Abstract
The article investigates the social and cultural practices of Sira production and consumption in the later Middle Period. It probes into the place held by Sira regarding the veneration of the Prophet, especially in relation to Hadith. Its first part shows that in the Middle Period Sira was intended as a vast literary repository characterized by fluidity of format, diverse social fruition, and plurality of practices in transmission and consumption. It was a literary field characterized by narrative malleability and creativity, for which there was popular demand and scholarly dedication.
The life and work of the Šāfiʿī scholar and Hadith expert Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimašqī (d. 842/1438), in particular his Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār fī l-siyar wa-mawlid al-muḫtār (The Compilation of Traditions on the Life and Birth of the Chosen One) occupies the second part of the article. Here, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār is taken as a written exemplification of the tight relationship between Sira, Hadith and devotion to the Prophet typical of the period, of 14th-15th century Damascus in particular.
Overall, the article argues that the intended meaning and use of a text as rich as Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār can be fully grasped only when we put it in close conversation with the Hadith culture and veneration for the Prophet of the time. It suggests the existence of a pervasive “Sira culture” binding people in a relationship of meaning to their shared memories of the life of the Prophet. Such culture was nurtured by remembrance of the Prophet’s excellency and life milestones. It aimed at cultivating salvific feelings of love for the Prophet that would assure believers a secure place in the Afterlife.
This study is concerned with Prophetic Sira in the later Islamic Middle Period, specifically the Mamluk domains (648/1250-922/1517).1 This was a time exceptionally rich in literary output which witnessed an extensive growth in the veneration of the Prophet. This veneration was expressed via a variety of devotional practices and types of literary activity, including an intensification in Hadith scholarship and transmission.2 Within this context, what was the place of Sira?3 How can we understand the multitude of literary manifestations as well as social and cultural practices of Sira production and consumption of the period? I shall address these questions by examining the relationship between Sira, Hadith and devotion to the Prophet as exemplified by the Šāfiʿī scholar and Hadith expert Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimašqī (d. 842/1438), in particular in his Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār fī l-siyar wa-mawlid al-muḫtār (The Compilation of Traditions on the Life and Birth of the Chosen One).4
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimašqī was a highly respected Hadith specialist and transmitter in his time. His story is a local one: he lived and worked in Damascus and travelled little. Nonetheless, his work also reflects the broader trends in the Hadith culture of the period and the intense veneration of the Prophet that ran parallel to it. These two elements converge in Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, a bulky literary work which brings together the genres of Hadith and Sira. Whereas recent studies have shed light on what has been labelled post-canonical Hadith culture, scholarly engagement with post-formative period sīras remains minimal. For this reason and owing to the need to provide meaningful context to the work of Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, the present study is divided in two parts. After briefly outlining the state of the art in Sira studies, the first part presents fresh conclusions drawn from primary sources regarding the pervasiveness of Sira writing in the later Middle Period, the range of literary forms it encompassed, the diversity of social contexts in which it was realized, and the spiritual import conferred upon it. These elements coalesce to suggest the existence of a “Sira culture,” an expression which may be used to point to a connective structure binding people in a relationship of meaning to their shared memories of the life of the Prophet.5 Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār is a written expression of this culture and constitutes the subject of the second part of this article. First, an examination of its structure will show that this mammoth work, which appears at first glance to be a Hadith collection, was in fact intended by its author as a sīra. Second, an analysis of its beginning and end will show that the work was crafted as an instrument to foster intimate attachment to the Prophet. Typically, such attachment was conceived as the necessary means to attain eternal salvation and was to be cultivated by meticulously and intimately recalling the details of Muḥammad’s excellency together with the decisive moments of his life. The intended meaning and use of a text as rich as Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār can be fully grasped only when we put it in close conversation with the intense Hadith culture and veneration for the Prophet of the time.6
Part I
1.1 Sira Studies, Sira as a Genre
A sīra of Muḥammad is a biographical literary work which, in its simplest form, gathers memories of the life of the Prophet into a narrative with a strong focus on chronology.7 Sira studies, the body of scholarship dedicated to this biographical tradition of the Prophet, is less developed than one would expect given the centrality of the figure of Muḥammad in that complex and highly diversified historical, religious, and human experience that we call Islam. Scholars have expended great efforts in the study of early Sira texts, their production and transmission, the relationship between Sira and the Qurʾān, the recovery of old layers of Sira and maġāzī (the accounts of Muḥammad’s Medinan military campaigns), as well as issues of authenticity and the possibility of using these sources for historical reconstruction.8 On the contrary, relatively scarce attention has been paid to sīras of later periods. In this regard, three works must be mentioned: Gurdofarid Miskinzoda (2007), Tilman Nagel (2008) and Tariq Khalidi (2009). Nagel and Khalidi’s books look at post-formative Sira writings in Arabic, considering the structure and features of a selection of texts, the themes they privilege, and points of faith conveyed by images of the Prophet. Nagel focuses on Medieval Arabic texts, whereas Khalidi embraces a broader perspective up to and including contemporary sīras. Both books point to the continuity of the vigorous efforts to idealize Muḥammad and highlight the longevity of the genre as well as its tendency to grow complex over time. Both are written as highly useful broad overviews.9 In marked contrast, Gurdofarid Miskinzoda’s unpublished PhD dissertation is a monograph study dedicated to al-Ẓahr al-bāsim fī siyar Abī l-Qāsim (The Blossom that Smiled upon the sīra of Abū l-Qāsim) by the Mamluk scholar Muġulṭaʾī b. Qilīǧ (d. 762/1361). This work was conceived as a super-commentary upon the authoritative and widespread commentary of Ibn Hišām’s al-Sīra l-nabawiyya: al-Suhaylī’s (d. 581/1185) al-Rawḍ al-unuf fī šarḥ al-sīra l-nabawiyya li-Bn Hišām.10
Miskinzoda’s work is more narrowly in scope but proves useful in other respects. As in Khalidi’s work, the focus here moves beyond the debate about the historicity, authenticity, and reliability of early sīras for historical reconstruction.11 Miskinzoda highlights the richness of later sīra works as complex literary constructions showing familiarity with a vast number of materials, playing across different fields of knowledge and engaging with an array of theological and political issues. Her reading of Muġulṭaʾī’s sīra against the backdrop of a rich tradition of Sira production running from the 3th/9th to the 11th/17th centuries provides valuable insights into the development of the genre and its dynamics over this period. One of the study’s central ideas is that even though the initial preoccupation with producing a chronological narrative of the life of the Prophet was never lost, later sīras tended to become elaborate literary works with a distinct concern for details and reliability.12
Moreover, Miskinzoda elaborates a set of formal basic features that distinguish Sira from other literary genres which are helpful for the purpose of this study. First and foremost, Sira is characterized by pronounced chronological preoccupations and as such typically contains varying accounts of the very same episodes from the life of Muḥammad. Another important feature is Qurʾānic quotations, which are frequently intertwined with the stories recounted. Poetry is often woven into the narrative to intensify and dramatize it. Sira also makes frequent use of documents, lists, speeches, genealogies, and letters to enhance its purported historicity. Finally, sīras usually provide clarification and commentary on points of grammar.13 Miskinzoda notes how these formal features may not all be present together in every sīra nor do they constitute an exhaustive list, and yet: “The presence and combination of some of these features are valid reasons for ascribing a given work to the genre of sīra.”14 Another point she underscores is that sīra works maintained a high degree of changeability and individuality over time and across space according to the background, interests and aims of their authors.15
At first glance, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dimašqī’s Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār resembles a Hadith collection, and while it serves in great part as Hadith, it also comprises a range of diversified materials that converge in what is, for the author, a sīra. The second part of the article will explore how such a determination can be made. Before that, an overview of the Hadith and Sira culture of the time is due to fully place Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s Ǧāmiʿ into context.
1.2 Hadith and Devotion to the Prophet
The mechanics of the pervasive social and cultural phenomenon of Hadith transmission in the Middle Period have recently been seriously scrutinized. Fresh engagement with manuscripts and thus-far understudied documentary sources has come to constitute a vibrant and rich field of enquiry.16 It now comes to light that, despite the challenge posed to the indispensability of the chain of transmission (isnād) by the establishment of the written Hadith canon in the fourth/tenth century, the continued oral transmission of Hadith did not fade. Rather, Hadith scholars incorporated into transmission and elaborated new methods and literary genres which expressed the concerns and aims of the field in its post-canonical time.17 They devised a powerful ideology to justify transmission as a unique mark bestowed by God upon the Muslim community, thus transforming Hadith into a pervasive expression of piety and devotion and an effective (and affective) way of drawing close to Muḥammad’s blessing and through him, to God. By establishing a link to the source of authority, the isnād not only validated the Prophet’s words, but also invoked his presence. Proximity to the Prophet in the chain of transmission, called ʿulūw, or elevation, became the quality most eagerly sought after by scholars and transmitters due to its perceived spiritual benefits and the great social prestige it carried. In sum, Hadith transmission became a precious source of social and cultural capital worthy of special investment and accumulation.18
Several of the most notable experts in the history of Hadith scholarship lived in Cairo and Damascus between the seventh/thirteenth and ninth/fifteenth centuries and produced seminal reference works in the field of Hadith studies and transmission.19 Ibn Ṣalāḥ al-Šahrazūrī (d. 643/1245) and al-Nawāwī (d. 676/1277) in the 7th/13th century, al-Ḏahabī (d. 748/1348) in the 8th/14th, and Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn himself in the 9th/15th century, all held the position of shaykh (mašyaḫa) of the Dār al-ḥadīṯ al-ašrafiyya intra-muros in Damascus. The high regard in which these scholars and their work were held and the steady growth in construction of teaching institutions dedicated to Hadith (dūr al-ḥadīṯ) between the 6th/12th and 9th/15th centuries point to the centrality and prestige that the study of Prophetic tradition acquired in this period.20 In Damascus, the first institution dedicated to the study of the Prophet’s lore was funded by the Zanǧid ruler Nūr al-Dīn (d. 569/1174), and by the time he wrote his history of the city’s religious buildings at the beginning of the 10th/16th century, ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Nuʿaymī (d. 978/1521) recounted and described the history of sixteen such institutions.21
The Dār al-ḥadīṯ al-ašrafiyya intra-muros just mentioned was one of the two dār al-ḥadīṯ that the Ayyubid ruler al-Ašraf Mūsā (d. 635/1237) had erected. The other was located on the slope of Mount Qāsyūn and was the first of its kind outside the city walls. The latter became the preserve of Ḥanbalīs from the Maqdisī family, whereas the former, near al-Ašraf Mūsā’s residence, was controlled by (traditionalist) Šāfīʿīs.22 Al-Ašraf decided to display the Prophet’s sandal (naʿl), which he had received several years prior, in the intra muros Dār al-ḥadīṯ (dār al-ḥadīṯ al-ašrafiyya l-ǧuwwaniyya), where it attracted pilgrims and became the object of acts of ritual piety.23
Chronicles from the period offer an abundance of witnesses who attest to the belief that the Prophet’s agency could be harnessed to the advantage of his community via the public recitation of Hadith, specifically of certain collections endowed with binding authority. Such was the case with the Ṣaḥīḥān, whose ritual use is demonstrated from the 7th/13th and 8th/14th centuries. The reading of al-Buḫārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ is documented in rain prayers (istisqāʾ) and moments of peril or to mark happy occasions such as the birth of a male heir to the Sultan.24 Other than these specific instances, recent studies have conclusively demonstrated the widespread communal nature of Hadith reading and transmission in this period in both private and public contexts,25 and that such practices became increasingly ritualized as they were imbued with the Prophet’s spiritual authority and personal aura.26 It is evident that Hadith was ubiquitous in this society.
Parallel developments associated with the towering figure of the Prophet have been detected for literary genres other than Hadith. Celebrations of the Prophet’s birthday (mawlid al-nabī) or other crucial events in his life like his ascension to heaven (miʿrāǧ) fostered devotion towards his person.27 These commemorations were accompanied by chanting poems praising him and his birth (madāʾīḥ, mawlidiyyāt), or by the recitation of narratives focusing on his pre-history and birth (mawlid).28 A growth in the production of “sober” mawlid texts specifically intended for ritualized public reading has been observed for 8th/14th century Damascus. According to Marion Katz, these narratives expressly avoided the fanciful cosmogonic tales typical of the period and privileged materials belonging to the mainstream scholarly tradition with a marked concern for authentication.29
Other than in mawlid, chanting poems in praise of the Prophet at appointed times was a regular activity in teaching institutions. Preferably, the officer charged with singing such praises (al-mādiḥ/al-munšid) was to be good looking and gifted with a beautiful voice (ḥasan al-hayʾa wa-l-ṣawt). The objective of reciting poetry in praise of the Prophet was to cultivate feelings of love and delight in the audience (al-tawāǧud wa-l-ṭarab li-l-sāmiʿīn).30 Such feelings, as Katz perceptively highlighted, were key to nurturing a desirable connection to the Prophet.31 The historian Šams al-Dīn al-Ǧazarī (d. 738/1337-1338) recalls the presence of “the chanters of poems in praise of the Prophet” (al-munšidīn li-l-madāʾiḥ al-nabawiyya) at the completion of a reading of the Qurʾān (ḫatm) performed by his nephew in the mosque of Ibn Hišām in Damascus.32 It appears to have been an event of some relevance in which several of the city’s most prominent social groups took part: the Qāḍīs, the notables (al-akābir wa-l-aʿyān), the notaries (al-ʿudūl), the jurists (al-fuqahāʾ), the Qurʾān reciters and finally, “the chanters of poems in praise of the Prophet.” Next to the others, the “chanters” appear to be of respectable social standing.
Ḫatms were public lectures held to celebrate the completion of a reading that had usually gone on for many sessions. Reading poetry was common during these lectures, which were normally attended by many people. Ḫatms often concerned the Qurʾān but not exclusively so;33 a focus on the Ṣaḥiḥān and sīras spread and became quite popular as well.34 Furthermore, both of the latter types of ḫatms gave life to specific literary works.35 We will encounter one of them by the hand of Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimašqī which will help us shed light on the function and place of Sira within this context of growing devotion for the Prophet.
1.2.1 Sira’s Writerly Culture
Just as Marion Katz discovered an increase in scholarly mawlid texts in 8th/14th-century Syria, Tarif Khalidi has detected a boom in Sira writing for 8th/14th-century Damascus. Khalidi dwells on this literary phenomenon which he describes as a “fourteenth century renaissance,” asking “Was this ‘renaissance’ in Sira works part of a larger literary revival?” Khalidi ultimately hesitates to answer, citing a lack of studies in the literary history of the period.36 To prove his point about the proliferation of Damascene sīra texts for the period in question, Khalidi clusters together and presents the sīras of Muġulṭāy, Šams al-Dīn al-Ḏahabī, Ibn Šākir al-Kutubī (d. 764/1363), Ibn Kaṯīr (d. 774/1373), and Ibn Qayyim al-Ǧawziyya (d. 751/1350).37
Khalidi was correct in his conjecture, although his focus can be easily widened to the regional level. In fact, narrating the life of Muḥammad was an intrinsic component of the scholarly, religious, and devotional culture of the time, and not only in Syria. Multiple sources attest to the richness of Sira textual production in this period. One is the Epilogue (ḫātima) of the long and detailed biography of the jurist, historian and Hadith scholar Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī (d. 852/1449) by his colleague al-Saḫāwī (d. 902/1497).38 In order to place his work within a longstanding tradition of biographical writings, al-Saḫāwī puts together a long list of such works which begins with sīras of Muḥammad. The spread and popularity of the genre is corroborated by the author’s assertion that sīras were composed by the great scholars of every era and are impossible to count. Many, if not most, of the sīras he lists over the following two pages belong to the later Middle Period. Al-Saḫāwī is precise: he notes when he did not read a work (mā waqaftu ʿalay-hi) and adequately conveys the variety of different modes of sīra-making.39 Works of maġāzī, dalāʾil al-nubuwwa, mawlid, ḫaṣāʾiṣ and muʿǧizāt – that is, reports of the Prophet’s campaigns, signs of prophethood, birth narratives, special prerogatives and miracles are all included in the list as part of the Sira genre.
