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Harald Motzki. Reconstruction of a Source of Ibn Ishaq’s Life of the Prophet

and Early Qur’an Exegesis: A Study of Early Ibn ‘Abbas Traditions

Article  in  Divan Disiplinlerarası Çalışmalar Dergisi · August 2019

DOI: 10.20519/divan.614168

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Harald Motzki. Reconstruction of a

Source of Ibn Ishaq’s Life of the Prophet
and Early Qur’an Exegesis: A Study of
Early Ibn ‘Abbas Traditions. New Jersey:
Gorgias Press, 2017. v + 144 pages.

Muhammed Enes Topgül

Marmara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0003-3077-2610
DOI: 10.20519/divan.614168

It has been the prevalent idea among orientalists that Islamic histori-
cal and religious literature appeared from the early-third century A.H.
onwards and reflected the political and religious divisions in the Islamic
community. In this book, Motzki goes against this idea and suggests that
that early Islamic literature can be dated to the end of the first and the be-
ginning of second centuries A.H. Motzki develops this thesis by studying
Ibn ‘Abbas’ traditions that have been considered suspect by the Western
researchers for he lived with the Prophet Muhammad for a limited time.
He attempts to reconstruct the source of Ibn ‘Abbas and underlines the
role of the narrator (rawi) named Muhammad b. Abi Muhammad. Motzki
presents his method as the attempt “to reconstruct the material that an
author has taken over from an earlier author or informant, submit its pe-
culiarities to a critical examination, and compare such peculiarities with
those of the material of other informants” (p. 16). As a matter of fact, this
method that Motzki calls isnad-cum-matn method resembles the proce-
dure of comparison (mu‘arada) that was used by hadith scholars of the
second and third centuries. However, while the hadith scholars implemen- 245
ted mu‘arada to determine hidden defects in the hadith and to evaluate Dîvân
the reliability of narrators, Motzki uses his own method to determine the 2019/1
earliest date of tradition.
Ibn Hisham does not mention the names of informants of Ibn Ishaq
in his book, but in the latest sources, reaching Ibn ‘Abbas with comple-
DEĞERLENDİRME MAKALELERİ

te isnads. This situation necessitated referring the theses of Schacht and

Juynboll (pp. 34-5). The author who evaluates the traditions of Quraysh
and al-Walid which came from Muhammad b. Abi Muhammad claims the
following: 1. Muhammad is an actual informant of Ibn Ishaq, 2. He invoked
Sa‘id b. Jubayr or ‘Ikrima, 3. He is mentioned as “mawla (non-Arab slave)
of Zayd b. Thabit,” and 4. His isnad possibly extended sometimes back to
Ibn ‘Abbas (p. 37). In order to eliminate vagueness in a tradition that Ibn Is-
haq mentioned to his informant as haddathani ba‘d ahl al-‘ilm, the author
refers to other sources and determines that this narrator is Muhammad
based on the statements of the disciples of Ibn Ishaq. The statement in
Ibn Kathir’s isnad “shaykh min ahl Misr yuqalu lahu Muhammad b. Abi
Muhammad” is additional evidence. Although the narrator is mentioned
as the mawla of Zayd b. Thabit, he did not attribute his tradition to Zayd
because he was very young in age when Zayd was alive. Motzki concludes
that Muhammad died before 110 A.H. based on the beginning of the ha-
dith learning periods of Yunus b. Bukayr and Ibn Ishaq and their deaths (p.
48-9). As far as it can be understood, while Motzki determines isnads that
mention the narrator in Ibn Hisham’s book, he investigates isnads which
Ibn Ishaq called “qala ve balagani,” the places where the narrator mentio-
ned as “mawla of Zayd b. Thabit” and the traditions which have a certain
theme, then refers to other sources that include these statements. He is
taking into consideration repetitive isnad patterns such as “‘Ikrima or Sa‘id
b. Jubayr ‘an Ibn ‘Abbas” (p. 53) and the words and actions of certain peop-
le in the traditions while mentioning Qur’an verses. That is, the text forms
reveal the giving pointed results ability of isnad-cum-matn method (p. 54).
According to Motzki, even if the source of the traditions about the Jewish
people in Medina is Muhammad b. Abi Muhammad, Ibn Hisham did not
mention him so as not to interrupt the tradition by constantly mentioning
the same isnad pattern (p. 54). Also, in Sira of Ibn Hisham, the traditions
which mention the hostility of Jewish people towards the Prophet Muham-
mad from Ibn Ishaq coincide with the isnads that Muhammad is mentio-
ned as the source of Ibn Ishaq (p. 68). In the textual part of the isnad-cum-
matn method, it is determined that the traditions of Muhammad b. Abi
Muhammad: i) report about a situation from the life of the Prophet, mostly
with the names of the persons involved; and ii) designate the verses revea-
246 led by God concerning these persons, their words or deeds (p. 73). Besides
Dîvân isnads, the structural characteristics of the texts can be ascribed to Mu-
2019/1 hammad as evidence against the argument that Ibn Ishaq was himself the
original author of the text. Even though Juynboll sees Ibn Hisham as a true
common link, not even Ibn Ishaq, the isnad-cum-matn method shows that
 DEĞERLENDİRME MAKALELERİ

