Hishām ibn al-Kalbī (), 737 – 819 CE / 204 AH, also known as Ibn al-Kalbi (), was an

Arab Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...

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 species; as well as the ...

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

Kufa Kufa ( ), 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, Euphrates River. The estimated population in 2003 was 110,000. Along with Samarra, Karbala, Kadhimiya ...

, he spent much of his life in

Baghdad Baghdad ( or ; , ) is the capital and List of largest cities of Iraq, largest city of Iraq, located along the Tigris in the central part of the country. With a population exceeding 7 million, it ranks among the List of largest cities in the A ...

. Like his father, he collected information about the genealogies and history of the ancient Arabs. He was considered unreliable by Hadith scholars. 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 Pre-Islamic Arabia is the Arabian Peninsula and its northern extension in the Syrian Desert before the rise of Islam. This is consistent with how contemporaries used the term ''Arabia'' or where they said Arabs lived, which was not limited to the ...

. In this work, Hisham posited a genealogical link between

Ishmael In the Bible, biblical Book of Genesis, Ishmael (; ; ; ) is the first son of Abraham. His mother was Hagar, the handmaiden of Abraham's wife Sarah. He died at the age of 137. Traditionally, he is seen as the ancestor of the Arabs. Within Isla ...

and the Islamic prophet

Muhammad Muhammad (8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious and political leader and the founder of Islam. Muhammad in Islam, According to Islam, he was a prophet who was divinely inspired to preach and confirm the tawhid, monotheistic teachings of A ...

, 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 is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) biblical languages ...

and Palmyrene sources. According to the , he wrote 140 works. His account of the genealogies of the Arabs is continually quoted in the . 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.

Scholarship

In 1966,

Werner Caskel Werner Caskel (March 5, 1896, Danzig – January 28, 1970, Colognehttp://www.saur.de/dbe/pdf/Aufge_Pers_C.pdf) was a German historian of Muslim people. Caskel's specialties were Islamic history and tribal genealogy. He taught as professor at th ...

compiled a two volume study of Ibn al-Kalbi's ("The Abundance of Kinship") entitled ''Das genealogische Werk des Hisam Ibn Muhammad al Kalbi'' ("The Genealogical Works of Hisham 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 The ''Book of Idols'' ('), written by the Arab scholar Hisham ibn al-Kalbi (737–819), is the most popular Islamic work about the religion in pre-Islamic Arabia. Arabian religion before Muhammad is described as polytheistic and idolatrous. Ibn a ...

(Kitab Al-Asnam) *The Abundance of Genealogy/Kinship (Jamharat Al-Ansab) *The Strain of Horses (Ansab al-Khayl)

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 Arab people 9th-century Arab people Banu Kalb Iraqi genealogists {{Asia-historian-stub