*** Welcome to piglix ***

Muhammad ibn Ishaq

Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Yasār
Title Ibn Isḥaq
Born 704 AD
85 AH
Medina
Died 761–770 AD
150–159 AH
Baghdad
Ethnicity Arab
Era Islamic golden age
Region Medina, Alexandria, Baghdad
Religion Islam
Main interest(s) Prophetic biography

Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Yasār ibn Khiyār (Arabic pronunciation: [ɪsˈħɑːq]; according to some sources, ibn Khabbār, or Kūmān, or Kūtān,Arabic: محمد بن إسحاق بن يسار بن خيار‎‎, or simply ibn Isḥaq, ابن إسحاق, meaning "the son of Isaac"; died 767 or 761) was an Arab Muslim historian and hagiographer. Ibn Ishaq collected oral traditions that formed the basis of an important biography of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

Born in Medina about the year A.H. 85 (704 A.D), ibn Isḥaq was the grandson of a Christian man of Kufa (in southern Iraq), by the name of Yasār. Yasār had been captured in a monastery in Ayn al-Tamr in one of Khalid ibn al-Walid's campaigns, taken to Medina and became the slave of Qays ibn Makhrama ibn al-Muṭṭalib ibn ʿAbd Manāf ibn Quṣayy. Having accepted Islam, Yasār was manumitted and became his mawlā (client), thus acquiring the nisbat al-Muṭṭalibī. Yasār's three sons, Mūsā, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, and Isḥāq, were all known as transmitters of akhbār, who collected and recounted tales of the past. Isḥāq married the daughter of another mawlā and from this marriage ibn Isḥāq was born.

There are no details of Isḥāq's early life, but in view of the family nature of early akhbār and hadith transmission, it was natural that he should follow in their footsteps. He was also influenced by the work of ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, who praised the young ibn Ishaq for his knowledge of maghāzī (literally, stories of military expeditions). Around the age of 30, ibn Isḥaq arrived in Alexandria and studied under Yazīd ibn Abī Ḥabīb. After his return to Medina, based on one account, he was ordered out of Medina for relating a false hadith from a woman he did not meet (Fāṭima bint al-Mundhir, wife of Hishām ibn ʿUrwa). But those who defended him, like Sufyan ibn `Uyaynah, stated that Ibn Ishaq told them that he did meet her. Also ibn Ishaq disputed with the young Malik ibn Anas, famous for the Maliki School of Fiqh. Leaving Medina (or forced to leave), he traveled eastwards towards what is now Iraq, stopping in Kufa, also al-Jazīra, and into Iran as far as Ray, before returning west. Eventually he settled in Baghdad. There, the new Abbasid dynasty, having overthrown the Umayyad caliphs, was establishing a new capital.


...
Wikipedia

...