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 stu ...
.
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 ...
, 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
Pre-Islamic Arabia ( ar, شبه الجزيرة العربية قبل الإسلام) refers to the Arabian Peninsula before the emergence of Islam in 610 CE.
Some of the settled communities developed into distinctive civilizations. Information ...
. 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 Common Era, CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Muhammad in Islam, Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet Divine inspiration, di ...
, 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 a ...
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 second ...
n sources.[
In 1966, ]Werner Caskel
Werner Caskel (March 5, 1896, Danzig – January 28, 1970, Kölnbr> was a German people, German historian of Muslim people. Caskel's specialties were Islamic history and tribal genealogy.
He taught as professor at the University of Berlin (si ...
compiled a two volume study of Ibn al-Kalbi's ("The Abundance of Kinship") entitled ''Das genealogische Werk des Hisam Ibn Muhammad al Kalbi''.
Works
*The Book of Idols __NOTOC__The ''Book of Idols'' ('), written by the Arab scholar Hisham ibn al-Kalbi (737–819), describes gods and rites of pre-Islamic Arab religions. The text is critical of pre-Islamic Arabian religion and decries the state of religious corrupt ...
(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
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