Ibn Ishaq is not a common link, Muhammad is his source and Muhammad
has his sources too (p. 74, 75).
The situation of Muhammad b. Abi Muhammad outside Sira sources
is examined in the frame of al-Tabari’s Jami‘. The doubts of Schöller and
Juynboll are answered specific to al-Tabari traditions. According to the
author, nothing suggests that al-Tabari forged the isnads. And the situation
of the traditions that are not made up is due to the differences in the tradi-
tions from different disciples. Another piece of evidence on this subject is
that the disciples of Ibn Ishaq mention Muhammad b. Abi Muhammad in
isnads. The author detects that al-Tabari actually reached Yunus b. Bukayr
with Waki‘ and did not copy the text from al-‘Utaridi because this version
of the tradition is different from al-‘Utaridi’s tradition in terms of isnad
and matn (p. 82). After all, the differences in isnads show that al-Tabari did
not correct the traditions that referred to Muhammad b. Abi Muhammad
systematically (p. 92). The comparisons which have aimed to show that al-
Tabari’s Ibn Ishaq tradition comes with a different isnad than that of Ibn
Hisham. According to Motzki, the two traditions in al-Tabari prove that it
misses some traditions about the prophet’s life while Ibn Hisham summa-
rized the book of Ibn Ishaq (p. 99). Schöller’s theory that these isnads first
came into being under al-Shafi‘i’s influence appears to be untenable since
these isnads were used already by Yunus and Salama, all the way back to
Ibn Ishaq (p. 100).
Even though it is not known that the tradition of Ibn Ishaq about al-Nadr
is from Muhammad b. Abi Muhammad or al-Kalbi, the different informati-
on from his disciples have made us think that he sometimes gives the other
one’s name (p. 103). The traditions of al-Kalbi which is in harmony with
the tradition of Ibn Ishaq from Muhammad (p. 111) shows us Schöller’s
claim that Muhammad b. Abi Muhammad in the isnads of al-Tabari is al-
Kalbi, is falsified (pp. 114-15). That is, Muhammad is not a fictive isnad
label, but rather one of Ibn Ishaq’s real sources (p. 115).
Then, was Muhammad b. Abi Muhammad a source of the Prophet’s life?
According to Motzki, when al-Kalbi and Mujahid traditions are compared,
it can be thought that these three names got similar traditions from unk-
nown earlier sources (p. 124). In the end, the study enables a better unders-
tanding of the sources of the Prophet’s life and some weaknesses of Ibn 247
Hisham’s book. Also, it showed a group of traditions in Ibn Hisham’s book
Dîvân
can be dated near the first century A.H., and it developed our knowledge
2019/1
of the sources of prophetic biography and their backgrounds (pp. 127-28).
The strongest part of the work is the interpretation of the results obtai-
ned from a sample set of traditions on the history of prophetic traditions.
DEĞERLENDİRME MAKALELERİ