Even more precise is the record of the most authoritative sīra works of his time which al-Saḫāwī issues in his notorious defense of historiography: al-Iʿlān bi-l-tawbīḫ li-man ḏamma l-taʾrīḫ (The Open Denunciation of Those Who Criticize History).40 There, he includes writings devoted solely to the biography of Muḥammad, biographies of his embedded in broader historiographical projects, versified sīras, commentaries and glosses (šarḥ/hāšiya). Furthermore, al-Saẖāwī includes in the Sira genre single monothematic writings dedicated to events and activities from the Prophet’s life, as well as literature pertaining to his special prerogatives as Prophet, his qualities, physical traits, or specific characteristics like the fact of being born circumcised. From this evidence we can gather that in al-Saḫāwī’s time, Sira was not only a widely produced form of biographical writing, but that it had also become a versatile and open literary repository which was associated with all aspects of Muḥammad’s person and was diverse in theme and mode of expression.41
This diversity of format is also reflected by the vocabulary used to describe the act of Sira writing in 8th/14th- and 9th/15th-century Syrian and Egyptian narrative sources. Scholars put together (ǧamaʿa), composed (ṣannafa), abridged (iḫtaṣara), commented (šaraḥa), versified (naẓẓama) and copied (nasaḫa) sīras.42 Aḥmad b. Ismāʿīl al-Ibšīṭī (d. 835/1432) offers a telling case of this multifarious activity. A Cairo based preacher, al-Ibšīṭī was so devoted to Sira that he not only copied frequently from it, but he also started composing a collective volume (kitāb ḥāfil) gathering some thirty books (sifr) that included Ibn Isḥāq’s sīra with al-Suhaylī’s commentary, the life of the Prophet from Ibn Katīr’s al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya, al-Wāqidī’s (d. ca 207/823) Maġāzī and much else. We are told by al-Saḫāwī that he was accurate in transmitting their words (kāna ḍābiṭan li-l-alfāẓ al-wāqiʿa fī-hā).43 Al-Ibšīṭī’s case draws attention to the fact that multiple sīras could be compiled in a single unit thus producing a sort of thematic ‘one-volume library’ which could be more practically read, studied, and consulted.44
At the same time, this case also sheds light on individual scholars who were particularly dedicated to Sira and became specialized in it. It appears that their Sira-related activity was normally connected with honoring the Prophet and celebrating his birthday.45 These scholars were proud of their work,46 and took special pleasure from producing massive compositions. A good illustration of the standing that such compositions enjoyed is Qāḍī Fatḥ al-Dīn b. al-Šahīd al-Dimašqī (d. 793/1391), a man of many offices who took pride in his bulky al-Sīra al-muhammadiyya. The Historian Ibn al-Ḥiǧǧī (d. 816/1413) related that: “Ibn al-Šahīd put together (or composed, ǧamaʿa) the sīra of the Prophet from a certain number of books and turned it into poetry, three volumes in 5000 verses, to which he added some useful texts such as al-Rawḍ [i.e. of al-Suhaylī] and others”. Ibn al-Ḥiǧǧī continues “He showed it to me, together with the glosses (ḥawāšin) he had written on it and the useful remarks and important points (fawāʾid wa-nukat) that had appeared to him. I found it an amazing book.”47 What impressed Ibn Ḥiǧǧī was not so much the sīra’s length, but rather the number of materials and amount of effort put into its compilation and versification.48
1.2.2 Transmitting Sira, Taking Sira: Performance, Non-elite Social Fruition, Ritualization
The materials so far consulted have unveiled that Sira was abundantly produced and often penned by dedicated scholars of different social status. Sira texts were just as abundantly transmitted.49 Judging from their mentions and their capacity for attracting commentaries, abridgments, or versifications, certain sīras enjoyed far more popularity than others. Such was the case for the sīras of Ibn Sayyid al-Nās (d. 734/1334) and ʿAbd al-Ġanī l-Maqdisī (d. 600/1203), for instance, although Ibn Hišām’s (d. ca 218/833 or 213/828) still held pride of place.50
Like any relevant textual tradition, Sira had its own specialized transmitters. Šihāb al-Dīn al-Abarqūhī (d. 701/1302) was a prominent transmitter of one riwāya (transmission) of Ibn Isḥāq/Ibn Hišām.51 At the end of his life, the famous poet and prose writer Ibn al-Nubāta l-Miṣrī (d. 768/1366) remained the only depositary of this riwāya for which he had distinguished himself (tafarrada bi-hā) and was sought after.52 For their part, students and scholars heard sīras (samiʿa min), memorized and recalled them (ḥafiẓa/istaḥḍara/ḏākara), read them under the guidance of a given teacher (qaraʾa ʿalā) or presented them to their šayḫ (aḥḍara ʿalā).53 The fluid terminology mirrors the blend of oral and written that was typical of the textual culture of the period.54 Auditing sessions for sīras (samāʿāt) are also recorded, some of which were quite well-attended.55 For instance, it appears that the only crowded license of transmission reading session (iǧāza) of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī (d. 909/1503), a late 9th/15th-century Damascene Ḥanbalī scholar from the Sāliḥiyya neighborhood of Damascus, was one in which he read sīra (specifically šamāʾil, i.e. traditions about Muḥammad’s excellent qualities) in front of some fifty people. In other words, a šamāʾil reading was able to draw a number of people otherwise unattested to in Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī’s iǧāzāt.56 This scholar’s private book collection also shows quite a few sīra works, several of them mawlid-related.57
In narrative sources, Hadith and Sira are often mentioned together as subjects of transmission, learning, auditing.58 A report taken from the chronicle of the Syrian historian Ibn Kaṯīr not only illustrates this fact but sheds light on another aspect of the Sira culture of the time, that of its non-elite social fruition. In the events reported under the year 763/1361-1362, Ibn Kaṯīr mentions a session of Hadith drills organized after sunset prayer in the transept dome (qubbat al-nasr) of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. In it, a šayḫ named ʿImād al-Dīn b. al-Sarrāǧ transmitted Hadith in the presence of a large crowd (wa-ǧtamaʿa ʿinda-hu ḫalq kaṯīr wa-ǧamm ġafīr) and then read something from the Prophet’s sīra penned by Ibn Kaṯīr himself.59 Not only are Hadith and Sira juxtaposed here as just noted, but the Umayydad Mosque and the sizeable audience in this report also suggest that neither Hadith transmission nor Sira consumption were confined to a scholarly milieu. Minor scholarly personalities are also at times described as reading Sira to the commoners (ʿāmma).60 We may now recall Aḥmad b. Ismāʿīl al-Ibšīṭī, the preacher who compiled a large collection of biographies of Muḥammad. Although we do not know what precisely he preached about, it is reasonable to assume that Sira was part of it.61
That Sira was often preached is corroborated by the famous question asked by an anonymous petitioner to the polemical Ḥanbalī jurist and theologian Taqī l-Dīn Aḥmad Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328): “What do the scholars say about the storytellers who transmit the campaigns of the Prophet (maġāzī) and the stories of the prophets (qiṣas al-anbiyāʾ) under the Citadel, in the mosques and in the markets …”62 The question proves the circulation of the Prophet’s biographical narratives among the non-elite while also shedding light on the role of storytellers and preachers in such circulation and the tensions over authority engendered by their participation in the tradition. In his answer as well as in another short legal opinion (fatwa) on the famous sīra attributed to al-Bakrī (fl. second half of the 7th/13th century), Ibn Taymiyya is thoroughly dismissive of what he perceives to be the unchecked circulation of falsified narratives about the Prophet’s life. He calls for the political and military authorities to punish severely those who transmit, copy, and even trust the reliability of these materials. To Ibn Taymiyya, these narratives were lies representing a grave offense to the Prophet.63 An examination in detail of Ibn Taymiyya’s answer is beyond the scope of this article. The relevant aspect here is that the question posed to the Ḥanbalī scholar proves that the Prophet’s biographical traditions were not the sole domain of the ʿulamāʾ. Sira narratives were composed and disseminated by preachers and storytellers in a variety of open or public spaces which were attended by all sorts of people. Jonathan Berkey has demonstrated that the activities of such popular disseminators posed a significant challenge to the scholarly elite’s claim of monopoly over the transmission of religious knowledge.64
Evidence about ritualized practices of Sira consumption is attested to as well. Mawlid celebrations included readings of mawlid texts in the month of Rabīʿ al-awwal and the completion of the reading of a given sīra was celebrated in final ritual lectures (ḫatm), as for Hadith. Like Hadith but also other lengthy works, lengthy sīras were read in serial gatherings in specifically appointed times. A protracted reading of Ibn al-Šahīd’s versified sīra started in Ǧumādā I 789/May 1387 and continued Sunday and Thursday of that very week in Ibn al-Šahīd’s reception hall (fī qāʿati-hi); the reading was attended by a group of learned men (ǧamāʿat al-fuḍalāʾ). Thursday was a recommended day for Hadith reading and fasting.65 In many prophetic traditions, Thursday is mentioned as a day of exceptional events; it is the day in which the gates of Paradise will open, the day in which human deeds will be presented to God and their sins will be pardoned, Muḥammad’s preferred day of departure for travel, and finally, the day in which his health fatally deteriorated.66 Ibn al-Šahīd’s choice to gather the notables for reading his sīra on Thursday was surely not incidental.
There is evidence that the Šamāʾil al-muḥammadiyya of Abū ʿĪsā l-Tirmiḏī (d. 279/892) was read in Medina beside the Prophets’ grave after the completion of the pilgrimage.67 A ritual coloring also permeates an instance of the reading of Ibn Hišām’s sīra in Mecca where the book was read in the direction of the Kaʿba by the preacher Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-ʿUsaylī.68 Furthermore, an instance of Sira reading during the month of Ramaḍān is mentioned by Ibn Ḥaǧar, although it involves a faraway Andalusi Qurʾānic reader.69 In sum, though to a lesser degree than Hadith, Sira reading became ritualized, entailing an intensification of meaning.70
Conclusion
To conclude, Sira has thus far proven to be a vast literary repository characterized by fluidity of format, diverse social fruition, and plurality of practices in transmission and consumption. It also emerges as a field for which there was popular demand and scholarly dedication. Cultural and social practices revolving around Sira shared many features with those of Hadith. Yet, due to its prestige and normative import, in time Hadith and the science of Hadith came to be regulated by specific rules and protocols. On the contrary, Sira was characterized by greater narrative malleability and creativity.
The multifarious and prolific output of sīras thus far discussed could be interpreted as an expression of the characteristic phenomena of the ‘textualization’ and ‘popularization’ of the written word elucidated by Konrad Hirscher in his book, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands. Hirschler argues that between the 5th/11th and 9th/15th centuries, the Arab lands (Egypt and Syria, precisely) experienced a breakthrough of the written word. A considerable textual florescence gave rise to new formats, textual agencies, and social participation both in the production and consumption of written works. There is no reason to exclude a similar phenomenon of textualization promoting the spread of Sira as well, but the popularity, fondness and respect for this literary genre call for deeper exploration. Specifically, the intense veneration of the Prophet and culture of Hadith transmission typical of this period cannot be ignored as factors also nurturing the Sira culture of the time. As observed by Tarif Khalidi, this was particularly discernible in 8th/14th-century Damascus. It is then to the life and work of one of its ‘Prophet-centered’ scholars that the second part of this study turns.
Part II
2.1 Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimašqī: His Life, Work, and Religious Worldview
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn was a respected Damascene scholar and prominent Šāfiʿī Hadith specialist of the late 8th/14th and early 9th/15th centuries. We owe to al-Saḫāwī a long biographical notice on Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn where the latter is presented as a kind, courteous and patient man of erudition, undoubtedly the foremost transmitter of Prophet traditions and specialist of the field of his time in the Damascus region (ḥāfiẓ al-Šām).71 Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn lived in Ṣāliḥiyya, the neighborhood on Mount Qāsyūn founded by the Maqdsisī Ḥanbalīs in the 6th/12th century. In Ṣāliḥiyya, scholars of this school of law typically lived, taught, and engaged in Hadith transmission.72 Al-Saḫāwī emphasizes how Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn and Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī were bound to one another by feelings of mutual respect and admiration. He tells us that when Ibn Ḥaǧar was in Damascus in Šaʿbān 836/April 1433, the latter held a dictating session at the Umayyad Mosque at the request of Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn,73 and that Ibn Ḥaǧar also attended the latter’s inaugural lecture at the Dār al-ḥadīṯ al-ašrafiyya during which he gave Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn one of his books as a gift.74 In fact, during Ibn Ḥaǧar’s stay in Damascus, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn was appointed to the prestigious position of šayḫ at the Dār al-ḥadīṯ al-ašrafiyya intra-muros.75 It was Ibn Ḥaǧar, temporarily in possession of the post himself, who personally nominated Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn as šayḫ and attended the school together with him as long as he was in the city.76 The year before, Ibn Ḥaǧar had also much appreciated the composition of Ibn Naṣir al-Dīn’s al-Radd al-wāfir (see below), which had been written in Muḥarram 835/September 1431.77 From Cairo, Ibn Haǧar had endorsed the work with a dedicated statement (taqrīẓ) which he had also read when he was in Damascus as a sign of esteem for Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn.78
Ibn Ḥaǧar also includes Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn in the list of his teachers where he declares that Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn gave him a license to transmit Hadith more than once (wa-aǧāza la-nā ġayr marra).79 On the whole, the image of Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn delivered to us by his biographical notices is that of a non-confrontational scholar truly interested in his students and in people’s religious needs, but at the same time a highly respected member of the elite whose expertise in Prophetic traditions was acknowledged by the most prominent scholarly personalities of his time.
The diversified textual production of Sira, the pervasiveness of Hadith culture, and the intense devotion towards the person of Muḥammad of the period come together in the writings of Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimašqī. In modern scholarship, his name is usually associated with the heated debate he had with a Ḥanafī-Matūridī scholar named ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Buḫārī (d. 842/1438), who had declared that whoever acknowledged Ibn Taymiyya’s status as a šayḫ al-islām was an unbeliever. Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s written rejoinder to al-Buḫārī won him considerable renown, but the better part of his scholarly activities, texts and concerns remains essentially unexplored.80 The only notable exception in a Western language is Marion Holmes Katz’s work on the mawlid where she skillfully discerns Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s attentiveness to non-elite religious needs beyond the technicalities of Hadith scholarship.81
The Prophet and his pervasive legacy are Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s chief scholarly preoccupation. The number of Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s writings fluctuates between sixty and seventy, many of which have survived and have been printed in recent times.82 An overview of his literary output offers an idea about this scholar’s interests and religious worldview. Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s most voluminous work dealing with the technical aspects of Hadith transmission is his Tawḍīḥ al-muštabih fī ḍabṭ asmāʾ al-ruwāt. The Tawḍīḥ is a dictionary of transmitters in which Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn claims to edit the famous 8th/14th-century historian and Hadith expert al-Ḏahabī’s Kitāb al-Muštabih fī l-riǧāl which he finds lacking in accuracy owing to its brevity.83
We are lucky to have much of Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s teaching material in written form. His Maǧālis gather his inaugural lecture at the Dār al-ḥadīṯ al-ašrafiyya and consist of twenty-five sessions. In them, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn starts by recalling the history of the school, then sketching the profile of the teachers who preceded him and producing a series of reflections on different subjects derived from the Qurʾānic verse: “Allah did confer a great favor on the believers when He sent among them a messenger from among themselves” (Kor 3, 164).84
A short work in verse titled ʿUqūd al-durar fī ʿulūm al-aṯar is clearly didactic. It is a short poem (qaṣīda) on the science of Hadith immediately followed by an explanation (šarḥ).85 Longer, clearer, more structured, and also in verse is a ṭabaqāt work titled Badīʿat al-bayān li-mawt al-aʿyān. The Badīʿa takes al-Ḏahabī’s Ṭabaqāt al-ḥuffāẓ as its model but focuses on the death dates of excellent transmitters over time.86 Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn equips this work too with an explanatory commentary called al-Tibyān li-badīʿat al-bayān where he expands on the single biographies and helps guide his reader through the chronosticon system (ḥisāb al-ǧummal) he employs for determining death dates.87 In both of these writings (ʿUqūd and Badīʿa), the use of poetry is specifically didactic. More generally, Ibn Nāsir al-Dīn shows a predilection for poetry as an expressive means to pair with Hadith which enhances the emotive power of his writing and dramatizes its key narrative moments. Ibn Nāsir al-Dīn’s love for poetry as an expressive means did not go unnoticed to his contemporaries.88
Returning to his fields of expertise, to Hadith studies belongs his short apology of al-Buḫārī’s Ṣaḥīḥān which adheres fully to the canonical Hadith culture of the time.89 Equally indicative of Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s wholehearted commitment to Hadith transmission are several minor writings of his, many of which are today gathered in a designated maǧmūʿa. Some of these are simply his lectures, or the record of his transmission of authoritative collections (al-Buḫārī foremost) of which he exhibits the much sought-after elevation (ʿulūw), that is he boasts having short, high-quality chains connecting him to the transmitters of al-Buḫārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ.90 Other writings report and discuss specific traditions and their histories,91 or consist in corrections of small collections of Hadith.92 Al-Intiṣār li-samāʿ al-Ḥaǧǧār is an interpretation exercise of the technicalities inscribed on a preliminary attendance register (awrāq al-samāʿ) of a twenty-two-session reading of al-Buḫārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ which took place in 633/1235-1236.93 Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn clearly had that document at hand, which he uses in al-Intiṣār to register the frequency of the participants’ attendance.94 He thus argues that al-Ḥaǧǧār (d. 730/1329), a humble Damascene mason whose name appeared in the certificate, had truly heard all of the Saḥīḥ. Having died very old, and having heard the whole Saḥīḥ at a very young age, al-Ḥaǧǧār’s role as the source of a prestigious elevated local chain connecting him and all those who heard the Ṣaḥīḥ from him to al-Buḫārī was thus confirmed.95 Not only does this text bear witness to the Hadith transmission culture of the era, it is also a testimony to Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s involvement in this culture and his command of the field’s technicalities.
Several other works are meant to encourage his audience to perform pious acts with a view to a prosperous afterlife. The idea put forth by Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn is that certain historical moments witnessed extraordinary events and were thus blessed by God with special powers. Such is the case for the days of ʿArafa and ʿĀšūrāʾ to which he dedicates two short treatises asserting that the performance of pious acts on these days brings great benefit to the believer.96 In line with this logic, another text encourages believers to perform, at least once in their life, a prayer prescribed by a number of traditions called ṣalāt al-taṣbīḥ.97 Meanwhile, focusing on “correct” practice is a rebuttal of the refusal to raise hands (rafʿ al-yadayn) during supplications.98 These works are simple and agile. They mainly unfold as quotations of Hadith followed by isnād criticism, although Marion Katz notes that “the author’s interests are primarily oriented towards pious action.”99 In other words, the underlying concern is that of offering his readers or auditors a handy guide to increasing their religious merit and hence their chances of salvation. Though it is neither short nor agile, a similar approach is at work in Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār.
Finally, and most importantly for the purposes of this study, was Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s fondness for sīra and sīra-related literature. The sīra of Ibn Hišām is listed among the works he had himself learnt and then transmitted,100 as also testified by a ḫatm penned by Ibn Nāsir al-Dīn himself marking the end of a multi-session reading of the text.101 Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s also composed three mawlid texts (including the Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār), two books on the Prophet’s death, two on his nocturnal ascension (miʿrāǧ), and one qaṣīda on the events following the hiǧra that is also included in Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār.102 One of his collection of traditions devoted to the prophet’s final days (Salwat al-kaʾīb bi-wafāt al-ḥabīb) enjoyed some local success. It was heard, copied, and circulated in Damascus among members of the Šāfiʿī Ġazzī family in the 9th/15th and 10th/16th centuries from a copy whose transmission went back to the author himself.103
On the whole, this production signals that cultivating remembrance of Muḥammad’s life milestones was an important feature of Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s religious worldview. His lecture celebrating the end of the reading of Ibn Hišām’s al-Sīra l-nabawiyya offers a glimpse in this regard. Dated to Šawwāl 818/January 1416, the ḫatm consists of a collection of verses lamenting the Prophet’s death. The verses are uttered by his immediate Companions and closest female relatives: Ṣafiyya, Hind and ʿĀʾiša, his daughter Fāṭima. Poetry complements the verses of the Sīra, but also dramatizes the terrible calamity that befell the community and the emotions associated with it.104 The ḫatm also transmits a series of short traditions. These reports draw attention to the grave of the Prophet as a special space of conjunction between him and believers where the latter can make themselves heard and attain salvation. Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn quotes well-known traditions on the promise of intercession to whoever visits Muḥammad’s grave and on the Prophet hearing prayers uttered for him by his grave. In sum, the Prophet’s grave is represented as a space of charisma, miracles (karāmāt) and unique prerogatives (ḫaṣāʾiṣ) of which Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn offers a sample. The materials he quotes encourage the veneration of the Prophet, although the author does not explicitly state this. He does say, though, that the miracles and prerogatives stemming from attendance of Muḥammad’s grave can be learnt from prophetic Hadith as well as from Muḥammad’s sīra, without differentiating between the two.
Ibn Nāṣir al Dīn closes his ḫatm with verses praising sīra as if addressing a person:
In these verses Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn makes the function of sīra clear: sīra provides spiritual illumination and healing through the recollection of the life and qualities of the best of creatures, Muḥammad. The idea that intimacy with Muḥammad’s life circumstances and special qualities provides a means for spiritual elevation also infuses Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār. It was an idea that permeated mawlid texts and their recitation, as well as the sober sufi spirituality of local Hadith transmitters as recently argued by Arjan Post in his study of ʿImād al-Dīn al-Wāsiṭī (d. 711/1311), a Ḥanbalī Sufi who had been part of Ibn Taymiyya’s circle of followers. Post draws attention to the fact that inner knowledge of prophetic Sira and Hadith was elaborated by al-Wāsiṭī as the first necessary step of the murīd’s spiritual journey (sulūk).106 Although, al-Wāsiṭī’s reception remains to be studied, it is unlikely that Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn did not at least partially absorb such ideas. Not only did he live in Ṣāliḥiyya, attend Ḥanbalīs and was attended by Ḥanbalīs, and was personally involved in Hadith transmission, but he was also the author of a short treatise on ḫirqa (Iṭfāʾ ḥurqat al-ḥawba bi-ilbās ḫirqat al-tawba) which speaks of his participation in a local traditionalist sufi-inflected spirituality centered on the person of the Prophet.107 Keeping in mind such spirituality helps us make sense of that complex edifice which is Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, which in fact contains echoes of this sufi-inflected piety.
