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Hisham ibn al-Kalbi

Not to be confused with Ibn Hisham.
Hishām ibn al-Kalbī
هشام ابن الكلبي
Personal life
Born737 CE
Kufa, Iraq
Died819 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
ReligionIslam
DenominationShia
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 Battle of Karbala in 680, 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

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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

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Arabic Wikisource has original text related to this article:
  • The Book of Idols (Kitab Al-Asnam)
  • The Abundance of Genealogy/Kinship (Jamharat Al-Ansab)
  • The Strain of Horses (Ansab al-Khayl)

References

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  1. ^ a b c ""Arabia" in Ancient History". Centre for Sinai. Archived from the original on 2008-11-19. Retrieved 2009-04-16.
  2. ^ Ibrahim, Ayman S. (2021-02-09). Conversion to Islam: Competing Themes in Early Islamic Historiography. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-753071-9.
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ a b  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.
  5. ^ Watson, Janet C. E. (1996). Lexicon of Arabic horse terminology. Kegan Paul International. pp. xiv. ISBN 978-0-7103-0542-8.
  6. ^ Caskel, Werner; Strenziok, Gert (1966). Ǧamharat an-nasab: das genealogische Werk des Hišām Ibn-Muḥammad al-Kalbī. Leiden: Brill.
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