For example, according to Motzki, it is not possible that Ibn Ishaq forged
a weak isnad in the second quarter of the second century A.H. This is be-
cause, if he created an isnad, he would have picked either Sa‘id b. Jubayr
or ‘Ikrima. According to the author, this isnad was better for a scholar of
the second half of the first century when the reporters of the pieces of in-
formation about the Prophet were not exactly recorded in writing (p. 72).
Another evaluation is made in the tradition of Ibn Ishaq story about how
al-Nadr went to and obtained the information from Jewish people. The
author examines al-Kalbi’s and Muhammad’s versions of the Ibn Ishaq
tradition and concludes that the two traditions are different. The texts of
Ibn Ishaq’s disciples are not different. This is likely to stem not from the
disciples having copied from each other and leaving this out of the isnad,
but rather from the fact that in the generation of Ibn Ishaq’s disciples, the
writing-down of orally-transmitted texts was much more prominent than
in the previous generation (p. 111).
There are some aspects of the work which are weak. First of all, it is very
strange that the author never mentions historians’ practice of collective
isnad (known as talfiq al-isnad) in the book. While the hadith scholars
evaluate the traditions from each narrator independently and record the
wordings belonging to them carefully, the historians mention more than
one name in the isnad while giving the information they got from many
narrators and presenting the texts from them in a more complicated way.
Many of Ibn Ishaq’s isnads, which are handled in Motzki’s work, show the
traces of the differences in isnad use, which is the most basic debates of the
historians and the hadith scholars in the second and third centuries (for
example see p. 62). If Motzki can focus on the difference between the ha-
dith scholars and the historians as regards the use of isnad, he could have
formulated more reasonable explanations about complete isnads and in-
complete isnads. Some expressions in the book give the impression that
there is no thought given to the meanings of isnad’s nature and expressi-
ons (sigha). For example, according to the author, isnad “indicates from
whom the source’s author received the text, and in turn, from whom the
informant has the text, etc., down to the alleged first narrator of the text”
(p. 17). However, there is no distinction between expressions of “haddat-
hana” or “akhbarana” which indicate apparently to the text and expression
248 of “‘an” which is not clearly indicate the text. Some comments in the work
Dîvân are properly justified. For example, the author’s claim that a certain nar-
2019/1 rator, whose father is named “Abu Muhammad,” is not Arab (p. 48) needs
proof. Similarly, in order to prove that Muhammad b. Abi Muhammad got
the information about Jewish people from Jewish people, he said that Zayd
b. Thabit grew up in a Jewish environment in Medina and went to their
 DEĞERLENDİRME MAKALELERİ

schools and this situation affected his mawla Muhammad (p. 74), which
is an extreme interpretation. Moving from examining isnad patterns con-
taining doubts, the possibility of Muhammed’s composing the traditions
he got from his two informants (p. 116) should be supported with other
proofs.
In the work, there are some editorial problems relating to the correct
transliteration of the Arabic phrases. (For example, “muhajir” as “muhajar”
(p. 67), “qala jami ‘an” as “qala jami‘an” (p. 89), “‘unuqaka” as “‘unqaka”
(p. 93), “rajazahu” as “rajzahu” (p. 117), “talawa” as “tulawa” (p. 118), “ra-
wayna or ruwwiyna” as “ruwiyana” (p. 119, fn. 263).) Some of these types
of errors are about the correct determination of the narrators’ names. For
example, the name written as “Ibn Rahweyh” (p. 116) should be “Ibn Ra-
hawayh” or “Ibn Rahuyah.” The person who is mentioned as “Ghundar
b. Ja‘far” (p. 3) is actually Muhammad b. Ja‘far, who has a nickname of
“Ghundar.” One name is written in two forms as “Salâm b. Mishkam” (p.
53) and “Sallâm b. Mishkam” (p. 63, 64, 127). And sometimes, there is no
writing standard like these writings: “mundhu bid‘in wa-arba‘in” (p. 83)
and “mundhu bid‘ wa-arba‘in” (p. 86). As an example of the problems re-
garding the wrong transliteration of Arabic expressions, the wrong menti-
oning of two verses can be given. Two German words have been ignored in
the translation of the work: on page 119, “Koran” and on page 124, “Sa‘id
b. Jubayr und ‘Ikrima.”
The author misses the nature of the sigha “haddathana” which directly
refers to the text and translates “haddathana” and “‘an” as “transmitted to
us” (p. 25, 29). In the work, the translation of the expressions of belag style
is wrong. As a matter of fact, the expression of “fima belagani” is translated
incorrectly as “according to my information” (p. 51) and “balaghani ‘an” is
translated incorrectly as “I heard from” (p. 88).
Some of the death dates in the book are inaccurate. The death of Ibn
Shabba is 262/876, not 226/840-1 (p. 9); the death of Ibn Kathir is 26 Sha-
ban, 774 not 775/1387 (p. 27, fn. 13); the death of Abu Nu ‘aym is 20 Muhar-
ram 430/22 October 1038, not 429/1038 or 430/1038-9 (p. 30, 111).
It is unfortunate that there is no index at the end of the book.

249
Dîvân
2019/1

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