2.2 Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār fī l-siyar wa-mawlid al-muḫtār, or The Compilation of Traditions on the Life and Birth of the Chosen One
At the intersection of Hadith, Sira and devotional literature (mawlid specifically) stands this remarkably bulky œuvre.108 We know that Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār was compiled before Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s inaugural lecture at the Dār al-ḥadīth al-ašrafiyya (that is before 836/1433) because his inaugural teachings there (i.e. the Maǧālis) mention the work.109 In fact, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār may have even gotten Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn the mašyaḫa at the Dār al-ḥadīṯ, its numerous competent Hadith reviews being an erudite contribution to the field.
In Hadith literature, a ǧāmiʿ was an encyclopedic compilation of traditions organized by topic which was meant to be studied by browsing its contents. Al-Buḫarī, Muslim, and al-Tirmiḏī all wrote Ǧāmiʿs.110 Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn titled his a collection of āṯār (lit. “tracks or traces”), a word dear to him that points to an inclusive idea of tradition as a corpus of transmitted texts comprising not only the words of the Prophet but also those of his Companions and the early generations of his followers.111 The word ǧāmiʿ echoes the comprehensiveness and authority of the famous Hadith collections Ibn Nāṣir well knew, but also points to an ambitious mode of doing Sira that was typical of the time which tended to absorb and combine together elements from other literary genres and develop rich and complex literary structures.112
2.2.1 Structure and Contents: An Overview of Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār
In modern scholarship, the oscillating classification of Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār either as a work of Hadith or Sira is suggestive of its hybrid nature.113 As a matter of fact, the structure and contents of the work help us determine the author’s intentions in composing this text.
At the very end of the work’s introductory pages, its author declares: “I divided this abridged compilation (al-ǧāmiʿ al-muḫtaṣar) into chapters divided according to well-arranged meanings, and I named it The Compilation of Traditions on the Life and Birth of the Chosen One.”114 The text is today edited in eight volumes and scarcely resembles an abridged work at all to the modern reader. But Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn measured the text in proportion to the uncountable available materials on the Prophet.115 Immeasurable quantity indicates insuperable excellence. This is a ubiquitous message in Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār: the amazing quantity of Hadith and traditions on and of Muḥammad, as well as the multitude of his names, are evidence of his perfection. The awareness and recognition of such perfection is a means to foster piety and love towards his person.
The text proceeds in long sections or chapters (faṣl/fuṣūl) which are arranged diachronically and report materials on the various moments of the Prophet’s life, starting from attestations of his coming and the Prophet’s pre-existence. Each chapter thus gathers clusters of traditions thematically related to its main topic. While the chapters are titled, the respective divisions (bāb/abwāb) within them not always are. The array of the topics is predictably broad.
The first seven chapters are dedicated to Muḥammad’s pre-corporeal history. Six of them present materials announcing his coming and special status granted by God. At their center stands the theme of attestation which, as Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn states, belongs to “the signs of prophethood” (aʿlām al-nubuwwa).116 The Qurʾān, the Torah and the Gospels, Moses and Jesus, as well as soothsayers, rabbis, previous prophets and men of learning, animals, plants and stones all are called in to announce, thus recognizing and confirming, Muḥammad’s coming prophethood.117 This is followed by a short chapter on God’s preference for Muḥammad and his superiority over all other creatures, men and angels alike; a superiority that extends to his umma.118 A remarkably long string of Hadith on the Prophet’s merits and prerogatives (faḍāʾil and ḫaṣāʾiṣ) is then reported to sanction this idea of divine predilection and superiority and serves as the climax to these chapters.
Muḥammad’s own voice attests his predestined mission and God’s fondness for him. Time and again, the Prophet proclaims himself as the distillation of God’s choice: God elected the Arabs, then the Qurayš among the Arabs, then the Banū Hāšim among the Qurayš, and finally himself among the Banū Hāšim.119 Equally, he attests his salvific role in the Last Day: “When the day of Resurrection comes, I will be the imām of the prophets, their preacher, the holder of their intercession […]” (iḏā kāna yawm al-qiyāma kuntu imām al-nabiyyīn wa-ḫaṭība-hum wa-ṣāḥib šafāʿati-him […]).120 He describes himself as the first to enter Paradise and the most followed prophet on the Last Day. In several traditions, Muḥammad highlights the predetermination of his mission by the fact that he was appointed prophet when Adam was between body and spirit.121 According to another ḥadīṯ, he declares “I was the first prophet to be created and the last to be sent” (kuntu awwal al-nās fī l-ḫalq wa-āḫira-hum fī l-baʿṯ).122 Finally, God’s special affection for Muḥammad is demonstrated by the Prophet’s names and epithets. The fact that God addressed him by a variety of names each reflecting his best qualities whereas He had referred to his other messengers simply by their names is proof of God’s predilection for his last messenger.123 In sum, the first six chapters put on stage a multivocal glorification of Muḥammad centered on his pre-existence and predestination as well as a great emphasis on his eschatological salvific role.
Muḥammad’s genealogical history is traced in the next faṣl (number 7).124 This chapter presents the Prophet’s lineage and the story of his ancestors. Muḥammad’s descent from Adam is tackled by presenting the ‘intermediaries’ between the two. Traditions about Adam and Eve’s creation and their expulsion from the Garden are reported and so is the pre-Islamic history of Mecca which converges on Muḥammad’s grandfather, ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, his parents and their excellence. At this point, the ground has been prepared for Muḥammad’s life-story. A long new chapter (faṣl 8) dedicated to mawlid and related stories occupies an important portion of Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār but does not marginalize other significant moments of the Prophet’s life.125 His birth tales are a blending of accounts touching on his conception and his mother Āmina’s pregnancy, the appearance of the miraculous light that announces something extra-ordinary about the newborn, the blessed time and place of his birth, and the wondrous events that took place on that night. This faṣl includes extra-mawlid materials such as lengthy reports about the Battle of the Elephant and ends with a lengthy section on the Prophet’s naming followed by a long list with explanations of all of his other names:126 “All his names derive from the laudable qualities that God bestowed upon him; by them He granted him praise and perfection” (wa-asmāʾu-hu kullu-hā min ṣifāti-hi l-ḥamīdiyya allatī manaḥa-hu Llāh taʿālā iyyā-hā).127 The fact that God reserved the use of the name Muḥammad for the Prophet’s coming is yet another “sign of [his] prophethood.”128
Muḥammad’s childhood and youth follow.129 This chapter (9) runs from his breastfeeding to his mission, starting with accounts of his upbringing and multiple traditions on the opening and cleansing of his breast and about the seal of prophethood. Both topics are typical variations of the broad theme of predestined election transposed onto his early years.130 The chapter continues in neat chronological order: the death of his mother, ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib’s custody (kafāla) of Muḥammad and ʿAlī, the episode of Baḥīra, Muḥammad’s participation in the sacrilegious war (ḥarb al-fiǧār),131 the visits from angels Muḥammad started receiving at the age of twenty,132 his trading activity, marriage to Ḫadīǧa, the marriages and death of their daughters,133 the virtues of Ḫadīǧa and her passing away,134 the reconstruction of the Kaʿba by the Qurayš and the sanctuary’s history.135 The reader is here acquainted with Muḥammad and Ḫadīǧa’s descendants and their virtues. Finally, Muḥammad’s mission and revelation close this chapter.136
Muḥammad’s migration from Mecca to Medina (hiǧra), occupies the next bulky chapter (faṣl 10) which exhibits a plenitude of laudatory materials on the Prophet’s qualities and merits and on places associated with him such as Medina and his mosque there.137 Here again, the presentation proceeds chronologically, starting with reports on the events preceding the hiǧra followed by the Companions’ migration, and ending with accounts reporting details on Abū Bakr and Muḥammad’s hiǧra.138 In an intentional digression, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn expends conspicuous energy relating and commenting upon descriptions of the Prophet’s physical and moral qualities.139 He picks four notorious ḥadīṯs on the subject, those of Umm Maʿbad, Hind, ʿAlī, and ʿĀʾiša, and in typical fashion reports their different chains and textual variations.140 Then he comments and explains the meaning of their wordings, seizing the opportunity to make a very long digression into a myriad of other materials on the Prophet’s nature, virtues, and personal features (šamāʾil).
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn had opened this digression on the Prophet’s qualities with the story of Umm Maʿbad’s description of Muḥammad, and he closes it by recalling it.141 At this point, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn can resume his hiǧra-centered narrative. He reports traditions on the Prophets’ arrival to Qubāʾ and then Medina, noting the building of the mosque of each city. The virtues of these places are expounded upon, as are the houses of his wives, the gifts of the anṣār to the Prophet, and his nostalgia for Mecca.142 The insignificant number of pages, only five in the present edition of Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, dedicated to the central years of the Prophet’s Medinan life stands out. Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn mentions the Prophet’s missions, expeditions and military campaigns in a short, rhymed poem which covers only three pages. The poem is called Bawāʿiṯ al-fikra fī ḥawādiṯ al-hiǧra, and the student (al-ṭālib) is obliged to memorize it. This poem is followed by a two-page discussion on variations in the number of the Prophet’s expeditions (maġāzī).143 Clearly, these were of little interest to the author.
It is the character of the final farewell pilgrimage and the dramatic moment of Muḥammad’s illness and passing away that are most significant to Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, and to which the long penultimate faṣl (11) is dedicated.144 The long ḥadīṯ of Ǧābir b. ʿAbd Allāh about the Prophet’s farewell pilgrimage (ḥuǧǧat al-wadāʿ) is taken as the foundational tradition (aṣl) of this section. As it unfolds, it is juxtaposed with corroborating reports and additions (šawāhid and ziyādāt) as well as other related useful information (fawāʾid).145 Again, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn shows great attention to structure by organizing his materials coherently and diachronically. Once done with Ǧābir, he reports other less detailed stories about the farewell pilgrimage and announces what comes next: Muḥammad’s return and settlement in Medina, “According to what of the Hadith I happened to inspect” (ḥasbamā taḍammanat-hu l-aḥādīṯ allatī waqaʿat la-nā).146 Next, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār moves on with the Prophet’s illness and death.147 Some space is dedicated to Abū Bakr’s succession (typically, the Prophet’s death is the most suitable moment for stressing a strictly Sunni political worldview),148 followed by the preparation of the dead and the prayer for him.149 Considerable importance is given to the Prophet’s burial’s place.150 The rest of the traditions and poetry reported in this chapter converge on the emotions stirred by the Prophet’s death.151 Divergent opinions are presented regarding the age of Muḥammad at the time of his passing and the length of his illness, his inheritance (mirāṯ), the women he left, his wives, servants and mawālī.152
The final chapter (faṣl 12) of the book is dedicated to “What Muḥammad left behind” (faṣl fī mā taraka-hu l-nabī baʿd wafāti-hi): garments, a ring, weapons, accessories, objects (the banner, the stick with a crooked end, a red rounded tent …); the animals that were dear to him.153 The prophet’s “special prerogatives” (ḫaṣāʾiṣ) lead Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār to its end by evoking the special significance of his grave and the meaningfulness of praying for him beside it. Its visitation (ziyāra) is implicitly recommended as a meritorious act, and the elegies of its first visitor, Fāṭima, close this voluminous work.
2.2.2 Observations
The thematic richness and the mixture of elements blended in the Ǧāmiʿ are now evident, the most obvious example being the intertwining of episodes from the Prophet’s biography with devotional materials stressing his unique qualities. The selection of sources Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn draws upon and regularly cites is impressive. He incessantly shifts between canonical and non-canonical Hadith collections, taʾrīḫ (al-Ṭabarī, Ibn Šābba, al-Azraqī, Sayf b. ʿUmar …), sīras from the formative period as well as later ones (Ibn Saʿd, al-Wāqidī, Ibn Isḥāq, Ibn Hišām, al-Suhaylī, Ibn Ḥazm, Ibn al-Ǧawzī …), proofs of prophethood (al-Bayhaqī, Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī, al-Māwardī …), šamāʾil (al-Tirmiḏī, al-Bayḥaqī …), and faḍāʾil (of people as well as places), to mention just a few.154 In addition, the author relies on less well-known works to which he must have had direct access. For instance, at the end of the sixth chapter he abundantly quotes from a short treatise on God’s preference for Muḥammad penned by his respected Damascene Šāfiʿī colleague, Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām (d. 600/1262).155 He quotes from sources which today remain unlocated, such as al-Sulamī’s (d. 412/1021) Kitāb al-Mawāʿiẓ (The Book of Exhortations), or al-Bardānī’s (d. 498/1005) collection of traditions about Those Who Saw the Prophet in Dreams (Man raʾā l-nabī fī manāmi-hi).156 The vastness of this source base suggests that the author owned or had access to a large number of books. It also brings into focus an important aspect of this genre, namely that the ǧāmiʿ in the title alludes to a certain type of encyclopedic Hadith work, but also highlights the intended comprehensiveness of Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s purposefully multi-genre sīra compilation.157 As previously highlighted, such comprehensiveness was a typical feature of later Medieval Sīra which this work exemplifies.
Each chapter develops a number of related themes, typically introduced by the author in synthetic fashion and followed by clusters of traditions and other materials related to the topic in question.158 Sometimes, between presenting a topic and reporting on traditions to illustrate it, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn ventures into short doctrinal presentations. For instance, he presents various types of migration (hiǧra) before dealing with Muḥammad’s journey to Medina.159 Or, before presenting traditions about the beginning of Muḥammad’s mission, he clarifies that the Prophet was protected from error, was not following any other law or revelation before receiving the Qurʾān, that the Qurʾān is distinguished by unsurpassable literary qualities, and that it is truly the Prophet’s apodictic miracle.160
After such digressions, the author meticulously retrieves his discourse from where he left it, sometimes by explicitly referring to the junction of departure and thus maintaining the work’s narrative fabric.161 A clear example is the long excursus on the Prophet’s excellent qualities (šamāʾil). The digression starts from Umm Maʿbad, who is mentioned at the beginning of the hiǧra accounts because of Abū Bakr and Muḥammad’s stopover by her camp on their way out of Mecca. After their departure, Umm Maʿbad is interrogated by her husband on the two men’s visit and in replying, she delivers her description of the Prophet. This description paves the way for other traditions on Muḥammad’s appearance and character, namely those conveyed by Hind, ʿAlī and ʿĀʾiša, as mentioned above. The ensuing commentaries and the addition of related traditions constitute a very long and detailed excursus that covers the fourth and fifth volumes of Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār ’s present edition and interrupts the hiǧra story. Nonetheless, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn dutifully closes his šamāʾil detour by returning to Umm Maʿbad: “[…] This Umm Maʿbad was a female companion emigrant to Medina. We said before that her full name was […]” (wa-Umm Maʿbad hāḏihi min al-ṣaḥābiyyāt al-muhāǧirāt taqaddama anna sma-hā […]).162 Her name is then declined in full, her tent’s location identified, and a possible identification of her grave’s site spotted. Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn shows his great care for narrative cohesion by ending the šamāʾil-centered section and returning to the hiǧra precisely from where he had interrupted it.
Prophetic and non-prophetic traditions are the preponderant material of Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār. That is, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn as a Hadith expert is constantly at work: he expends remarkable energy evaluating the chains he reports as well as the work of his fellow Hadith scholars.163 Much attention is dedicated to establishing the transmitters’ names or illustrating the different chains along which one report is transmitted. Variations in the mutūn (texts) and additions to them are also included. All along, the author offers his interpretation of certain words or his criteria for including a certain report. When possible, the Ṣaḥiḥān are given due precedence but when he has other Hadith sources at his disposal, he uses them to illustrate single episodes from the Prophets’ life.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn demonstrates a clear awareness of and attention to the distinction between Hadith (prophetic words) and āṯār (traditions about the Prophet from authorities other than him).164 Obviously, when dealing with pre-Islamic events he is generally compelled to resort to materials other than Hadith. For instance, when introducing the Battle of the Elephant, he is adamant that the event was transmitted in detail by traditions (āṯār), authors of expeditions (siyar) and exegetes. Ibn Ṇāṣir al-Dīn explains that since accounts of the battle are scattered (mufarraqa) he gathered them together as if they were one narrative (ʿalā siyāqat ḥadīṯ wāḥid).165
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn does not embrace a prescriptive attitude towards the traditions he reports. This means that he comments on the quality of the transmitters, flags their eventual soundness with their different ranks, reports of any disagreement with his peers, and duly signals and justifies the quotation of a fabricated ḥadīṯ.166 In doing so, he conforms to the Hadith transmission etiquette of the time which recommended that fabricated Hadith never be transmitted unless with a statement clarifying their faulty status.167 But in contrast to other Sira authors who were part of the same milieu and with whose work Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn was familiar, he shows leniency towards his materials and works by juxtaposing reports, rather than excluding them.
To illustrate this point, let us briefly glimpse at the renowned 8th/14th century historians and authoritative Hadith experts Šams al-Dīn al-Ḏahabī and Ibn Kaṯīr. Like Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, both lived in Damascus. They were Šāfiʿīs and committed traditionalists in theology who were close to Ibn Taymiyya’s circle. Like Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, they wrote sīras distinguished by a massive injection of Hadith and Hadith scholarship.168 But in contrast, their sīras were part of bigger historiographical projects: al-Ḏahabī’s Taʾrīḫ al-islām (History of Islam) and Ibn Kaṯīr’s universal history al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya (The Beginning and the End). Also, unlike Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, their concern with authentication is much more pronounced.169 Ibn Kaṯīr’s al-Bidāwa wa-l-nihāya opens with a manifesto exhibiting a high degree of methodological consciousness. He declares that he will avoid the use of reputedly ‘non-Islamic’ narratives about biblical characters (Isrāʾiliyyāt) apart from what agrees with the Qurʾān, and more generally that he will rely upon that which is sound and good of (mā ṣaḥḥa naqlu-hu aw ḥasuna), and not that which is weak, which he will warn against (wa-mā kāna fī-hi l-ḍaʿf nunabbihu-hu).170 Although ultimately he does not fully succeed in complying with this programme, his initial statement alone is revealing.171 As for al-Ḏahabī, his sīra is much shorter, and his style certainly less discursive than Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn. The former proceeds by reporting the relevant traditions and then peremptorily issues verdicts about their quality (wa-hāḏā ṣaḥīḥ, ḥasan, ġarīb, munkar, ḍaʿīf …),172 at times openly questioning the soundness of certain elements. In an account like the journey of ʿAlī with Muḥammad to Syria as reported by Qurād Abū Nūḥ, al-Ḏahabī sounds much preoccupied with the factual veracity of the account’s details,173 an attitude rarely found in Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn.
Last, despite the fragmentary nature of Hadith, there is no doubt that Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn intended his work as Sira. This is demonstrated by internal and literary evidence. Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn refers to his composition at its end as “this sīra.”174 Similarly, in one colophon the copyist writes: “This is the epilogue (ḫātima) of this sīra,” revealing his perception of the work as belonging to this literary family.175 Meanwhile, the literary features distinguishing a sīra mentioned at the beginning of this study are also present in the work. A pronounced chronological concern runs through the text. Chronology is a narrative tool that provides a continuum to an otherwise unwieldy mass of materials and is a major preoccupation of Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn. Muḥammad’s age is given or debated for nearly every single event; often it is the first piece of information provided and then followed by traditions discussing chronological variations. This approach renders Muḥammad’s timeline visible.176 What’s more, the whole of the Prophet’s existence unfolds consistently in the text, from the time of creation in which he is created but not yet physically in the world, to the time in which he becomes manifest in the world after his physical birth, to the time of his bodily disappearance when his grave becomes the space where his presence can still be felt.
