Hisham ibn al-Kalbi
Hishām ibn al-Kalbī هشام ابن الكلبي | |
|---|---|
| Personal life | |
| Born | 737 CE |
| Died | 819 CE |
| Parent |
|
| Main interest(s) | History |
| Notable idea(s) | Theory of all Arabs being descended from Ishmael, the son of Abraham |
| Notable work(s) | Jamharat al-Ansab, Kitab al-Asnam |
| Religious life | |
| Religion | Islam |
| Denomination | Shia |
| Muslim leader | |
Influenced by | |
Influenced | |
Abu al-Mundhir Hisham ibn Muhammad ibn al-Sa'ib ibn Bishr al-Kalbi (أبو المنذر هشام بن محمد بن السائب بن بشر بن عمرو بن الحارث بن عبد الحارث الكلبي; 737–819 CE / 204 AH), more commonly known as Hishām ibn al-Kalbī (Arabic: هشام بن الكلبي) and as Ibn al-Kalbi (ابن الكلبي), was an early 8th-century Arab Muslim historian.[1] Born in Kufa,[2] he spent much of his life in Baghdad. Like his father, he collected information about the genealogies and history of the ancient Arabs. His genealogies are well-cited among Arabs, but Sunni scholars considered his hadith to be unreliable since he was Shia. Much of his work was preserved by al-Tabari.[3]
Ibn al-Kalbi's most famous work is the Book of Idols (Kitab al-Asnam), which aims to document the veneration of idols and pagan sanctuaries in different regions and among different tribes in pre-Islamic Arabia.[4] In this work, Hisham posited a genealogical link between Ishmael and the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and put forth the idea that all Arabs were descended from Ishmael.[1] He relied heavily on the ancient oral traditions of the Arabs, but also quoted writers who had access to Biblical and Palmyrene sources.[1] Hisham is also famous for preserving Abu Mikhnaf's work Maqtal al-Husayn ("The Murder place of al-Husayn") which detailed the events of the Battle of Karbala in 680 based on eyewitness accounts, and was in turn preserved by al-Tabari.[3] According to the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadim, he wrote 140 works. His account of the genealogies of the Arabs is continually quoted in the Kitab al-Aghani .[4] He also wrote the Strain of Horses (Ansab al-Khayl), which tries to document the history of the Arabian horse from 3000 BC to his own time.[5]
Scholarship
[edit ]In 1966, Werner Caskel compiled a two volume study of Ibn al-Kalbi's Jamharat al-Nasab ("The Abundance of Kinship") entitled Das genealogische Werk des Hisam Ibn Muhammad al Kalbi ("The Genealogical Works of Hisham ibn Muhammad al-Kalbi").[6] It contains a prosopographic register of every individual mentioned in the genealogy in addition to more than three hundred genealogical tables based on the contents of the text.
Works
[edit ]
- The Book of Idols (Kitab Al-Asnam)
- The Abundance of Genealogy/Kinship (Jamharat Al-Ansab)
- The Strain of Horses (Ansab al-Khayl)
References
[edit ]- ^ a b c ""Arabia" in Ancient History". Centre for Sinai. Archived from the original on 2008年11月19日. Retrieved 2009年04月16日.
- ^ Ibrahim, Ayman S. (2021年02月09日). Conversion to Islam: Competing Themes in Early Islamic Historiography. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-753071-9.
- ^ a b Borrut, Antoine (2015). "Remembering Karbalāʾ: The Construction of an Early Islamic Site of Memory". The Institute of Asian and African Studies: 264–265.
- ^ a b Wikisource One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Thatcher, Griffithes Wheeler (1911). "Ḥishām ibn al-Kalbī". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica . Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 525–526.
- ^ Watson, Janet C. E. (1996). Lexicon of Arabic horse terminology. Kegan Paul International. pp. xiv. ISBN 978-0-7103-0542-8.
- ^ Caskel, Werner; Strenziok, Gert (1966). Ǧamharat an-nasab: das genealogische Werk des Hišām Ibn-Muḥammad al-Kalbī. Leiden: Brill.
