Muhammad and The Jews — Page 14
which was "so well known and well authenticated that it was unneces- sary to produce the evidence of an isnild" 1 or is drawing upon "a common corpus of qil$$ and traditional material, which they (sirah- maghiizi writers) arranged according to their own concepts and to which they added their own researches. "2 It would be reasonable therefore, to assume that the lack of an isnild for some of the major events concer- ning the B. Quray~ah and most of the important events of Khay bar indi- cates that lbn Is). laq drew his material from the 'common corpus of qa~~·. We may revert here to Imam: Malik's charge that lbn lsl}aq traced the glzazawiit of the Apostle by means of the sons of the conver- ted Jews who remembered the stories of the B. al-Na9ir, the B. Q·uray~h and Khaybar. An examination of Ibn Isl}iiq's isniids shows that out of three hundred and four isniids, which he used in the Sirah there are only nine in which a Jewish convert or a Jew is involved. 3 The names of the Jewish reporters and the subjects of their reports are given below : 4 1. Abu Malik b. Tha"labah b. Abu Malik al-Qura?:i, The l;limyarites accepted Judaism after the rabbis with their sacred books hanging from their necks walked through fire without any harm to them; 5 2. MuQ. ammad b. Ka"b al-Qura:fi, i) Conversion of the people of Najran to Christianity by "Abd Allah b. al-Thamir; 6 ii) "Utbah b. Rabi"ah's proposal to the Apostle offering him money, honour etc. if he stopped insulting their gods; 7 iii) The Apostle badly treated by the Thaqif in Ta "if; 8 1 James Robson, "Jbn Isl,Jaqs Use of the Isniid", Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Vol. 38, 1955-56, p. 452. 2 J. M. B. Jones, "Ibn Isl,Jiiq and Al-Waqidi", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. XXII, 1959, p. 51. 3 The isniid count is based on lsniid Index given in Ibn Hisham, Kitab Sirat Rasul Allah, ed. by Dr. Ferdinand Wilstenfeld (2 Vols. Gottingen, 1860), pp. 58·69. This number does not include Ibn Hishiim's isnads. 4 I have tried to follow as closely as possible the order in which a Jewish reporter appears in the Sirah. 5 Ibn Hishii. m, p. 17. 6 Ibid. , pp. 23, 24. 7 Ibid. , pp. 185-87. 8 Ibid. , pp. 279-80. 14