Poetry infuses Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār and serves multiple purposes. It can highlight topical moments, explain obscure words, serve as an introduction device for stories, intensify emotions, or have a didactic purpose.177 Similarly, lexical glosses are spread throughout the text.178 Narratives and citations from the Qurʾān frequently intertwine as it is typical of sīra narratives.179 Finally, genealogy serves to single out the members of the Prophet’s family as individuals of special merit. The only absent feature of Sira among those identified by Miskinzoda is “letters to rulers and documents.” In short, enhancing historicity or demonstrating authenticity was not Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s most pressing concern.
2.2.3 Purpose
Two of its key-topics further highlight the ways in which Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār was a voice for the prophetic veneration culture typical of the time.
In the list of Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s works, this writing appears with the shortened title Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār fī mawlid al-muḫtār, “originally in three volumes.”180 Thus, the text was associated with the celebration of the Prophet’s birth even though the work is not focused exclusively on mawlid or mawlid-related topics. The difficulty of defining the thematic core of Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār is reflected in the fluctuating titles of its manuscripts. These vary from Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār fī mawlid al-muḫtār where the focus in on mawlid, to Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār fī sīrat al-muḫtār where the focus is on Muḥammad’s life to Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār fī l-siyar wa-l-mawlid, where the focus is on both. One title also recites: Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār fī sīrat al-nabī l-muḫtār and “what happened to him, his emigration and death, military campaigns, miracles, auxiliaries and companions” (wa-mā ǧarā ʿalay-hi wa-hiǧratu-hu wa-wafātu-hu wa-ġazawātu-hu wa-muʿǧizātu-hu wa-anṣāru-hu wa-ṣaḥābu-hu).181
The introduction is of use in this regard, suggesting that the work was inspired by the mawlid celebration:
فإنّ قلوب المؤمنين وأفئدة المتّقين وأرواح المحبّين تحيا عند نشر الأحاديث النبوية وتُنير بالسماع السيرة المحمدية وتتشوّق إلى وصف أخلاق نبيّنا الشريفة وتتشوّف إلى نعت أوصافه الجليلة المنيفة وتتشرّف ببثّ آدابه الجليلة اللطيفة وترتاح في كل عام إلى سماع حديث مولده أفضل الصلاة والسلام.
The hearts of the believers, the inner hearts of the God-fearing ones, and the souls of the lovers revive at the propagation of Hadith and lighten to the listening of Muḥammad’s sīra, they ardently desire the description of our Prophet’s noble nature and long for the depiction of his glorious exalted qualities, they are uplifted by his sublime fine manners and are pleased every year with listening to the story of his birth, may the best of prayer and peace be upon him.182
This passage functions as an anticipation of the work’s contents and draws attention to the spiritual and emotional benefits derived from listening to Hadith and Sira: revival of the soul and illumination, fulfillment of ardent desire for the Prophet, moral uplifting, pleasure.
The rest of the introduction focuses on mawlid celebrations, described as a “good innovation” (bidʿa ḥasana) by Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn. He writes that in his time, mawlid had become a yearly festivity celebrated with much delight in the lands of Islam, Mecca, Medina, Syria, and Egypt. Yet, it was also a celebration in whose observance people differed, some following the proper etiquette, others not. He then sketches a brief history of the first mawlid celebration in Irbil by the local ruler al-Malik al-Muẓaffar Abū Saʿīd al-Kökbürī (d. 630/1233) at the beginning of the 7th/13th century.183 Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn describes the lavish banquet, the adorned pavilions erected expressly for the occasion, and the diffuse atmosphere of joy and delight which could sometimes lead to objectionable behavior (rubbamā addā li-l-wuqūʿ al-maḥḏūr). A tenuous allusion to mawlid polemics surfaces here but remains undeveloped.184 Next, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn expresses his appreciation for al-Kökbürī as a ruler who loved his people, was fond of Sufi samāʿ and was well-learnt in Hadith.185 Taking Abū Šāma (d. 665/1268) as his reference, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn closes these pages by re-stating the permissibility and the goodness of the mawlid celebration which, together with acts of charity and the manifestation of love for Muḥammad that they entail, is a way of thanking God for the blessing of Muḥammad’s message.186 Given people’s attachment and love for this festivity, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn concludes:
ولما رأيتُ أحوال المؤمنين على ما وصفناه من الميل والمحبة لما ذكرناه ألّفتُ هذا المختصر المعلم من أحوال نبيّنا محمد وذِكْر مولده ومنشئه وصفاته وأخلاقه الشريفة ووفاته ليحصل لهم غاية مطلوبهم ويحصّلوا خِصال محبوبهم ويزدادوا إيمانًا ومحبةً ويرتقوا بذلك أعلى رتبة فالمرء مع من أحبّ.
When I saw the condition of the believers, according to what I described of the attachment and love for that which we have mentioned, I composed this Compendium which is marked by the circumstances of our Prophet Muḥammad and the recollection of his birth, origins, qualities, noble nature and death, so that the ultimate object of their desire reaches them and they attain the excellent qualities of their beloved, increase in faith and love, and thanks to this ascend to the highest rank, for man will be with whom he loves.187
This passage is decisive: by recalling the Prophet’s major life-landmarks as well as his good nature (aḫlāq) and qualities (ṣifāt), Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn wants to offer a means – and what is for him the right means – for believers to draw towards the Prophet internally to the point of reaching their object of desire and attaining his excellent qualities (yuḥaṣṣilū ḫiṣāl maḥbūbi-him). Accordingly, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār is meant to offer more than simple knowledge about the Prophets’ life; it cultivates an intimate and inner propinquity to the person of the Prophet and fuels feelings of love for him. These feelings will win believers a special position of proximity to Muḥammad in the Hereafter, as follows from the citation “for man will be with whom he loves.”188
The above phrase is an excerpt from a famous ḥadīṯ which touches on the crucial issue of salvation. It is narrated by Anas b. Mālik (d. ca 91/709-93/711) and gives voice to a questioner who asked the Prophet about the Afterlife (the Hour). Confronted with Muḥammad’s question: “What did you prepare for it [i.e. for the Hour]?” (māḏā aʿdadta la-hā) – the questioner humbly replied that he prepared nothing, save his love for God and the Prophet. At these words, Muḥammad asserted: “You will be with whom you love” (anta maʿa man aḥbabta).189
The first version of this ḥadīṯ reported by Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn is from al-Buḫārī and Muslim, where, following the Prophet’s words, Anas b. Mālik declares not only his love for the Prophet, but also that for Abū Bakr and ʿUmar: “I love the Prophet, Abū Bakr and ʿUmar, and I wish I will be with them thanks to my love for them, even if my actions are not like theirs” (anā uḥibbu l-nabī wa-Abā Bakr wa-ʿUmar wa-arǧū an akūna maʿa-hum bi-ḥubbī iyyā-hum wa-in lam aʿmal bi-miṯl aʿmāli-him).190 At the forefront of Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār stands not only the idea that familiarizing oneself with the ‘traces’ (āṯār) of the Prophet’s life’s grants spiritual elevation and salvation, but also a strong Sunni-oriented declaration of faith.191
In what follows, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn lists the different transmitters of this ḥadīṯ, their names, identity, and degrees of reliability. Eventually he points to defects in the chain192 and reports textual variations of the tradition with similar comments upon their chains of transmission.193 One strand of the tradition, reported in multiple chains, prioritizes love over observance: the person questioned by the Prophet about the Hour confesses that he has not prepared via prayer or fasting, and only possesses his love for him. Even in this case, the Prophet remains firm: “Man is with whom he loves, and you will be with whom you loved” (al-marʾ maʿa man aḥabba wa-anta maʿa man aḥbabta). Anas b. Mālik again comments upon the Prophet’s words and highlights the believers’ relief upon hearing them: “I’ve never seen Muslims rejoice at anything after [the advent of] Islam as they did on this occasion” (mā raʾaytu l-muslimīna fariḥū baʿd al-islām faraḥa-hum [bi-hā]).194
At this point, and as he does elsewhere in his work, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn supplements the ḥadīṯ on love with extra-Hadith materials corroborating it and exemplifying its meaning. First, he recalls that the well-known sufi, Šāfiʿī scholar and traditionist Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī (d. 430/1038), the author of no less than Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ and Dalāʾil al-nubuwwa – one of Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s favourite sources – dedicated to this tradition an entire composition (muṣannaf) in which he collected most (ġālib) of its transmission paths.195 This observation paves the way to two dream-narratives where love generates the benefit of inclusion among the loved ones in the Hereafter.
The first dream is traced back to Muḥammad al-Bardānī (d. 498/1005), a proficient Ḥanbalī ḥadīṯ scholar in Baghdad, and his book Man raʾā l-nabī fī manāmi-hi (Those Who Saw the Prophet in Dreams). In his biographical notice of him, al-Ḏahabī confirms that: “He had put together a volume about prophetic dreams” (ǧamaʿa muǧalladan fī l-manāmāt al-nabawiyya). This collection seems no longer extant,196 but we do know that al-Bardānī’s traditions circulated in the Damascus Ḥanbalī and traditionalists circles of which Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn was part.197 Al-Ḏahabī himself relies upon a chain going back to al-Bardānī to report the notorious ḥadīṯ in which the Prophet sanctions dreams as an extension of prophecy.198 Furthermore, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn quotes al-Bardānī once more in the first faṣl.199
The dream narrator, a certain Abū ʿAlī glossed by Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn as “perhaps he was Ibn Ḫafīf (d. 371/982)” recounts having seen the Prophet in a dream in which he sat with the ‘poor’ (fuqarāʾ). Observing from above and at some distance, Abū ʿAlī sees Gabriel and the angels pouring water on the hands of the group for washing. Abū ʿAlī extends his hands to receive water too, but the angels warn Gabriel: “Don’t pour water on him because he is not one of them” (la taṣubbū l-māʾ ʿalā yadi-hi fa-laysa min-hum). To this Abū ʿAlī replies: “Oh Messenger of God, even if I am not one of them, I truly love them” (yā rasūl Allāh fa-in kuntu lastu min-hu fa-innī uḥibbu-hum). At this the Prophet intervened: “‘Man is with whom he loves’ – so they poured water on my hand” (al-marʾ maʿa man aḥabba fa-ṣabbū l-māʾ ʿalā yadī).200 The dream also speaks of a tension between this anonymous group of renunciants – their piety being exemplified by poverty – and an important personality of classical Sufism, the traditionalist oriented Ibn Ḫafīf. The Prophet sanctions Ibn Ḫafīf’s inclusion in the group by dint of his love for them.201
The second story is also said to be taken from a source which is today no longer extant: al-Mawāʿiẓ (The Exhortations) by the sufi traditionist Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021), a contemporary of Abū Nuʿaym and al-Bardānī.202 The dream is of the early renunciant Ibrāhīm b. Adham (d. 163/779-780) and portrays a conversation between Ibrāhīm and Gabriel.203 Gabriel is pictured in the act of descending to earth to record the names of “those who love” (al-muḥibbīn), when Ibrāhīm straightforwardly asks, “Like whom?”, to which the angel replies: “‘Like Mālik ibn Dīnār, Ṯābit al-Bunānī and Ayyūb al-Saḫtiyānī’ – and he listed a great many.” When Ibrāhīm enquires, “Am I among them?”, Gabriel refuses him straight away. No explanation whatsoever is given for this unexpected snub; as an early pious renunciant, Ibrāhīm is equal in renown to the three people mentioned, so his separation from ‘the lovers’ (al-muḥibbīn) comes across as a disturbingly arbitrary and unmotivated act. But as in the previous story, Ibrāhīm is protected ‘by way of love.’ He addresses Gabriel by saying: “When you write their names, write underneath: ‘Lover of those who love’” [referring to himself]. He said [i.e. Ibrāhīm]: And at this, a revelation (al-waḥy) descended proclaiming ‘Write him before them!’” (fa-iḏā katabta-hum fa-ktub taḥta-hum: muḥibb al-muḥibbīn, qāla: fa-nazala l-waḥy ‘uktub-hu awwala-hum’). Thus, the revelation not only acknowledges Ibrāhīm’s proper place, but also to [work to demonstrate…] changes his status.204 In this story, the muḥibbīn’s object of desire remains unspecified (is it God or the Prophet?).205 Be that as it may, Ibrāhīm b. Adham’s love for his fellow renunciants gains him a prominent place within this group of chosen lovers.
Typically, dream narratives act as vehicles of an authoritative message of truth.206 In this case, the message revolves around the intimate relationship between love and a special place in the next world. The people involved into the narratives are early ascetics renowned for their renunciant attitudes towards the world, and a later Sufī (Ibn Ḫafīf). In both narratives, love is a glue prompting the inclusion of outsiders (Ibn Ḫafīf and Ibrāhim b. al-Adham) among the elected. It is not simply a source of salvation, but of future proximity to God and the Prophet in the Hereafter (although not explicitly specified). Together the two stories work demonstrate the Prophets’ words reported by Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn in many chains and variants: “Man will be with whom he loves.”
The scholars from whom Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn picks his stories (al-Bardānī and al-Sulamī) and those he mentions (Abū Nuʿaym’s Ḏikr al-muḥibbīn) have something in common. They lived in the same period, at the end of the 4th/10th and beginning of the 5th/11th century and were Hadith scholars. Abū Nuʿaym and al-Sulamī were also both Sufis and Šāfiʿīs – the latter scholar more committed than the former. Their famous ṭabaqāt works erected bridges between early Islamic renunciant piety and the taṣawwuf (Sufism) of their time and accommodated the latter within the mainstream Sunnism of the period. In fact, both scholars engaged in Hadith transmission and liked to stress this as their main area of scholarly activity.207 Their model of Islamic piety clearly attracted the pious, prophet-centered, Sunni traditionist, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimašqī.
A last bunch of traditions complements what has thus far been gathered. In these ḥadīṯs, love for the Prophet is further qualified and quantified. Quoting from the Ṣaḥīḥān and Abū Dāʾūd, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn asserts that it is not merely any love that the Prophet recommends, but a love that is greater than that which one feels for parents, children, or the self.208 The last tradition is again reported on the authority of Anas b. Malik, to whom the Prophet told: “‘Oh my son, if you are able to enter morning and evening without having deceit for anybody in your heart, so do it.’ Then, he said to me: ‘Oh my son, this is part of my sunna. And whoever vivifies my sunna, verily he loves me, and whoever loves me, he will be with me in Paradise’” (yā bunayy wa-ḏālika min sunnatī wa-man aḥyā sunnatī fa-qad aḥabbanī wa-man aḥabbanī kāna maʿī fī l-ǧanna).209 Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn then proceeds as he does throughout the text, first specifying where else the ḥadīṯ has been cited – in this case, in Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmiḏī’s Ǧāmiʿ – then commenting upon the various links of the isnād.
2.2.4 Pious Action: Praying for the Prophet by His Grave
Cultivating salvific feelings of love towards the person of the Prophet was part of the vision and purpose in Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār. This could be done not only by recollecting memories of the Prophet’s life and interiorizing his personal qualities, but also by means of pious action. This last point is well illustrated in the final faṣl of Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār dedicated to “What the Prophet left behind after his death” (faṣl fī mā taraka-hu l-nabī baʿd wafāti-hi). After having reported on the Prophet’s possessions, the faṣl seals the end of the work by returning to the theme of his death. As usual, clusters of Hadith are quoted which are thematically organized around the following special prerogatives attached to Muḥammad’s grave (al-ḫaṣāʾiṣ al-mutaʿalliqa bi-qabri-hi l-šarīf): his grave emanates signs of divine favour, such as thousands of angles circling it and praying for him; his life and death were a blessing for believers given how in Heaven the Prophet will intercede with God to ask forgiveness for men’s bad actions and to praise their good ones; Muḥammad calls upon believers to pray for him as a way to show him gratitude and affection and a as means of seeking personal salvation. Accordingly, praying for and saluting the Prophet is presented by Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn as “among the most meritorious acts which draw close to Muḥammad, the purest acts of obedience and greatest good deeds” (min afḍal al-qurbāt wa-azkā l-ṭāʿāt wa-aʿẓam al-ḥasanāt).210 Believers are urged to pray by the Prophet’s grave. The author explains that “The Hadith and traditions (āṯār) on the merit of praying and greeting our Lord and the Messenger of God are a great deal. We restricted ourselves only to some of those related to [his] noble grave”, for fear of losing concision (wa-l-aḥādīṯ wa-l-aṯār fī faḍl al-ṣalāt wa-l-salām ʿalā sayyidi-nā rasūl Allāh kaṯīra ǧiddan iqtaṣarnā min baʿḍi-hā ʿalā l-muta’alliqa bi-l-qabr al-šarīf faqaṭ).211
What comes next is a cascade of traditions, one after another converging on the merits of ziyāra, the most important being intercession to the visitor on the part of the Prophet.212 By now, we are familiar with the author’s technique of reporting parallel and divergent versions of these traditions and reviewing isnāds with an accurate eye for his sources.213 He is also keen to mention his own transmissions.214 Finally, he is fully aware of the contentious nature of many of Hadith regarding ziyāra. In fact, he does not quote from the Ṣaḥiḥān because the traditions he reports are not sound enough to be found there. Yet, he is thoroughly willing to concede these traditions their full devotional import:
وفيما قدّمنا الترغيب في فضل الزيارة التي أقامت بها الأمّة للدين شعاره فزيارة قبر النبي عليه أفضل السلام والصلاة سنّة من سُنن أهل الإسلام وهي قُربة مُجمَع عليها وفضيلة مرغب فيها مندوب إليها وأحاديثها ملتقاة بالقَبول والامتثال وإن كان في بعض إسنادها مقال ولا يتكلم فيها بما يردها إلا كل مخذول ولا يطعن فيها بالوضع إلا كل مرتاب جَهول نعوذ بالله من الخذلان والشقاوة والحرمان.
What we presented here is meant to awake desire for the merit of ziyāra that the community performs as the banner of its religion. In fact, visiting the grave of the Prophet – the best of prayers and peace be upon Him – is one of the sunna of the people of Islam, it is an agreed upon deed which draws one closer to God, a desirable and recommendable meritorious action. Its Hadith are met with approval and consensus even if in some of their chains there is contention. Nobody discusses their refutation, but the forsaken. And nobody discredits them with the charge of fabrication, but the doubtful ignorant. We seek refuge in God from abandonment, misery, and deprivation.215
In so writing, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn once more acts in accordance with the demands of the Hadith etiquette of his time. Namely, that weak Hadith could be transmitted and acted upon in matters of tarġīb and tarhīb (tempting people with the joys in Paradise and terrifying them with the horrors of Hell) edifying stories and parables (al-qiṣaṣ wa-l-amṯāl), admonishments (mawāʾiẓ), or reports relating the meritorious values of certain (devotional) actions (faḍāʾil al-aʿmāl).216 His was a mainstream position holding that when a meritorious action was in question, the weakness of the ḥadīṯ recommending it was not an issue.217 In other words, his position gave priority to popular devotional practices over questions of reliability and authenticity. In his own words: “Acting upon it [i.e. a weak ḥadīṯ] is considered permissible according to the majority” (yaǧūzu l-ʿamal bi-hi ʿinda l-ǧumhūr).218
“And the first who visited the Prophet’s grave – as far as we know – was his daughter Faṭima” (wa-awwal man zāra qabr al-nabī – fī-mā aʿlam – ibnatu-hu Fāṭima). She was perhaps also the first one to utter an elegy lamenting his death.219 With the image of a daughter in mourning for the loss of her father, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār draws to a close.
