Muhammad and The Jews — Page 16
ghazawat of the B. al-Na<;lir and the B. Quranah. It seems to be obvious that Imam Malik's charge was not based on the above reports. A more reasonable explanation is that Imam Malik had a fuller know- ledge of the qiiJJ material current at the time and was in a position to locate the stories which originated from the sons of the Jewish converts. Ibn Isl,Jaq seems to have seen no harm in incorporating this material in his Srrah without verification and without isniid. Imam Malik objected to this procedure. Levi Della Vida's observation on the subject confirms our view : The abundance and the variety of material collected by Ibn Isl:iiiq forced him to enlarge the circle of his authorities and to accept a number of insufficiently supported traditions. He even takes care to give the source, not always particularly clear, of some of his information, especially when, as is oft en the case, ii goes back to Je wish or Christian sources. 1 Ibn Isl,Jaq had no direct knowledge of the events and in view of the self-contradictory nature of the accounts one would have expected that he would either qualify his statements or absolve himself of the responsibility of reporting something of which he either had no direct knowledge or which he thought was of a doubtful nature. In all other doubtful cases he normally uses phrases such as "in what has reached me"2, or "it was mentioned to me"3 or he would simply finish a story by adding that God knows best what happened. Ibn Isl,Jaq does not show this caution and scrupulousness in his account of the B. Quranah. The Umayyads encouraged the collection and preservation of the Traditions, anecdotes and accounts of the maghiizi. Many tiibi~un were involved in these efforts; scholars like Musa b. <-Uqbah wrote the accounts of maghiizi while a Traditionist like Malik b. Arras collected the Traditions. But it was lbn Isl,Jaq whose Sirah provided a complete history: pre-Islamic background, pre-Hijrah struggle in Medina, the expansion of Islam after the truces of Hudaibiyah and Khaybar, together with a biography of the Apostle (complete with miracles) which could stand up to any hagiography of a Christian saint. This is not to impute motives or a conscious effort on the part of Ibn Isl,Jaq to fabricate miracles or to pick and choose from the qii:JJ material reports emanating from the descendants of the Jewish converts to Islam. There is no reason to disagree with Guillaume's observation 1 G. Levi Della Vida, "Sira", El(l), Vol. IV, p. 442. The italics are mine. 2 fi ma balaghani. s dhukira [; 16. ,_