Muhammad and The Jews — Page 18
based mostly on his teacher's work, but it is a compilation of great value. Named The Great Book of Classes, it is in fact an extended dictionary or Who's Who containing biographies of the Apostle, his a$/:ziib (Companions) and tiibi"-iln, the later bearers of Islam, conveniently arranged under classes. Both of them are chroniclers of events, collectors of anecdotes and repositories of the remembered past, but lack historical conscious- ness, which lbn Isl). aq and Ibn Hisham show. We shall, therefore, use them, depending on the reliability of their reports, to check, supplement and evaluate Ibn Isl). aq's account of the events with which we are concerned. The rijiil critics consider al-Waqidi unreliable. Imam Al). mad b. I;Ianbal calls him a liar 1 and al-Dhahabi says, "he is no longer cited". 2 According to lbn Khallikan, "the Traditions received from him are considered offeeble authority, and doubts have been expressed on the subject of his veracity". 3 On the other hand Western scholarship quotes complimentary opinions on his reliability. 4 Petersen, who has done considerable work on the growth of early Muslim historical writing, however, warns that al-Waqidi's Traditional material must "be treated with greater reservation than that of other scholars". 5 Abii"-Abd Allah Mul). ammad b. Sa"-d b. Mani al-Ba~ri al-Hashim! kiitib of al-W aqidi was a maw/a (client) of the B. Hashim, his grandfather being a freedman of I;Iusayn b. "-Abd Allah b. "-Ubayd Allah b. eAbbas. 6 Though "as a comparison with the text of Waqidi's Maghazi shows, lbn Sa"'d relies above all upon W aqidi" 7 the rija/ critics consider lbn Sa"'d a "trustworthy authority". s As we shall see, however, after providing a comprehensive list of his main transmitters before giving an account of the maghazi, he rarely provides isnads for the individual incidents and events, though there are exceptions such as Badr etc. Therefore, in spite of his general trustworthiness, it is not possible to 1 Miziin al-l"tidiil (Cairo, 1382/1963) Vol. III, p. 663. 2 Al-Dhahabi, Tadhkirat al-lfujfiiz. Vol. I, p. 348. 3 Ibn Khallikan, Wafayiit trans. by M. de Slane (Repr. Karachi, 1964), Vol. IV, p. 326. 4 Joseph Horovitz, IC, (1928), p. 518 and EI(l) Vol. IV, p. 1104-5; Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Mecca (Oxford, 1953), p. 12. 5 Petersen, p. 83. 6 Tahdhib, Vol. IT, p. 344. 7 Horovitz, (1928), p. 524. 8 J. W. Fuck, "Ibn Sa"d," El (2) Vol. III. p. 922. 18