On the whole, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn shares a language of Prophetic devotion typical of the Islamic piety of his time.220 Content-wise, there is nothing unique to it, but such language does show that Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār – a Hadith-oriented sīra – was intended to nurture the veneration of the Prophet in practice as well.
Conclusion
Recent scholarship has engaged with both the deeply rooted and highly pervasive Hadith transmission culture of the later Middle period as well as the local intensification of sober mawlid writings and Hadith-injected Sira in 8th/14th-century Damascus. The life and work of Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimašqī, born and bred in that city between the 8th/14th and 9th/15th centuries, display a culmination of these elements. Although often associated with Ibn Taymiyya and Ḥanbalīs because of his Radd al-wāfir as well as his commitment to Hadith scholarship and transmission, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn shared little with the provocative and outspoken personality of Ibn Taymiyya, nor was he a worldly and powerful man of the sort of Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī. Perhaps this explains why he has remained neglected by modern scholars working in Western languages. Yet precisely the fact that he was a rather mainstream scholarly personality makes of him a representative voice of the local devotional culture towards the Prophet of the later Middle Period, the key elements of which converge in his Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār fī siyar wa-mawlid al-muḫtār.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn was himself an expression of the intense veneration towards the Prophet that took shape in the period, of the post canonical Hadith culture of his time and the vigorous transmission of the Prophet’s legacy that went along with it. In the later Middle Period, Sira, the narrative literary genre closely associated with recollecting memories of the Prophet’s life and person, became a diverse repository of literary texts. Moreover, this genre was being regularly studied, transmitted, written, and consumed in a variety of spaces and by a variety of people. This article suggests that the popularity, fondness, and respect for Sira can be fruitfully put in relation with the growing devotion towards the person of the Prophet that was in turn fueled by mawlid celebrations, the intensification of Hadith studies, and its transmission. The scope of a rich work like Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār can be grasped when read against the background of this scholarly and devotional commitment to the Prophet’s legacy.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s written output helps make sense of his scholarly interests and religious worldview in particular in relation to Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār. The structure and contents of this massive work show that what initially appears to be an encyclopaedic Hadith collection was a massive collection of chronologically arranged traditions recalling the most significant phases of the Prophet’s existence as well as his unique qualities. There is no doubt that the author conceived this work to be a sīra, as he explicitly refers to it. So too does the copyist of the Damascus Ẓāhiriyya manuscript used as the basis for the current edition of the text. Moreover, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār exhibits most, if not all, of the features that by the time characterized narrative memories of the life of the Prophet. Namely, a substantial preoccupation for chronology and chronological arrangement, glosses, poetry, genealogy, and Qurʾānic infusion into the recounted stories. All of this is kept together by a vigilant narrative eye which defies the literary and fragmented nature of Hadith and traditions.
The discipline of Hadith intervenes substantially in this work. It is so present not only because it was Ibn Nāsir al-Dīn’s primary field of enquiry, but also because it was a powerful way of connecting to the Prophet, and through him to God. In brief, the isnād was not only a validating tool, but also a transmission of prophetic presence.221 In the opening pages of Iftitāḥ al qārī li-Ṣaḥīḥ al-Buḫārī, an effective picture of Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s grand idea on the status of Sunna as well as its transmitters forcefully emerges. Here, the Sunna of the Prophet is presented as “an inspiration from God too” (i.e. next to the Qur’ān), and is thus given the status of the revealed word.222 Accordingly, it was God who appointed for the Sunna the men (riǧāl) who went in search of it, collected it and validated its chains “with which God honored this community.”223 Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn produces a hyperbolic inventory of what the Sunna includes:
وفيها […]بيان مغازي رسول الله وسراياه وبعوثه وكُتُبه وأحكامه وأقضيته ومواعظه ووصاياه ومعجزاته وأيامه وصفاته وأخلاقه وآدابه وأحواله إلى حين مماته وذِكْر أزواجه وأولاده وأصهاره وأصحابه ونشر فضائلهم ومناقبهم وأقاويلهم في الشريعة […].
[…] The illustration of his campaigns, expeditions, missions, writings, decisions and rulings, exhortations, recommendations, miracles, his days, qualities, nature (aḫlāq), manners and states (aḥwāl), until the time of his death; the mention of his wives, children, sons-in-law, and Companions; the spread of their merits and virtues, and their sayings on the Law […]224
In sum, the Sunna is replete with details about the Prophet’s life, and as such its massive presence in a sīra work should not surprise us.
In parallel, and by means of Hadith, the role of transmitters is presented by Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn in heavily charged terms. They are the Prophet’s successors (ḫulafāʾ rasūl Allāh), those in whose favor Muḥammad supplicates, God’s abdāl on earth, His friends (awliyāʾ li-Llāh) and those who divert affliction (al-balāʾ) from the community with their search for Hadith (bi-riḥlat aṣḥāb al-ḥadīṯ).225 They will be saved on the Day of Resurrection and be the protectors (ḥurrās) of the earth.226 These ideas lend the plethora of Hadith criticism that populates Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār greater meaning. It was not only the scholarly field in which the author excelled, but also the activity through which Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn claimed his place among the prestigious men who seek the Sunna outlined in Iftitāḥ al qārī.
Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār is a complex work: long, bulky, and replete with Hadith erudition on the one hand, filled with poetry and dotted with simple doctrinal points on the other. Primarily inspired by the affection for the Prophet which suffused mawlid celebrations, most likely, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār was not intended to be recited in mawlid festivals but studied. The author’s initial statement about his purpose is an important key to comprehending the text. There, he states that recalling the main landmarks of the Prophet’s life and his very unique qualities is a way of reaching him and attaining his very qualities. The author thus calls for a sort of spiritual mimesis, an inner attachment that aims at spiritual elevation and salvation by cultivating the feelings of love that assure believers a secure place near Muḥammad in the next world. Although the Prophet was no longer alive, his presence could be evoked by recalling his existence and unmatched perfection, and so much better if this was done by means of Hadith.
The reception of Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār remains to be studied, as does his relationship to the local Prophet-centered Sufism that tenuously peeped in at various stages in this article. The affinity or divergence of this work with other Hadith-infused sīras and mawlid texts also deserve closer scrutiny. I began by asking about the place of Sira in the veneration of the Prophet in the later Middle Period, especially in relation to Hadith. I hope to have demonstrated that Sira was a form of literary and cultural memory regarding the life of Muḥammad. At least as fashioned in a text like The Compilation of Traditions on the Birth and Life of the Chosen One, Sira had little to do with historicity, and much more with making the Prophet alive and present by cultivating the memory of his perfection and ongoing existence.
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An earlier version of Part I of this article was presented and discussed at a roundtable in Aix-en-Provence “Le Prophète comme modèle: implications doctrinales et pratiques dévotionnelles” (24-25 October 2014). I would like to thank the conveners and participants for that opportunity. I am grateful to Renaud Soler for insisting that I produce something on the topic of post-formative period sīras and for his useful feedback on the first draft of this article. Equal thanks are due to the peer-reviewers whose comments helped improve the text. This article is a contribution to the DFG and ANR funded project Muhammad in the mirror of his community in early modern and modern Islam in which I was involved (https://prophet.hypo
I adopt the periodization of the “Middle Period” (subdivided into early and later) from Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World of Civilization, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1974, 3 vols, especially II, p. 3-11 and p. 376-384. Not all of the features proposed by Hodgson as characterizing these centuries (ca 945-1500) are still tenable, but the idea of treating this lapse of time as a “period” maintains a broad scholarly consensus. See Jonathan Berkey, Religion and Society in the Near and Middle East: 600-1800, Cambridge-New York-Melbourne, Cambridge University Press (“Themes in Islamic History,” 2), 2003, p. 179-183.
For an overview of topics and issues related to prophetic piety and devotion across history, see the special issue of Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 178 (2017) [Le prophète de l’Islam : la construction d’un modèle, premiers mystiques, normalisation de la présence et de la vénération, eds Nelly Amri, Denis Gril and Rachida Chih]; the recently published volume: Denis Gril, Stefan Reichmuth and Dilek Sarmis (eds), The Presence of the Prophet in Early Modern and Contemporary Islam, vol. 1, The Prophet between Doctrine, Literature and Arts: Historical Legacies and their Unfolding, Leiden-Boston, Brill (“Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section One, The Ancient Near East,” 159/1), 2021. On prophetic piety, also the classical Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety, Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press (“Studies in Religion”), 1981.
Throughout this study, I use “Sira” to denote the genre of Muḥammad’s biographies as a whole and “Hadith” to denote the literature of Prophetic traditions which assembles text-units called ḥadīṯ in various forms and according to various criteria. On the contrary, I use sīra and ḥadīṯ when wanting to indicate a specific prophetic biography or tradition.
Hereby shortened to Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār.
My debt here is to Jan Assmann, La Memoria culturale: Scrittura, ricordo e identità politica nelle grandi civiltà antiche, Torino, Einaudi, 1997 (German original, 1992), p. xii-xiii. In English, among many, see id., “Communicative and Cultural Memory,” in Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, eds Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning, Berlin-New York, Walter de Gruyter (“Media and Cultural Memory,” 8), 2008, p. 109-118; id., “Communicative and Cultural Memory,” in The Theoretical Foundations of Hungarian ‘lieux de mémoire’ Studies, eds Pál S. Varga, Karl Katschthaler, Donald E. Morse and Miklós Takács, Debrecen, Debrecen University Press (“Debrecen”), 2013, p. 36-43.
Readers interested in what I call Medieval “Sira Culture” can limit themselves to Part 1 of the article. Those interested in a textual study of this culture may instead opt for Part 2, together with Conclusions. The bravest can face the essay in its entirety.
Gordon D. Newby, “Imitating Muhammad in Two Genres: Mimemis and Problems of Genre in Sīrah and Sunnah,” Medieval Encounters, 3/3 (1997), p. 266-283. For an excellent introduction to (early) al-sīra l-nabawiyya see Wim Raven, “Sīra and the Qurʾān,” in Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Leiden-Boston, Brill, 2001-2006, consulted online on 28 March 2021.
An overview of the issues that have preoccupied modern Sira scholars can be found in Andreas Görke, Muḥammad: Critical Concepts in Religion, London-New York, Routledge-Francis & Taylor, 2015, 5 vols, I [The Sources on the Life of Muḥammad] (1.2 in particular), pertaining only to English-language research. A seminal collection of essays is Harald Motzki (ed.), The Biography of Muhammad: The Issue of the Sources, Leiden-Boston-Köln, Brill (“Islamic History and Civilization. Studies and Texts,” 32), 2000, of which part 1 is dedicated to the development of the Sira tradition.
Tilman Nagel, Allahs Liebling: Ursprung und Erscheinungsformen des Mohammedglaubens, Münich, R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2008, especially p. 211-245 and p. 265-288 on Medieval sīras. On Nagel, see Gottfried Hagen, “The Imagined and the Historical Muḥammad: A review of recent publications,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 129/1 (2009), p. 97-111. Tarif Khalidi, Images of Muhammad: Narratives of the Prophet in Islam Across the Centuries, New York, Doubleday, 2009, p. 267-306. Another concise overview of Sira literature, with titles and names of post-tenth century Sira authors is Meir Jacob Kister, “The Sīrah Literature,” in Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period, eds Alfred Felix Landon Beeston, Thomas Muir Johnstone, Robert Bertram Searjent and Gerald Rex Smith, Cambridge-New York-Melbourne, Cambridge University Press (“Cambridge History of Arabic Literature”), 1983, p. 353-367, esp. p. 366-367.
Gurdofarid Miskinzoda, On the Margins of Sīra: Muġulṭaʾī (689-762/1290-1361) and His Place in the Development of Sīra Literature, PhD Dissertation, University of London, SOAS, 2007.
A useful critical discussion of the literature on the subject starting from Henri Lammens and including Soviet scholarship can be found in ibid., p. 75-101.
Ibid., p. 102-103, 233 and passim. The point is made also by Nagel and Khalidi.
Ibid., p. 113-147. Before Miskinzoda, but not as thorough, is Wim Raven, “Sīra,” EI2 and id., “Sīra and the Qurʾān.” Also, Kister, “The Sīrah Literature,” especially p. 357-362.
Miskinzoda, On the Margins of Sīra, p. 113.
Ibid., p. 94, 112-113, 117, 146-147 and passim.
Eerik Dickinson, “Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazūrī and the Isnād,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 122/3 (2002), p. 481-505 and Garret A. Davidson, Carrying on the Tradition: An Intellectual and Social History of Post-Canonical Hadith Transmission, PhD Dissertation, University of Chicago, 2014; now a book: id., A Social and Intellectual History of Hadith Transmission across a Thousand Years, Leiden-Boston, Brill (“Islamic History and Civilization,” 160), 2020 (throughout this work reference will be made to the dissertation since I had no access to the book). Of course, it makes no sense to speak of “post-canonical” without the canon being firmly there. The formation of the Hadith canon and its implications are studied by Jonathan Brown in The Canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim: The Formation and Function of the Sunnī Ḥadīth Canon, Leiden-Boston, Brill (“Islamic History and Civilization,” 69), 2007. On manuscripts as documentary sources, Andreas Görke and Konrad Hirschler (eds), Manuscript Notes as Documentary Sources, Beirut, Orient Institute (“Beiruter Texte und Studien,” 129), 2011. Stefan Leder has many articles on the subject, one of which is fully referenced in fn 24 along with his Muʿǧam al-samāʿāt al-dimašqiyya. See also Konrad Hirschler, A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture: The Library of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press (“Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture”), 2020.
Davidson, Carrying on the Tradition, p. 79-191 provides extensive source material analysis on the development and meaning of iǧāza and samāʿ and the changes in post-century Hadith transmission, whereas p. 192-278 present and examine new literary genres in the field of post-canonical Hadith.
On religious knowledge as a form of social capital, see the classical works of Michael Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus, 1190-1350, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (“Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization”), 1994 and Jonathan Berkey, The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo: A Social History of Islamic Education, Princeton, Princeton University Press (“Princeton Studies on the Near East”), 1992.
Examples include Ibn Ṣalāḥ al-Šahrazūrī’s famous Hadith textbook Kitāb Maʿrifat anwāʿ ʿilm al-ḥadīṯ, now translated into English by E. Dickinson as An Introduction to the Science of Ḥadîth, Reading, Garnet Publishing (“Great Books of Islamic Civilization”), 2006; al-Mizzī’s comprehensive dictionary on the transmitters of the Six Books and other minor collections (Tahḏīb al-kamāl fī asmāʾ al-riǧāl) published in thirty-five volumes; al-Ḏahabī’s Mīzān al-iʿtidāl fī naqd al-riǧāl dedicated to weak transmitters; Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī’s weighty commentary on al-Buḫārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ (Fatḥ al-bārī), or his popular compendium of al-Mizzī’s Tahḏīb: Tahḏīb al-Tahḏīb. On the contributions of Ibn Ṣalāh al-Šahrazūrī and al-Ḏahabī to the Sunni Hadith culture of their time, Scott Lucas, Constructive Critics, Ḥadīth Literature and the Articulation of Sunnī Islam: The Legacy of the Generation of Ibn Saʿd, Ibn Maʿīn, and Ibn Ḥanbal, Leiden-Boston, Brill (“Islamic History and Civilization. Studies and Texts,” 51), 2004, p. 26-61. On Ibn Ṣalāḥ also Jens Scheiner, “‘When the class goes on too long, the Devil takes part in it’: Adab al-muḥaddith according to Ibn aṣ-Ṣalâḥ ash-Shahrazûrî (d. 643/1245),” Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 129 (2012), p. 185-204.
On Hadith scholarship specifically in 13th century Damascus, Louis Pouzet, Damas au VIIe/XIIIe siècle : vie et structures religieuses d’une métropole islamique, Beirut, Dar al-Machreq (“Recherches. Langue arabe et pensée islamique,” 15), 19912, p. 182-199, and on various local expressions of prophetic piety p. 357-360.
Al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris fī taʾrīḫ al-madāris, ed. Ibrāhīm Šāms al-Dīn, Beirut, Dār al-kutub al- ʿilmiyya, 1990, 2 vols, I, p. 15-90.
A history of the two schools with the biographies of its teachers is reported by Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn himself in the opening of his inaugural lectures there, see Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Maǧālis fī tafsīr qawli-hi taʿālā: “Laqad manna Llāh ʿalā l-muʾminīn iḏ baʿaṯa fī-him rasūlan min anfusi-him,” ed. Muḥammad ʿAwwāma, Beirut, Dār al-yusr-Dār al-minhāǧ, 1431/20122, p. 34-57.
Apparently, the Prophet’s sandal was even the subject of specific literary compositions, see al-Saḫāwī, al-Iʿlān bi-l-tawbīḫ li-man ḏamma ahl al-taʾrīḫ, Beirut, Muʾassasat al-risāla, 1407/1986, p. 158. For a full account of the school’s foundation and the importance of the sandal, see Eerik Dickinson, “Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazūrī and the Isnād,” p. 481-484 and Daniella Talmon Heller, Islamic Piety in Medieval Syria: Mosques Cemeteries and Sermons under the Zangids and the Ayyubids (1446-1260), Leiden-Boston, Brill (“Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture,” 7), 2007, p. 203-205. An instance of Hadith reading in proximity to the sandal is recorded by al-Dāwūdī (d. 945/1538), Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn, ed. ʿAlī Muḥammad ʿUmar, [Cairo], Maktabat Wahba, [1972], 2 vols, II, p. 276: “He [i.e Abū Ṭālib al-Širāzī al-Fayruzābādī, d. 817/1415] read the Ṣaḥīḥ of Muslim in Damascus under the guidance of Nāṣir al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Jahbal in three days in front of the Prophet’s sandal,” mentioned in Konrad Hirschler, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands: A Social and Cultural History of Reading Practices, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2012, p. 53, 78 fn. 39.
See al-Birzālī (d. 738/1339), al-Muqtafī ʿalā kitāb al-rawḍatayn, al-maʿrūf bi-taʾrīḫ al-Birzālī, ed. ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Salām al-Tadmurī, Beirut, al-Maktabat al-ʿaṣriyya, 2007, 4 vols, II, p. 424 and IV, p. 354 (reading al-Buḫārī during collective prayers for rain); Ibn Kaṯīr (d. 774/1373), al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya fī l-taʾrīḫ, Cairo, Maṭbaʿat al-saʿāda, 1351/1932-1358/1939, 14 vols, XIII, p. 320 (reading Buḫārī under the siege of ʿAkka); al-Ǧazārī (d. 738/1337-1338), Taʾrīḫ ḥawādiṯ al-zamān wa-anbāʾi-hi wa-wafayāt al-akābir wa-l-aʿyān min abnāʾi-hi: al-maʿrūf bi-taʾrīḫ Ibn al-Ǧazarī, Beirut, al-Maktaba l-ʿaṣriyya, 1998, 3 vols, I, p. 44 (reading al-Buḫārī in the Damascus Umayyad Mosque of Damascus to celebrate the birth of a son to al-Malik al-Ašraf). More in Brown, The Canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim, p. 338-349.
