc., recorded by generations of Muslims. In principle, the Mohammed biographies were compiled from reports of his deeds, similar to how the reports of his statements were compiled in the hadith . However, the Sira literature as opposed to the Hadith literature is generally not through the chain of transmission ( isnad secured), although some reports in the earliest Sira Isnade included. There are probably several reasons for this. First, the story of Muhammad's life was probably well known and recounted among Muslims from the early days of Islam. Second, the Sira literature contains mostly narratives about Muhammad's life, while the aim of the Hadith literature is to collect his statements as an authoritative source for Islamic law . The relevance of numerous hadith statements to litigation made it necessary that they be secured by Isnade.
Together, Sira and Hadith form the Sunnah , the basis of almost all religious practices and those rules of conduct that Muslims must obey.
Major works
Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah is the oldest surviving biography of Mohammed; it was written less than 150 years after Muhammad's death. It has come down to us in extensive excerpts in later works and arrangements by Ibn Hisham and at-Tabari and others. There are some important differences between the later adaptations and reviews, some of which concern the content of Ibn Ishaq's original text. The controversial episode about the origin of the satanic verses, for example, is not preserved in Ibn Hisham's adaptation, which has come down to us in al-Tabari and in other later works and which goes back to the original reporting by Ibn Ishaq and his sources. A disciple of Ibn Ishaq, Yunus b. It was Bukair who not only passed on the original text of the first Sira work, but also provided its content with further information that does not go back to Ibn Ishaq, but to his contemporaries. The later historiographical literature clearly recognized these "insertions" and spoke of theزيادات المغازي ziyadat al-maghazi , DMG ziyādātu ʾl-maġāzī 'Additions to the Maghazi = to the campaigns of the Prophet'.
Another text of the earliest Sira comes from al-Waqidi : to beكتاب المغازي / Kitāb al-Maġāzī / 'Book on the Prophet's Campaigns' is exclusively devoted to the campaigns of the Prophet Mohammed. Some representatives of early historiography are reported to have studied the biography of Muhammad before Ibn Ishaq, including 'Urwa ibn az-Zubayr ibn al-'Awwam from Medina, whom the above-mentioned Ibn Ishaq and al-Waqidi as their source call. Current research on Islam has come to the conclusion that 'Urwa ibn az-Zubair, as a frequently cited source about the life of Mohammed, was most likely able to pass on his information in writing.
See also
literature
- Amir Dziri: Sira - Introduction to the Prophet's Biography (= Study Series Islamic Theology. Volume 1). Freiburg i. Br. 2014, ISBN 978-3-9815572-2-0 .
- Andreas Görke, Gregor Schoeler : Reconstructing the Earliest sīra Texts: the Hiǧra in the Corpus of ʿUrwa b. al-Zubayr. In: Islam. 82, 2005, pp. 209-220 ( andreas-goerke.de PDF).
- Andreas Görke, Gregor Schoeler: The oldest reports on the life of Muhammad: The corpus 'Urwa ibn az-Zubair'. , Darwin Press, Princeton 2008.
- MJ Kister: The Sīrah Literature. In: The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature. Arabic literature to the end of the Umayyad period. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1983, ISBN 0-521-24015-8 , pp. 352-367.
- Wim Raven: Art. Sīra. in: The Encyclopaedia of Islam . Volume 9. Brill, Leiden 1997, pp. 660-663.
- Wim Raven: Art. Sīra and the Qurʾān. In: Jane Dammen McAuliffe et al. a. (Ed.): Encyclopaedia of Qur'an. 5 volumes, Brill Publishers, Leiden 2001-2006, ISBN 90-04-14743-8 , Volume 5, pp. 29-51.
- Joachim von Stülpnagel: Urwa b. al-Zubair. His life and importance as a source of early Islamic tradition. (Dissertation Tübingen 1956).
- Gustav Weil (translator): The life of Muhammad according to Muhammad Ibn Ishâk. edited by Abd el-Malik Ibn Hishâm . Stuttgart 1864 ( books.google.de ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Miklós Murányi : Ibn Isḥāqs Kitāb al-Maġāzī in the Riwāya of Yūnus b. Bukair. In: Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam. (JSAI), Vol. 14, 1991, pp. 214-275.