Hishām ibn al-Kalbī ( ar, هشام بن الكلبي), 737 AD – 819 AD/204 AH, also known as Ibn al-Kalbi (), was an

Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

. His full name was Abu al-Mundhir Hisham ibn Muhammad ibn al-Sa'ib ibn Bishr al-Kalbi. Born in

Kufa Kufa ( ar, الْكُوفَة ), also spelled Kufah, is a city in Iraq, about south of Baghdad, and northeast of Najaf. It is located on the banks of the Euphrates River. The estimated population in 2003 was 110,000. Currently, Kufa and Najaf a ...

, he spent much of his life in

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...

. Like his father, he collected information about the genealogies and history of the ancient Arabs. According to the , he wrote 140 works. His account of the genealogies of the Arabs is continually quoted in the . Hisham established a genealogical link between

Ishmael Ishmael ''Ismaḗl''; Classical/Qur'anic Arabic: إِسْمَٰعِيْل; Modern Standard Arabic: إِسْمَاعِيْل ''ʾIsmāʿīl''; la, Ismael was the first son of Abraham, the common patriarch of the Abrahamic religions; and is cons ...

and the Islamic prophet

Muhammad Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the mon ...

, and put forth the idea that all Arabs were descended from Ishmael. He relied heavily on the ancient oral traditions of the Arabs, but also quoted writers who had access to

Biblical The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of ...

and

Palmyra Palmyra (; Palmyrene: () ''Tadmor''; ar, تَدْمُر ''Tadmur'') is an ancient city in present-day Homs Governorate, Syria. Archaeological finds date back to the Neolithic period, and documents first mention the city in the early secon ...

n sources. In 1966, Werner Caskel compiled a two volume study of Ibn al-Kalbi's ("The Abundance of Kinship") entitled ''Das genealogische Werk des Hisam Ibn Muhammad al Kalbi''. 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

*The Book of Idols (Kitab Al-Asnam) *The Abundance of Kinship (Jamharat Al-Ansab)

References

External links

Biodata at MuslimScholars.info
9th-century historians from the Abbasid Caliphate 9th-century deaths 737 births 819 deaths People from Kufa 8th-century Arabs 9th-century Arabs Banu Kalb Iraqi genealogists Arab Muslim historians of Islam {{Asia-historian-stub