The phenomenon of reading in public spaces is attested to by the corpus of Damascene hearing certificates published by Stefan Leder, Yāsīn M. al-Sawwās and Maʾmūn al-Ṣāġarǧī, Muʿǧam al-samāʿāt al-dimašqiyya/Les certificats d’audition à Damas : 550-750/1155-1349, Damascus, Institut français d’études arabes de Damas, 1996-2000, 2 vols. See also Berkey, The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo, p. 155-160, 176-177, 180, 215 and passim; Stefan Leder, “Spoken Word and Written Text – Meaning and Social Significance of the Institution of Riwāya,” Islamic Area Studies Working Paper Series, 31 (2002), p. 1-18, especially 11-14; Hirschler, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands, 23-81.
On reading Hadith in specific months, see Berkey, The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo, 74, 156, 180, 213-214; Brown, The Canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim, p. 342-343; Davidson, Carrying on the Tradition, p. 117-123.
For instance, a celebration of the Prophet’s ascension in the courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus on the night of 27 Rabīʿ I 725 (13 March 1325) is recorded by al-Ǧazarī, Taʾrīḫ ḥawādiṯ al-zamān, II, p. 75. See ibid., III, p. 1016 for a mawlid held in Cairo, at the Dār al-Saʿāda, by will of the vice-Sultan (Rabīʿ I 738/October 1337).
On madāʾīḥ and mawlidiyyāt, Mohamed Thami El Harrak, “Présence du Prophète dans l’art du panegyrique (madīḥ) et de l’audition spirituelle (samāʿ),” in The Presence of the Prophet in Early Modern and Contemporary Islam, vol. 1, The Prophet between Doctrine, Literature and Arts: Historical Legacies and their Unfolding, eds Denis Gril, Stefan Reichmuth and Dilek Sarmis, Leiden-Boston, Brill (“Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section One, The Ancient Near East,” 159/1), 2021, p. 411-430. Mawlid has been at the center of recent studies: Nicolaas Jan Gerrit Kaptein, Muhammad’s Birthday Festival: Early History in the Central Muslim Lands and Development in the Muslim West Until 10th/16th Century, Leiden-New York-Köln, Brill, 1993 and Marion Holmes Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muḥammad: Devotional Piety in Sunni Islam, London-New York, Routledge (“Culture and Civilization in the Middle East,” 11), 2007; Pouzet, Damas au VIIe/XIIIe siècle, p. 359, addresses madāʾiḥ nabawiyya as a new literary genre in 7th/13th century Damascus; Suzanne Stetkevych, The Mantle Odes: Arabic Praise Poems to the Prophet Muḥammad, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2010, chap. 2 is on the most famous devotional 7th/13th-century ode for the Prophet written by al-Buṣīrī (d. between 694/1294 and 696/1296), the “Qaṣīdat al-Burda.” See also ead., “From Sīrah to Qaṣīdah: Poetics and Polemics in al-Būṣīrī’s ‘Qaṣīdat al-Burdah’ (‘Mantle Ode’),” Journal of Arabic Literature, 38/1 (2007), p. 1-52.
Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muḥammad, p. 54-61. Mawlid celebration in domestic spaces has been observed as well. Marion Holmes Katz, “Commemoration of the Prophet’s Birthday as a Domestic Ritual in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Damascus,” in Domestic Devotions in the Early Modern World, eds Marco Faini and Alessia Meneghin, Leiden-Boston, Brill (“Intersections,” 59/2), 2018, p. 167-181.
See Muḥammad Amīn, al-Awqāf wa-l-ḥayāt al-iǧtimāʿiyya fī Miṣr, 648-963 H, 1250-1517 M : dirāsa tārīḫiyya waṯāʾiqiyya, Cairo, Dār al-nahḍa al-ʿarabiyya, 1980, p. 192-193; Taǧ al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 771/1370), Muʿīd al-niʿam wa-mubīd al-niqam, ed. Muḥammad Fatḥī l-Nādī, Cairo, Muʾassasat al-ʿalyāʾ li-l-našr wa-l-tawzīʿ, 2008, p. 130; Berkey, The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo, p. 20, 198; George Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1981, p. 176.
Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muḥammad, p. 104-125.
See Davidson, Carrying on the Tradition, p. 121-122.
Brown, The Canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim, p. 339 and 344.
See al-Saḫāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ fī aʿyān al-qarn al-tāsiʿ, ed. Ḥusām al-Dīn al-Qudsī, Cairo, Maktabat al-Qudsī, 1353/1934-1355/1936, 12 vols, I, p. 210, 273; V, p. 229; VI, p. 296; VIII, p. 18; IX, p. 11, 43; X, p. 236; XI, p. 3.
Davidson, Carrying on the Tradition, p. 122.
Khalidi, Images of Muhammad, p. 329-330.
Ibid., p. 334-355.
Al-Saḫāwī, al-Ǧawāhir wa-l-durar, ed. Ibrāhīm Bāǧis ʿAbd al-Maǧīd, Beirut, Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1419/1999, 3 vols, III, p. 1251-1278.
Ibid., III, p. 1251-1252.
Al-Saḫāwī, al-Iʿlān bi-l-tawbīḫ li-man ḏamma ahl al-taʾrīḫ, p. 146-160; English translation, Franz Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 19682, p. 393-403. I thank Renaud Soler for drawing my attention to this source.
For instance Khalidi, Images of Muhammad, p. 283, 308 or Miskinzoda, On the Margins of Sīra.
A sample from Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī, al-Durar al-kāmina fī aʿyān al-miʾa l-ṯāmina, ed. ʿAbd al-Wāriṯ Muḥammad ʿAlī, Beirut, Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 1418/1997, 4 vols, II, p. 242 (wa-šaraḥa sīrat ʿAbd al-Ġanī […] wa-šaraḥa l-sīra l-nabawiyya llatī ḫtaṣara-hā l-ḥāfiẓ ʿAbd al-Ġanī), II, p. 253 (wa ṣannafa … al-sīra al-nabawiyya); II, p. 237 (wa-samiʿa min ḫaṭīb mardā l-sīra li-Bn Hišām); III, p. 70 (wa-ṣannafa l-taṣānīf min-hā […] al-sīra l-nabawiyya); III, p. 180 (naẓẓama […] al-sīra fī biḍʿ ʿašara alf bayt maʿa ziyādāt […] wa-ḥaddaṯa bi-hā bi-l-Qāhira wa-qaraʾa-hā ʿalay-hi […]); III, p. 288 (wa-ǧamaʿa šayʾan fī l-sīra l-nabawiyya wa-ḥaddaṯa bi-hi); IV, p. 131 (wa-la-hu muḫtaṣar al-sīra l-nabawiyya); IV, p. 216 (wa-min taṣānīfi-hi l-Zahr al-bāsim fī l-sīra l-nabawiyya […] ǧamaʿa l-sīra l-nabawiyya); al-Ǧazarī, Taʾrīḫ ḥawādiṯ al-zamān, III, p. 810 (wa-šaraḥa l-sīra l-nabawiyya taṣnīf al-ḥāfiẓ ʿAbd al-Ġanī); al-Saḫāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, III, p. 100 (kāna yaǧmaʿu fī l-sīra l-nabawiyya); X, p. 248 (ǧamaʿa Bušrā l-anām sīrat ḫayr al-kirām wa-Buġyat al-sūl fī madḥ al-rasūl); X, p. 5-6 (wa-min taṣānifi-hi sīra nabawiyya […]); IX, p. 304 (wa-min taṣānifi-hi sīra nabawiyya); IV, p. 173 (wa-min taṣānifi-hi l-afiyya fī l-ḥadīṯ wa-fī l-sīra l-nabawiyya […]); II, p. 71 (iḫtaṣara l-sīra […]); VIII, p. 76 (wa-ḫtaṣara sīrat Ibn Sayyid al-Nās); III, p. 185 (wa-qurriḍa la-hu fī-mā qīla baʿḍ manāẓīmi-hi wa-hiyya kaṯīra […] wa-uḫrā fī l-sīra l-nabawiyya […]); VII, p. 114 (wa-naẓẓama l-sīra l-nabawiyya li-l-ʿAlā Muġulṭāy); X, p. 134 (wa-šaraḥa qiṭʿa kabīra min sīrat Ibn Hišām); II, p. 159 (wa-ʿānā l-tasabbub fī l-ʿiṭr bi-baʿḍ al-ḥawānīt maʿa nasḫ kutub al-ʿilm wa-l-raġba fī taḥṣīli-hā ka-sīrat Ibn Hišām); I, p. 244 (wa-lahiǧa bi-l-sīra l-nabawiyya fa-kataba min-hā kaṯīran […]).
Al-Saḫāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, I, p. 244.
Manuscript evidence can of course shed more light on this material aspect of the Sira culture of the period. I borrow the expression “one-volume library” from the recent edited volume on the subject. Michael Friedrich and Cosima Schwarke (eds), One-Volume Libraries: Composite and Multiple-Text Manuscripts, Berlin, de Gruyter (“Studies in Manuscript Cultures,” 9), 2016. The editors happily explain that the expression “one-volume library” describes “an individual collection of texts in one book that contains all its scribe or patron might need for professional or other purposes” (p. 2 of the introduction) from Franz Rosenthal, “From Arabic Books and Manuscripts V: A One-Volume Library of Arabic Philosophical and Scientific Texts in Istanbul,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 75/1 (1955), p. 14-23.
Al-Saḫāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, XI, p. 61: “He put his mind into the recitation of sīra al-nabawiyya and applied himself with devotion to the study of al-Rawḍ until he became an expert in both. He [also] composed something on mawlid” (iʿtanā bi-qirāʾat al-sīra l-nabawiyya wa-admana muṭālaʿat l-Rawḍ ʿalay-hā ḥattā mahara bi-himā ǧamaʿa fī l-mawlid al-nabawī šayʾan); IX, p. 282: “He had a number of writings on the Prophet’s life, among them al-Nūr al-bāhir al-sāṭiʿ min sīrat ḏī l-burhān al-qāṭiʿ which I read with him on the Prophet’s birthday” (wa-la-hu fī l-sīra ʿiddat taṣānīf […] qara’tu ʿalay-hi bi-mawlid al-nabī); X, p. 248 (ǧamaʿa Bušrā l-anām sīrat ḫayr al-kirām wa-Buġyat al-sūl fī madḥ al-rasūl wa-l-kawākib al-ḍawiyya fī madḥ ḫayr al-bariyya).
Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī, al-Durar al-kāmina, IV, p. 113 ([…] awqafa-nī Bn Sayyid al-Nās ʿalā l-sīra llatī ʿamala-hā […]).
Ibn Ḥiǧǧī is quoted by Ibn Qāḍī Šuhba (d. 851/1448), Taʾrīḫ Ibn Qāḍī Šuhba, ed. Adnan Darwich, Damas, Institut français de Damas, 1977, 4 vols, I, p. 215. The title of Ibn Šahīd’s sīra was al-Fatḥ al-qarīb fī sīrat al-ḥabīb (I, p. 407).
Also, Ibn Qāḍī Šuhba, Taʾrīḫ, I, p. 407 and al-Saḫāwī, al-Iʿlān bi-l-tawbīḫ li-man ḏamma ahl al-taʾrīḫ, p. 152.
Ḥaddaṯa bi- is the standard: Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī, al-Durar al-kāmina, II, p. 81 (wa-ḥaddaṯa ʿan […] bi-l-sīra min samāʿ […]) IV, p. 169 (wa-ḥaddaṯa bi-ṣaḥīḥ muslim wa-l-sīra); al-Ǧazarī, Taʾrīḫ ḥawādiṯ al-zamān, III, p. 555, 1003 (wa-ḥaddaṯa bi-l-sīra marrāt […]).
Al-Saḫāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, II, p. 210, 244, 250, 293, 354; II, p. 71, 88; III, p. 144, 150, 162; V, p. 256, 290, 313; VI, p. 4, 7, 101, 105, 268, 283, 288; VII, p. 14, 243; VIII, p. 18; IX, p. 253; X, p. 13, 16, 99, 134, 176, 330; XI, p. 3, 61; XII, p. 9, 81; (sīrat Ibn Isḥāq/Ibn Hišām); II, p. 17, 282, 290, 320; III, p. 230, 234, 320; IV, p. 169-170; V, p. 284, 290; VIII, p. 18, 76; IX, p. 13; XI, p. 3 (sīrat Ibn Sayyid al-Nās); Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī, al-Durar al-kāmina, II, p. 77, 81 (sīrat ʿAbd al-Ġanī l-Maqdisī); II, p. 242 (a šarḥ of ʿAbd al-Ġanī’s sīra); al-Ǧazarī, Taʾrīḫ ḥawādiṯ al-zamān, III, p. 810 (šarḥ of ʿAbd al-Ġanī’s sīra).
Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī, al-Durar al-kāmina, III, p. 53; IV, p. 67, 135; Nagel, Allahs Liebling, p. 24.
Thomas Bauer, “Ibn Nubātah al-Miṣrī (686-768/1287-1366): Life and Works. Part I: The Life of Ibn Nubātah,” The Mamluk Studies Review, 12 (2008), p. 1-35, esp. p. 12; Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī, al-Durar al-kāmina, IV, p. 135; al-Saḫāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, III, p. 50, 162; IV, p. 307; V, p. 54, 313; VII, p. 14; IX, p. 149; X, p. 13.
Samiʿa min/samiʿa ʿalā fī […]: Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī, al-Durar al-kāmina, II, p. 184 (wa-samiʿa […] al-sīra min […]); III, p. 53 (wa-samiʿa l-sīra l-hāšimiyya min […]); IV, p. 43 (wa-samiʿa l-sīra ʿalā […] bi-qiraʾat al-Mizzī); IV, p. 68 (samiʿa min […] al-sīra); IV, p. 135 (wa-samiʿa l-sīra min […] wa-tafarrada bi-hā); al-Ǧazarī, Taʾrīḫ ḥawādiṯ al-zamān, p. 552 (samiʿa min […] al-sīra bi-qirāʾat al-Mizzī); al-Saḫāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, I, p. 172, 293, 321; II, p. 17, 88, 290; III, p. 96, 150 (wa-samiʿa l-sīra li-Bn Hišām marratayni); III, p. 144, 162, 320; XI, p. 3, 28; XII, p. 81 (min masmūʿati-hi l-sīra li-Bn Hišām […]); X, p. 99 (wa-samiʿa min-hu l-sīra l-nabawiyya li-Bn Hišām […]); X, p. 13 (wa-samiʿa min Ibn Nubāta sīrat Ibn Hišām […]); IX, p. 47 (wa-samiʿa min […]); IX, p. 43 (wa-samiʿa minnī ẖatm al-sīra li-Bn Sayyid al-Nās); IX, p. 13 (wa-samiʿa min baʿḍ al-sīra li-Bn Sayyid al-Nās); IX, p. 11 (wa-samiʿa l-ẖatm al-sīra min sīrat Ibn Hišām); VII, p. 243 (wa-samiʿa ʿalā l-sīra l-nabawiyya); VII, p. 227 (wa-samiʿa ʿalā baʿḍ al-sīra); VII, p. 227 (wa-mimmā samiʿa min […] al-sīra l-nabawiyya); VII, p. 14 (wa-samiʿa ʿalā […] al-sīra li-Bn Hišām); V, p. 2-3, 32, 54, 193, 229, 284, 299, 313; VI, p. 4, 7, 39; Qaraʾa ʿalā: al-Saḫāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, II, p. 71, 282; III, p. 23; IV, p. 260 (wa-lāzamanī fī qirāʾat al-sīra); V, p. 256, 299, 304; VI, p. 283 (wa-qaraʾa ʿalayya l-sīra l-nabawiyya); VIII, p. 186 (qaraʾa ʿalayya bi-maǧlis […] fī l-sīra l-nabawiyya li-l-Dimyāṭī); IX, p. 61, 149; X, p. 176 (qaraʾa ʿalay-hi l-ṣaḥīḥayn wa-sīrat Ibn Hišām); XI, p. 16 (qaraʾa ʿalay-hi sīrat Ibn Hišām); Istaḥḍara: al-Saḫāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, II, p. 320 (kāna fāḍilan […] yastaḥḍiru kaṯīran min al-sīra); VI, p. 288 (wa-kāna yastaḥḍiru l-sīra li-Bn Hišām); VII, p. 115; XII, p. 78 (kānat mustaḥḍiratan li-l-sīra l-nabawiyya takādu an taḏkura l-ġazwa bi-tamāmi-hā); Ḥafiẓa: ibid., IV, p. 151 (fa-ḥafiẓa l-Qurʾān wa-kutuban min-hā alfiyyat al-ḥadīṯ wa-l-sīra li-l-ʿIraqī); VI, p. 155 (wa-yaḥfaẓu kaṯīran min al-sīra l-nabawiyya wa-l-mutūn), p. 296 (fa-ḥafiẓa alfiyyatay al-ʿIraqī fī l-ḥadīṯ wa-l-sīra); Ḏākara: ibid., VI, p. 42-43 (kāna yuḏākiru kaṯīr min al-ḥadīṯ wa-l-taʾrīḫ wa-l-sīra). Aḥḍara/ḥaḍara: Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī, al-Durar al-kāmina, II, p. 77 (wa-aḥḍarat al-sīra l-nabawiyya ʿalā […]); al-Saḫāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, III, p. 187, 243; IV, p. 169-170; XII, p. 9, 71 (ḥaḍara ʿalā l-ʿIrāqī Alfiyyata-hu fī l-sīra l-nabawiyya).
Hirschler, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands, p. 12-29.
Al-Saḫāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, VI, p. 252 (wa-lākin raʾaytu […] fī ṭabaqat al-samāʿ al-sīra […]); VII, p. 176 (wa-akṯara min samāʿ al-sīra l-nabawiyya wa-ġayri-hā min kutub al-ḥadīṯ ḥattā ṣāra yastaḥḍiru ašyāʾ min al-mutūn wa-l-maġāzī); VIII, p. 175 (ḥaḍara samāʿ al-sīra).
Hirschler, A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture, p. 83-85.
Ibid., entries number: 77, 103a, 165f, 168a, 169a (mawlid), 192c (mawlid), 201e, 202a, 202b, 212c, 312, 318, 339l, 340e (mawlid), 349o (miʿrāǧ), 373g (mawlid), 373j (mawlid), 468cc, 473c (šamāʾil), 514 c (mawlid), 514g (mawlid), 517e (šamāʾil).
Al-Ǧazarī, Taʾrīḫ ḥawādiṯ al-zamān, II, p. 555 (wa-ḥaddaṯa bi-Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim wa-l-sīra l-nabawiyya li-Bn Ishāq). The subject is the Ḥanbalī qāḍī al-quḍāt of Damascus Ibn Surūr al-Maqdisī (d. 732/1331-1332). A sampling from al-Saḫāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, I, p. 272; II, p. 71; III, p. 96 (Sira and Hadith from two different teachers); IV, p. 173, 307; V, p. 2-3, 256 (wa-qaraʾa Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim wa-l-sunan li-Abī Dawud wa-sīrat Ibn Hišām …), p. 513; VI, p. 101 (min marwiyāti-hi kutub al-sitta […] wa-sīrat tahḏīb Ibn Hišām), p. 105 (wa-qaraʾa l-Buḫārī wa-l-Tirmiḏī wa-sīrat Ibn Hišām ʿalā […]), p. 268, 282; VII, p. 243 (qaraʾa ʿalay-hi Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim wa-bāqī l-kutub al-sitta wa-samiʿa ʿalā sīrat Ibn Hišām); X, p. 176 (qaraʾa ʿalay-hi l-Ṣaḥīḥayn wa-sīrat Ibn Hišām), p. 338 (qaraʾa ʿalay-hi min al-Buḫārī wa-l-Tirmiḏī wa-ǧamīʿ Muslim wa-kaḏā sīrat Ibn Hišām …); XII, p. 9 (aḥḍarat […] qiṭʿa kabīra min sīrat Ibn Hišām wa-min musnad Aḥmad); p. 49 (Zaynab […] kānat ḥasanat al-muṭālaʿa li-l-Ṣaḥiḥayn wa-l-sīra l-nabawiyya), p. 81….
Ibn Kaṯīr, al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya, XIV, p. 294: qarāʾa fī l-sīra l-nabawiyya min ḫaṭṭī.
For instance, al-Saḫāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, VI, p. 282: qarāʾa ʿalā l-ʿāmma bi-l-Buḫārī wa-l-sīra.
Ibid., I, p. 244 and id., al-Iʿlān bi-l-tawbīḫ li-man ḏamma ahl al-taʾrīḫ, p. 151. Ibn Kaṯīr (al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya, XIV, p. 171) writes of a certain Quṭb al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Nūr al-Ḥalabī then al-Miṣrī, who was a well-known Hadith scholar (muḥaddiṯ), that he used to talk about (takallama) the widely known sīra compiled by ʿAbd al-Ġanī l-Maqdisī (d. 600/1203). Takallama (‘to talk’) in similar contexts usually implies addressing and teaching a wide audience. See, Caterina Bori, “Theology, Politics and Society: The Missing Link. Studying Religion in the Mamluk Period,” in Ubi sumus? Quo vademus? Mamluk Studies, State of the Art, ed. Stephan Conermann, Göttingen, Bonn University Press (“Mamluk Studies,” 3), 2013, p. 57-94, esp. p. 83-84.
Ibn Taymiyya, Maǧmūʿ fatāwā šayḫ al-islām Aḥmad Ibn Taymiyya, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad b. Qāsim al-Naǧdī l-Ḥanbalī, Rabat, Maktabat al-maʿārif, 1981, 37 vols, XVIII, p. 355-371, quotation from XVIII, p. 355 and XVIII, p. 351-354 on sīra of al-Bakrī. On ‘non-canonical’ sīra works, al-Bakrī, see Boaz Shoshan, Popular Culture in Medieval Cairo, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (“Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization”), 2002, p. 23-39; Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muḥammad, p. 8-12; Hirschler, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands, p. 165-166.
Ibn Taymiyya, Maǧmūʿ fatāwā šayḫ al-islām Aḥmad b. Taymiyya, XVIII, p. 353, 354, 371.
Jonathan Berkey, Popular Preaching and Religious Authority in the Medieval Islamic Near East, Seattle-London, University of Washington Press (“Publications on the Near East”), 2001. A condensed version: id., “Audience and authority in Medieval Islam,” in Charisma and Religious Authority: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Preaching, 1200-1500, eds Katherine Ludwig Jansen and Miri Rubin, Turnhout, Brepols (“Europa Sacra,” 4), 2010, p. 105-120.
Talmon Heller, Islamic Piety in Medieval Syria, p. 70, 254; Hirschler, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands, p. 39-40; Davidson, Carrying on the Tradition, p. 120; Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muḥammad, p. 147, 159.
On Thursday (and Monday), Uri Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muḥammad as seen by the Early Muslims, Princeton, The Darwin Press (“Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam,” 5), 1995, p. 191.
Al-Ǧazarī, Taʾrīḫ ḥawādiṯ al-zamān, III, p. 946.
Al-Saḫāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, VI, p. 283.
See Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī, al-Durar al-kāmina, IV, p. 7.
Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1987, p. 109-112; James W. Watts, “The Three Dimensions of Scriptures,” The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds, 2/2-3 (2006/2008), p. 135-159, reprinted in Iconic Books and Texts, ed. James W. Watts, Sheffield, Equinox, 2013, p. 9-32. For Hadith ritual reading, see Davidson, Carrying on the Tradition, p. 119-121.
Al-Saḫāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, VIII, p. 103-106. Also useful are the biographical notices by Ibn Fahd al-Makkī (d. 871/1466), Laḥẓ al-alḥāẓ bi-ḏayl ṭabaqāt al-ḥuffāẓ, Damascus, Maṭbaʿat al-tawfīq fī Dimašq, 1347[/1928], p. 317-322 and Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī, al-Maǧmaʿ al-muʾassis li-l-muʿǧam al-mufahris, ed. Yūsuf ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Marʿašlī, Beirut, Dār al-maʿrifa, 1410/1994, 4 vols, III, p. 285-289.
See the hearing certificate (samāʿ) appended to Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, al-Tarǧīḥ li-ḥadīṯ ṣalāt al-taṣbīḥ, ed. Maḥmūd Mamdūḥ, Beirut, Dār al-bašāʾir al-islāmiyya, 1405/1984, p. 76. Ṣāliḥiyya has been at the center of recent scholarly attention. In particular, Toru Miura, “The Ṣāliḥiyya Quarter in the Suburbs of Damascus: Its Formation, Structure, and Transformation in the Ayyūbid and Mamlūk Periods,” Bulletin d’études orientales, 47 (1995), p. 129-181 and the more recent book which I was unable to inspect: Toru Miura, Dynamism in the Urban Society of Damascus: The Ṣāliḥiyya Quarter from the Twelfth to the Twentieth Centuries, Leiden-Boston, Brill (“Islamic Area Studies,” 2), 2016.
Al-Saḫāwī, al-Ǧawāhir wa-l-durar, I, p. 181.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Maǧālis, p. 418.
According to Taqī l-Dīn Muḥammad b. Fahd al-Makkī, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn was appointed at the beginning of 837/1433. Ibn Fahd al-Makkī, Laḥẓ al-alḥāẓ, p. 317-325, esp. p. 319.
Al-Saḫāwī, al-Ǧawāhir wa-l-durar, II, p. 595.
For dating al-Radd al-wāfir: Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī, Inbāʾ al-ġumr bi-anbāʾ al-ʿumr, Hyderabad, Maṭbaʿat maǧlis dāʾirat al-maʿārif al-ʿuṯmāniyya, 1967-1975, VIII, p. 258-259; al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, VIII, p. 105; Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, al-Radd al-wāfir ʿalā man zaʿama anna man sammā Bn Taymiyya šayḫ al-islām kāfir, ed. Zuhayr al-Šāwīš, Beirut, al-Maktab al-islāmī, 1393/1973, p. 140 and MS Berlin Staatsbibliothek Ms. Or. Wetzstein I 157, fol. 73v (Muḥammad b. Abī Bakr ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad, Kitāb al-radd al-wāfir ʿalā man zaʿama anna man sammā Bn Taymiyya šayḫ al-islām kāfir, f. 1r-74v).
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, al-Radd al-wāfir, p. 144-146 (the taqrīẓ); al-Saḫāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, VIII, p. 105.
Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī, al-Maǧmaʿ al-muʾassis, III, p. 287.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, al-Radd al-wāfir.
Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muḥammad, p. 96-100.
To my knowledge, the most informative list of Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn works is that put together by Muḥammad Naʿīm al-Arqsūsī which includes extant manuscripts and editions. Al-Arqsūsī lists sixty-three works. See Muḥammad Naʿīm al-Arqsūsī in his Muqaddima to Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s Tawḍīḥ al-muštabah fī ḍabṭ asmāʾ al-ruwāt wa-ansābi-him wa-alqābi-him wa-kunā-hum, ed. Muḥammad Naʿīm al-Arqsūsī, Beirut, Dār al-risāla l-ʿālamiyya, 1431/ 2010, 2 vols, I, p. 38-42.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Tawḍīḥ al-muštabih.
Id., Maǧālis fī tafsīr qawlihi taʿālā: “Laqad manna Allāh ʿalá al-mu’minīn idh baʿaḫa fīhim rasūlan min anfusihim.”
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Kitāb ʿUqūd al-durar fī ʿulūm al-aṯar wa-šarḥu-hā, eds Ṣubḥī l-Ḥusaynī l-Sāmarrāʾī and Muṣtafā Ismāʿ īl, Beirut, Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1426/2005.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Badīʿat al-bayān li-mawt al-aʿyān, ed. Aḥmad al-Būšī, Kuwait, Dār Ibn al-Aṯīr, 1418/1997.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, al-Tibyān li-badīʿat al-bayān, ed. Šayḫalī ʿAbd al-Salām, Beirut, Dār al-nawādir, 1429/2008, 3 vols. On ḥisāb al-ǧummal, Adam Gacek, Arabic Manuscripts: A Vademecum for Readers, Leiden-Boston, Brill (“Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1, The Near and Middle East,” 98), 2009, p. 58-59.
Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī, al-Maǧmaʿ al-muʾassis, III, p. 287.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Iftitāḥ al qāriʾ li-Ṣaḥīḥ al-Buḫārī, in Maǧmūʿ fī-hi rasāʾil li-l-ḥāfiẓ Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimašqī, ed. Mišʿal b. Bānī l-Ǧabrīn Muṭayrī, Beirut, Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 2001, p. 317-350.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Isnād Ṣaḥīḥ al-Buḫārī, in Maǧmūʿ fī-hi rasāʾil, p. 294-309. See also, the Asānīd kutub al-sitta wa-ġayrihā (Maǧmūʿ fī-hi rasāʾil, p. 275-287) and six elevated Hadith (ʿawālī) that Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn recorded for himself (Maǧmūʿ fīhi rasāʾil, p. 429-44).
Like the session (maǧlis) Ibn Nāṣr al-Dīn held on the story of Ǧābir b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣarī (d. 77/696 or 78/698), the companion of the Prophet who travelled one month to hear a ḥadīṯ on God’s final justice from its only living transmitter, ʿUnays b. ʿAbd Allāh. See Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Maǧlis fī ḥadīṯ Ǧābir allaḏī raḥala fī-hi masīra šahr […], in Maǧmūʿ fī-hi rasāʾil, p. 203-228.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, al-Nukat al-aṯariyya ʿalā l-aḥādīṯ al-ǧazariyya, in Maǧmūʿ fī-hi rasāʾil, p. 483-504. This text corrects point by point a small collection of Hadith (ǧuzʾ) which “one of the leading scholars of the day composed for himself” and which he had happened to inspect. The collection was called al-Ǧazariyya.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, al-Intiṣār li-samāʿ al-Ḥaǧǧār, in Maǧmūʿ fī-hi rasāʾil, p. 398-418: fa-waqaftu ʿalā awrāq al-asmāʾ (p. 404), qad ṇaẓara l-imām […] Ibn al-Wānī fī awrāq al-asmāʾ al-maḏkūra […] wa-waǧadtu bi-ḫaṭṭi-hi (p. 405).
See Saʿīd al-Ǧūmānī, “Waṯīqa ǧadīda ʿan naql al-ʿilm fī l-taʾrīḫ al-islāmī taḥqīq awrāq al-samāʿ li-sunan al-Dāraquṭnī,” Maǧallat kulliyyat al-šarīʿa wa-l-dirāsāt al-islāmiyya, 38/2 (2021), p. 1-57, esp. p. 28-31.
The case of al-Ḥaǧǧār and its significance has been noted by Hirschler, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands, p. 66 and Davidson, Carrying on the Tradition, p. 63-65.
Id., al-Lafẓ al-mukarram bi-faḍl yawm ʿĀšūraʾ al-muḥarram and Maǧlis fī faḍl yawm ʿArafa wa-mā yataʿallaqu bi-hi, in his Maǧmūʿ fī-hi rasāʾil, p. 51-110, 129-184 and briefly discussed by Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muḥammad, p. 114-115, 147-149, 152-153.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, al-Tarǧīḥ li-ḥadīṯ ṣalāt al-taṣbīḥ, discussed by Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muḥammad, p. 96-100.
Id., al-Radd ʿalā man ankara rafʿ al-yadayn fī l-duʿāʾ, in Maǧmūʿ fī-hi rasāʾil, p. 357-363.
Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muḥammad, p. 99.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Maǧmūʿ fī-hi rasāʾil, p. 282: wa-min masmūʿātī […] al-sīra l-nabawiyya li-Bn Isḥāq tahḏīb Ibn Hišām.
Id., Maǧlis fī ḫatm al-sīra l-nabawiyya ʿalā ṣāḥibi-hā afḍal al-ṣalāt wa-l-salām, ed. Ibrāhīm Ṣāliḥ, Damascus, Dār al-bašāʾir, 1419/1999. The date is that of the composition of the text (ibid., p. 31).
For titles and manuscripts see al-Arqsūsī’s introduction to Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s Tawḍīḥ al-muštabah, I, p. 40 (entries nos 30-37), to be updated. The short mawlid work Mawrid al-ṣādī fī mawlid al-hādī has been edited: Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Mawrid al-ṣādī fī mawlid al-hādī, ed. Ibrāhīm Šayḫ Rāšid al-Murayḫī, Baḥrayn: Ǧāmʿiyya al-Imām Mālik b. Anas Mamlakat Baḥrayn, 1429AH/2008. The work Salwat al-kaʾīb bi-wafāt al-Ḥabīb (on the Prophet’s death) also: Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Salwat al-kaʾīb bi-wafāt al-Ḥabīb, ed. Ṣāliḥ Yūsuf Maʿtūq-Hāšim Ṣāliḥ Mannāʿ, Dubai, Dār al-buḥūṯ li-l-dirāsāt al-islāmiyya wa-iḥyāʾ al-turāṯ, [1998].
Ibid., p. 64-68.
Id., Maǧlis fī ḫatm al-sīra l-nabawiyya, p. 17-27, 28-30.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Maǧlis fī ḫatm al-sīra l-nabawiyya, p. 30: “On it [i.e. al-sīra l-muḥammadiyya], I composed a few verses which I recited at the conclusion of The Sīra.”
See Arjan Post, The Journeys of a Taymiyyan Sufi: Sufism though the Eyes of ʿImād al-Dīn al-Wāsiṭī (d. 711/1311), Leiden-Boston, Brill (“Studies on Sufism”), 2020, especially p. 145-146, 192-197. Also id., “A Glimpse of Sufism from the Circle of Ibn Taymiyya: An Edition and Translation of al-Baʿlabakkī’s (d. 734/1333) Epistle on the Spiritual Way (Risālat al-Sulūk),” Journal of Sufi Studies, 5 (2016), p. 156-187 where Post presents the case of Zayn al-Dīn al-Baʿlabakkī (d. 734/1333), a Ḥanbalī student of Ibn Taymiyya who was trained in Sufism by al-Wāsiṭī. In 718/1318, Zayn al-Dīn was tried for claiming to have experienced a spiritual state in which he had received the cloak from ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Ǧīlānī (p. 165-166).
This treatise remains available only in manuscript form but can be partially studied through Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī’s many quotations of it. See Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, Badʾ al-ʿulqa, ed. ʿĀṣim Ibrāhīm al-Kayyālī, Beirut, Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 2008, p. 45-73. On Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī’s Sufism, see Hirschler, A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture, p. 59-63; Denis Gril, “De la ḫirqa à la tarîqa : continuité et évolution dans l’identification et la classification des voies,” in Le soufisme à l’époque ottomane, XVIe-XVIIIe siècle, eds Rachida Chih et Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, Cairo, Institut français d’archéologie orientale (“Cahier des Annales islamologiques,” 29), 2009, p. 58-81, esp. p. 67-68.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār fī siyar wa-mawlid al-Muḫtār, ed. Abī Yaʿqūb Našʾat Kamāl, al-Fayyūm, Dār al-falāḥ li-l-baḥṯ al-ʿilmī wa-taḥqīq al-turāṯ, 2010, 8 vols.
Id., Maǧālis, p. 25: wa-li-l-ḥadīṯ ṭuruq ḫarraǧtu-hā fī Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār.
See Muḥammad b. Ǧaʿfar al-Kattānī (d. 1345/1927), al-Risāla l-mustaṭrafa li-bayān mašhūr kutub al-sunna l-mušarrafa, Beirut, Dār al-Bašāʾir al-islāmiyya, 14141/19955, p. 39-40, 41-42 which also provides a list of early Ǧawāmiʿ. According to al-Kattānī a Ǧāmiʿ covered the following subjects: belief (ʿaqāʾid), rulings, “heart-melting traditions” enticing to piety and devotion (riqāq), manners (ādāb), travelling and not (al-safar wa-l-maqām), tafsīr, history, campaigns (siyar), crises and seditions (fitan) as well as virtues and vices (of places and people).
See Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Maǧālis, p. 63-64.
Khalidi, Images of Muhammad, p. 313: “In this era of recapitulation, the Sira too began to bloat, to swallow and regurgitate its antecedents, and to lay down the groundwork for a Sira that was to last to the present day. In the process, this new premodern Sira went behind the four founding fathers to preserve for us sizable fragments from the very early layers of Sira writing, and then to organize the vast material accumulated in a manner often referred to as ‘comprehensive’ (jamiʿ) or ‘well arrayed’ (madbut).”
Al-Arqsūsī lists it as a work on prophetic biography, see his Muqaddima to Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Tawḍīḥ al-muštabah, I, p. 40; al-Kattānī, al-Risāla l-mustaṭrafa lists it among the works of Hadith (on prophetic biography).
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, I, p. 82: wa-qad ǧaʿaltu hāḏā l-ǧāmiʿ al-muḫtaṣar fuṣūlan mubawwaba li-maʿānin murattaba wa-sammaytu-hu Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār fī l-siyar wa-mawlid al-muḫtār.
Ibid., I, p. 373. See Christopher Melchert, “Bukhārī and his Ṣaḥīḥ,” in Hadith, Piety, and Law: Selected Studies, Atlanta, Lockwood Press, 2015, p. 61-87, esp. p. 70; originally published in Le Muséon, 123 (2010), p. 425-454.
On attestations of Muḥammad’s coming in early biographical materials of the Prophet, see Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder, p. 21-43. The titles of the first five fuṣūl respectively are: [1] Faṣl fī l-bišārāt al-ʿaẓīma bi-ḏikr nabī-nā Muḥammad fī kutub Allāh al-qadīma; [2] faṣl fī ḏikr nabiyyi-nā Muḥammad fī l-Inǧīl; [3] faṣl fī ḏikr al-bišārāt al-ʿīsawiyya bi-l-nabī Muḥammad; [4] faṣl fī l-kitāb allāḏī kāna fī l-kanz al-maḏkūr fī qawli-hi taʿalā: (wa-kāna taḥta-hu […]); [5] faṣl fī mā kāna fī ṣuḥuf Mūsā min ḏikr nabiyyi-nā Muḥammad.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, I, p. 84-373.
Ibid., I, p. 374-388: faṣl fī ḫtiyār Allāh taʿalā la-hu wa-ǧtibāʾi-hi wa-tafḍīli-hi ʿalā l-ḫalāʾiq wa-ṣṭifāʾi-hi.
Ibid., I, p. 389-411.
Ibid., I, p. 412 then in numerous variants on this very topic I, p. 412-424.
Ibid., I, p. 461-469.
Ibid., I, p. 452-454.
Ibid., I, p. 482.
Ibid., II, p. 5-406: faṣl fī ḏikr nasabi-hi l-munīf ilā Adam ʿalay-hi l-ṣalāt wa-l-salām wa-ntiqāl nūri-hi l-šarīf ilā abāʾi-hi l-kirām.
In the only manuscript I was able to consult, the faṣl dedicated to mawlid narratives covers 73 folios out of a whole of 306, but the manuscript is incomplete; it lacks its end. See Ǧāmiʿa Muḥammad bin Saʿūd al-Islāmiyya MS 5522, fol. 119v-192r. Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, II, p. 407-510 and III, p. 5-243: faṣl fī ḥamli-hi wa-ẓuhūr ḍiyāʾi-hi wa-ḥawādiṯ mawlidi-hi wa-ḏikr asmāʾi-hi.
Ibid., III, p. 106-243.
Ibid., III, p. 135.
Ibid., III, p. 142-143.
Ibid., III, p. 244 to the end and IV, p. 5-161: faṣl fī raḍāʿi-hi wa-našʾati-hi wa-zawāǧi-hi wa-ḏikr baʿaṯati-hi muḫtaṣara wa-miʿrāǧi-hi.
On the opening and purification of Muḥammad’s heart as an episode of initiation and preparation to prophethood, see Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder, p. 59-75.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, III, p. 411-416, 422-432.
Ibid., III, p. 420-421.
Ibid., III, p. 433-541.
Ibid., III, p. 542-557.
Ibid., IV, p. 5-52.
Ibid., IV, p. 56-161: faṣl hiǧrat al-nabī […] maʿa nubḏa min šamāʾili-hi wa-ṣifāti-hi.
Ibid., IV, p. 162-525 and V, p. 5-391.
Ibid., IV, p. 162-301.
Ibid., IV, p. 351: al-ṣifāt al-nabawiyya, al-šamāʾil al-muḥammadiyya, al-aḫlāq al-šarīfa, al-awṣāf al-ʿāliya l-munīfa; also V, p. 239 and 248.
Ibid., IV, p. 302-350 (ḥadīṯ Umm Maʿbad); IV, p. 351-529 (ḥadīṯ Hind) and V, p. 5-234 (ḥadīṯ Hind and ʿAlī); V, p. 239-248 (ḥadīṯ ʿĀʾiša).
Ibid., V, p. 248.
See for instance ibid., V, p. 351-369 reporting ḥadīṯs and traditions on Medina’s many names and merits and V, p. 371-375 (longing for Mecca).
Ibid., V, p. 387-390 and 391-392.
Ibid., V, p. 393-586 and VI, p. 5-265: faṣl fī ḥuǧǧati-hi.
Ibid., V, p. 394-395, 397, 555; VI, p. 200-201, 218.
Ibid., VI, p. 217-221, quotation from 221. Materials reporting the Prophets’ return to Medina are covered in ibid., VI, p. 267-293.
Ibid., VI, p. 294 ff.
Ibid., VI, p. 355-377, 490-507.
Ibid., VI, p. 508-534.
Ibid., VI, p. 535-574.
Ibid., VII, p. 5-28.
Ibid., VII, p. 53 ff.
Ibid., VII, p. 473-505 and ibid., VIII.
For an impressive list of his sources see the introduction: ibid., I, p. 23-30.
Ibid., I, p. 378-382; Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām (d. 600/1262), Bidāyat al-sūl fī tafḍīl al-rasūl, ed. Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī, Damascus, al-Maktab al-islamī, 19864.
On these works, see infra p. 44 and 45.
See the point made by Karen Bauer referring to the tafsīr genre as represented by al-Ṭabarī’s Ǧāmiʿ al-bayān: Karen Bauer, “Justifying the Genre: A Study of Introductions to Classical Works of Tafsir,” in Aims, Methods, and Contexts of Qur’anic Exegesis, 2nd/8th-9th/15th centuries, ed. Karen Bauer, Oxford-London, Oxford University Press-Institute of Ismaili Studies (“Qurʾanic Studies Series,” 9), 2013, p. 38-65, esp. p. 50.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, II, p. 319, 389, etc.; IV, p. 173, 196, 245, 255, 260, etc.; VI, p. 294, etc.; VII, p. 367, 381, etc.; VIII, p. 5, 94, 96, 104, 110, 128, etc.
Ibid., IV, p. 162-167.
Ibid., IV, p. 55-55, 56, 120 ff.
For instance, ibid., VI, p. 327; VII, p. 186, 313 (kamā qaddamnā […]), etc.
Ibid., V, p. 248.
See how he criticizes Ibn Kaṯīr, for instance, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, III, p. 404-405, or al-Ḏahabī: ibid., VIII, p. 103.
Ibid., I, p. 101, 152, 373, 400, 477, etc.; III, p. 5, 107; VIII, p. 128, etc.
Ibid., III, p. 4, 9.
Ibid., V, p. 503; VII, p. 370; VIII, p. 118.
Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ al-Šahrazūrī, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīṯ, ed. Nūr al-Dīn ʿItr, Beirut-Damascus, Dār al-Fikr, 1425/2004, p. 98: wa-lā taḥillu riwāyatu-hu li-aḥad fī ayy maʿnā kāna illā maqrūnan bi-bayān waḍʿi-hi.
Two informative introductions to Ibn Katīr are Younus Y. Mirza, “Ibn Kathīr, ʿImād al-Dīn,” EI3 and Erik Ohlander, Ibn Kathīr, in Essays in Arabic literary biography, eds Joseph E. Lowry and Devin J. Stewart, Wiesbaden, Harrasowitz Verlag (“Mîzân,” 17), 2009, p. 147-159. On al-Ḏahabī, Caterina Bori, “al-Dhahabī,” EI3.
Ibn Kaṯīr, al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya, ed. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī, Cairo, Dār Hiǧr, 1419/1998, 21 vols. The sīra runs from volume 3 to volume 9 of this edition; al-Ḏahabī, Taʾrīḫ al-islām wa-wafāyāt al-mašāhīr wa-l-aʿlām, ed. Baššār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf, Beirut, 1424/2003, 17 vols. Muḥammad’s biography covers the second half of the first volume, p. 479-853.
Ibn Kaṯīr, al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya, I, p. 7. For similar procedural statements: ibid., III, p. 354, 620; VII, p. 404; VIII, p. 173 (wa-qad ʿulima bi-l-tawātur anna-hu dufina […]).
According to Rebecca Williams, Ibn Kaṯīr strove unsuccessfully to apply to his sīra Ibn Taymiyya’s programme of doing exegesis with Qurʾān and authentic Sunna only. Rebecca R. Williams, Muḥammad and the Supernatural: Medieval Arab Views, London-New York, Routledge (“Routledge Studies in Classical Islam”), 2013, p. 6-11. On Ibn Kaṯīr’s sīra, also Nagel, Allahs Liebling, p. 282-289 and Khalidi, Images of Muhammad, p. 334-337.
A sampling: al-Ḏahabī, Taʾrīḫ al-islām, I, p. 482, 483, 484, 485, 486, 493, 776, 778, 779, 783, 787, 835, etc.
Ibid., I, p. 502-503.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn: “This is the epilogue of what of this sīra Allāh has granted” (fa-hāḏā ḫātimat mā fataḥa Llāh bi-hi min hāḏihi l-sīra; Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, VIII, p. 181) and Abū Yaʿqūb Našʾat Kamāl, Muqaddima of Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, I, p. 33.
Abī Yaʿqūb Našʾat Kamāl, Muqaddima to Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, I, p. 32 and p. 52 (colophon of the Damascus Ẓāhiriyya copy of the work – Damascus, al-Asad National Library MS Ẓāhiriyya taʾrīḫ 1894).
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, III, p. 342, 349, 384, 393, 395, 411, 415, 420, 422, 433, 450, 460, 451, 551; IV, p. 5, 59-77, etc. On the centrality of chronology in Sira, see Miskinzoda, On the Margins of Sīra, p. 113-116. On the symbolic significance of chronology in Muḥammad’s biographical accounts, see Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder, p. 189-214 and Lawrence I. Conrad, “Abraha and Muḥammad: Some Observations Apropos of Chronology and Literary ‘topoi’ in the Early Arabic Historical Tradition,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 50/2 (1987), p. 225-240.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, III, p. 406-409; V, p. 240; IV, p. 303-304; VIII, p. 145 ff.; V, p. 387-389, etc.
Ibid., I, p. 403, 410; III, p. 343, 404, 431-432; IV, p. 325ff.; V, p. 373-374, 399-400, etc.
Ibid., IV, p. 267, 269; VI, p. 85, etc.
Al-Saḫāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, VIII, p. 194.
Abī Yaʿqūb Našʾat Kamāl, Muqaddima to Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, I, p. 32-34 (last long title at p. 34). See also ibid., I, p. 82.
Ibid., I, p. 62.
Ibid., I, p. 63-67, p. 67-68 on mawlid as bidʿa ḥasana. For an early history of mawlid celebrations, see Kaptein, Muḥammad’s Birthday festival, especially chap. 1 and 2, and in particular p. 40-41 on al-Malik al-Muẓaffar Abū Saʿīd al-Kökbürī’s mawlid in Irbil.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, I, p. 65. For polemics on mawlid legitimacy, see Kaptein, Muḥammad’s Birthday festival, p. 44-67; Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muḥammad, p. 65, 71-72, chapter 3 (passim) and chapter 5; Raquel M. Ukeles, “The Sensitive Puritan? Revisiting Ibn Taymiyya’s Approach to Law and Spirituality in Light of 20th-Century Debates on the Prophet’s Birthday,” in Ibn Taymiyya and His Times, eds Yossef Rapoport and Shahab Ahmed, Karachi, Oxford University Press (“Studies in Islamic Philosophy,” 4), 2010, p. 317-337.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, I, p. 66.
Ibid., I, p. 67. Abū Šāma was clearly an authoritative reference on mawlid’s legitimacy. The same passage mentioned by Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn is used as representative of mawlid justifications by Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muḥammad, p. 63 and Kaptein, Muhammad’s Birthday Festival, p. 71.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, I, p. 68.
Ibid., I, p. 69-83.
Ibid., I, p. 69. See Buḫārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, Book 62 (Kitāb faḍāʾil al-ṣaḥāba), bāb 6 (Manāqib ʿUmar b. al-Ḫaṭṭāb), ḥadīth 38. https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3688 (last access 20 January 2023). Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, Book 45 (Kitāb al-birr wa-l-ādab), Bāb 50 (al-Mar’ ma‘a man aḥabba), ḥadīth 208. https://sunnah.com/muslim/45/208 (Last access 20 January 2023).
Ibid.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, VI, p. 355-357, 358-360.
For instance, ibid., I, p. 73 (bottom), 82.
For instance, ibid., I, p. 70-71, 74, 80, 81.
Ibid., I, p. 70-77. Quotation is from p. 71.
Ibid., I, p. 78. The title of the muṣannaf is Ḏikr al-muḥibbīn maʿa l-maḥḅūbīn iḏā wāfaqa-hum fī l-ʿaqd wa-l-ḥāl. This work is no longer extant. It is mentioned by al-Ḏahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, eds Asad al-Arnāʾūṭ, Šuʿayb al-Arnāʾūṭ and Ḥusayn Asad, Beirut, Muʾassasat al-risāla, 1982, 25 vols, XIX, p. 306; Kebira Masotta, Les premiers ascètes en Islam d’après la Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ de Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī : entre zuhd et taṣawwuf, l’émergence du saint, unpublished PhD Dissertation, Paris, EPHE, 2017, p. 55 mentions it without further details.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, I, p. 79-80: ruyyinā min ḥadīṯ al-ḥāfiẓ […]. For a biographical notice of al-Bardānī, al-Ḏahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, XIX, p. 219-222 and p. 220.
A collection of al-Bardānī’s traditions figures in Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī’s catalogue of his own books. See Hirschler, A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture, p. 503. The work’s full title is al-Fawāʾid al-ḥisān al-muntaqāt al-ṣiḥāḥ ʿalā šarṭ al-imāmayn al-Buḫārī wa-Muslim, supposedly a taḫrīǧ (selection) of Muslim and al-Buḫārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ which is today preserved in Damascus. Damascus, al-Asad National Library, MS 384771, fol. 125-140; described by Yāsīn Muḥammad al-Sawwās in Fihris maǧāmiʿ al-madrasa l-ʿumāriyya fī dār al-kutub al-ẓāhiriyya bi-Dimašq, Kuwait, Maʿhad al-maḫṭūṭāt al-ʿarabiyya, 1980, p. 599.
Al-Ḏahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, XIX, p. 220-221: […] lam yabqa min mubašširāt al-nubuwwa illā l-ruʾyā l-ṣāliḥa. Pierre Lory, Le rêve et ses interpretations en Islam, Paris, Albin Michel (“Sciences des religions”), 2003, p. 44-49.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, I, p. 387-388, quot. from p. 387: “I came across a valuable question (masʾala) written by (bi-ḫaṭṭ) the master Hadith scholar (al-ḥāfiẓ) Abī ʿAlī l-Bardānī in which he mentioned that the friends [of God] are superior to the angels. In it he resorted to proofs from the Book and the Sunna.” Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn then reports a whole passage from the masʾala. He probably had access to the book.
Ibid., I, p. 79.
On the material poverty of early renunciants, see Christopher Melchert, Before Sufism: Early Islamic Renunciant Piety, Berlin-Boston, Walter de Gruyter (“Islam – thought, culture, and society,” 4), 2020, p. 21-23. The Sufi Ibn Khafīf has been studied by Florian Sobieroj, Ibn Khafīf aš-Šīrāzī und seine Schrift zur Novizenerziehung (Kitāb al-Iqtiṣād): Biographische Studien, Edition und Übersetzung, Beirut-Stuttgart, Orient-Institut der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft-F. Steiner, 1998. For reference to further studies: id., “Ibn Khafīf,” EI3.
Al-Mawāʿīẓ wa-l-waṣāyā by al-Sulamī is a writing known only through quotations in other works. See Bilal Orfali and Gerard Böwering, Sufi Treatises of Abū Abd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī, Beirut, Dar el-Machreq (“Recherches”), 2009, p. 18. I am indebted to Jean-Jacques Thibon for this reference.
On Ibrāhīm b. al-Adham, Russel Jones, “Ibrāhīm b. Adham,” EI2; Denis Gril, “Compagnons ou disciples ? La suḥba et ses exigences : l’exemple d’Ibrāhīm b. Adham d’après la Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ,” dans Les maîtres soufis et leurs disciples, IIIe-Ve siècles de l’hégire (IXe-XIe s.) : enseignement, formation et transmission, eds Geneviève Gobillot et Jean-Jacques Thibon, Beirut, Institut français du Proche-Orient, 2012, p. 35-53.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, I, p. 79-80. The story is also reported by Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī, Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ wa-ṭabaqāt al-aṣfiyāʾ, Cairo, Maṭbaʿ al-saʿāda, 1932-1938, 10 vols, VIII, p. 34-35 and Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīḫ madīnat Dimašq, ed. ʿUmar b. Ġarāma l-ʿAmrawī, Beirut, Dār al-fikr, 1995-1998, 80 vols, LXI, p. 401.
Love for the Prophet was not a typical feature of early renunciants. See Jean-Jacques Thibon, “Transmission du hadith et modèle prophétique chez les premiers soufis,” Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 178 (avril-juin 2017), p. 71-88, esp. p. 71-72; Masotta, Les premiers ascètes en Islam d’après la Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ de Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī, p. 442.
About dreams: Lory, Le rêve et ses interprétations en islam, esp. p. 131-136, 145-162 and the various studies by Leah Kinberg.
Jean-Jacques Thibon, L’œuvre d’ Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī, 325 (937)-412 (1021) et la formation du soufisme, Damascus, Institut français du Proche-Orient, 2009, p. 131-139, 510-519; Masotta, Les premiers ascètes en Islam d’après la Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ de Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī, esp. p. 426-433; Christopher Melchert, “Early Renunciants as Ḥadīth transmitters,” The Muslim World 92 (2002), p. 407-418.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, I, p. 80-81.
Ibid., I, p. 81. Tirmiḏī, Ǧāmiʿ, Kitāb al-ʿIlm (41), bāb Mā gāʾa fī l-aḫḏ bi-l-sunna wa-ǧtināb al-bidaʿ (16).
See Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, VIII, p. 128.
See ibid., VIII, respectively p. 94-98, 99-100, 101-128; quotation from p. 128.
Ibid., VIII, p. 128-141.
For instance, when assessing the transmitter Sawwār b. Maymūn Abū Ǧarrāḥ al-ʿAbdī, Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn draws on al-Ḏahabī. He writes: “al-Ḏahabī said in what I found written by him in his book Visiting the Prophet – which is a thin collection (ǧuzʾ laṭīf) […],” then he quotes from the source and signals the end of the quotation (intahā). Ibid., VIII, p. 131.
Ibid., VIII, p. 132-133, 134.
Ibid., VIII, p. 141.
See id., al-Tarǧīḥ li-ḥadīṯ ṣalāt al-taṣbīḥ, p. 36, discussed by Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muḥammad, p. 96-100; Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ al-Šahrazūrī, ʿUlūm al-ḥadīṯ, p. 103; English translation, id., An Introduction to the Science of Ḥadîth, p. 80.
See Jonathan A.C. Brown, “Even If It’s Not True It’s True: Using Unreliable Ḥadīths in Sunni Islam,” Islamic Law and Society, 18 (2011), p. 1-52.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, al-Tarǧīḥ li-ḥadīṯ ṣalāt al-taṣbīḥ, p. 36.
Id., Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār, VIII, p. 141-142 (quotation from p. 141).
Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger, p. 99-104 on belief in šafāʿa and the merits of taṣliya. On ziyāra, the standard reference remains Christopher Taylor, In the Vicinity of the Righteous: Ziyāra and the Veneration of Muslim Saints in Late Medieval Egypt, Leiden-Boston, Brill (“Islamic History and Civilization,” 22), 1999.
Denis Gril effectively speaks of the isnād as: “less as a means of authentification than as a transmission of [prophetic] presence.” Denis Gril, “Hadith in the work of Ibn ʿArabī: The uninterrupted chain of prophecy,” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society, 50 (2011), p. 45-76. I am here quoting from the online version available at: https://ibnarabisociety .org/ahadith-in-the-work-of-ibn-arabi-denis-gril/, last accessed December 14th, 2021.
Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Iftitāḥ al-qāriʾ li-Ṣaḥīḥ al-Buḫārī, in Maǧmūʿ fī-hi rasāʾil, p. 322 (wa-l-sunna l-nabawiyya hiya waḥy min Allāh taʿālā ayḍan) and p. 321: “Gabriel – peace be upon him – used to let the Sunna descend on the Prophet as he let the Qurʾān descend on him, and he used to teach it as he taught the Qurʾān” (also quoted in al-Radd al-wāfir, p. 6).
See Davidson, Carrying on the Tradition, p. 16-27; Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn, Iftitāḥ al qārī li-Ṣaḥīḥ al-Buḫārī, in Maǧmūʿ fī-hi rasāʾil, p. 322: wa-qad naṣaba Llāh taʿālā li-l-sunna rigālan raḥalū fī ṭalabi-hā […].
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 323-324.
Ibid., p. 326, 328.