The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet and their Authors

202 Pages·2002·60.878 MB·English

by  Josef Horovitz, Lawrence I. Conrad

STUDIES IN
LATE ANTIQUITY AND EARLY ISLAM
11
THE EARLIEST BIOGRAPHIES OF
THE PROPHET AND THEIR
AUTHORS
JOSEF HOROVITZ
EDITED BY
LAWRENCE I. CONRAD
THE DARWIN PRESS, INC.
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
2002
Copyright © 2002 by THE DARWIN PRESS, INC., Princeton, NJ 08543.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form, by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except in
the case of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Horovitz, Josef, 1874-1931.
The earliest biographies of the prophet and their authors / Josef Horovitz ;
edited by Lawrence I. Conrad
p. cm. — (Studies in late antiquity and early Islam ; 11)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87850-118-5 (alk. paper)
1. Muoammad, Prophet, d. 632--Biography—History and criticism. 2.
Biographers-History and criticism. 1. Conrad, Lawrence L, 1949- II. Title.
III. Series.
BP75.3 .H67 2002
297.6'3—dc21
2002019236
The paper in this book is acid-free neutral pH stock and meets the guidelines for
permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book
Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Preface
Editor's Introduction
Introduction
1. MaghazT Authorities among the Tabi'un
2. The Early Medinans
3. The Students of al-Zuhrl
4. MaghazT under the Early 'Abbasids
Bibliography and Abbreviations
General Index

PREFACE
THIS WORK is part of a collaboration between the Darwin Press and the
Magnes Press to render the scholarship of Josef Horovitz on early Islamic
history and historiography more widely available, both to students unfamiliar
with German, the language in which many of Horovitz' studies were written,
and to colleagues in adjacent fields who have not previously encountered
his work. Originally the project envisaged one volume containing all of the
selected essays, but the present study was so much larger and so dominated
the collection that in the end it was decided to publish it separately, with its
own index and bibliography.
The origins of my own involvement with this work go back to 1974, when
the late O.K. Zurayk, my first teacher in Western and Islamic historiogra-
phy, suggested, inter alia, that I read everything I could find by Horovitz
to prepare for the comprehensive examinations for my MA in the History
Department at the American University of Beirut. Some years later I was
again reminded of the study's importance when I was translating A. A. Duri's
7he Rise of Historical Writing among the Arabs, which frequently refers to
it. Notes and corrections gradually accumulated on my own copy of the
text, and later the progress of the Late Antiquity and Early Islam project,
which seeks to establish broader bases for communication among the various
distinct fields involved in the study of this period, suggested that perhaps
it would be worthwhile to proceed further with this material. Issues that
arose in the course of this work are discussed below in the Editor's Introduc­
tion.
I would like to express my thanks, in the first instance, to the Horovitz
family, and especially to Professor Menachem Horovitz, for authorising and
encouraging this project. I am also grateful, as always, to Darwin Press
and its Managing Director, Ed Breisacher, for their unfailing confidence in
and support of an unrepentently scholarly enterprise at a time when com­
mercial considerations reign supreme in academic publishing. Mark Conrad
keyboarded the text, and users of the index will immediately recognise the
fine work of Barbara Ilird, registered indexer of the Society of Indexers. I
VLL
Preface
Vlll
am grateful to Dr. Karin Horner for her comments on my Editor's Introduc­
tion. My thanks also to the various libraries that have generous made their
resources and expertise available to me, most especially the Institute of the
History and Culture of the Middle East at the University of Hamburg and
the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford.
Lawrence I. Conrad
University of Hamburg
12 November 2001
EDITOR'S
INTRODUCTION
THIS VOLUME comprises a new edition of The Earliest Biographies of the
Prophet and Their Authors, a pioneering study on early Islamic historiogra­
phy relating to the life of Muhammad1 written by the German Orientalist
.Josef Horovitz (1874-1931) and published in four parts in the first two is-
1Good starting points for this vast subject are GAS, I, 237-302; 'Abd al-'AzIz al-Durl,
Nash 'at 'ilm al-ta'rikh 'inda l-'arab (Beirut, 1960), 20-33, 61-117; ed. and trans. Lawrence
I. Conrad as The Rise of Historical Writing among the Arabs (Princeton, 1983), 20-41, 76-
135; Frank E. Peters, "The Quest of the Historical Muhammad," IJMES 23 (1991), 291—
315; Uri Rubin, ed., The Biography of Muhammad, in Lawrence I. Conrad, ed., The For­
mation of the Classical Islamic World, IV (Aldershot, 1998); Fred Donner, Narratives of
Islamic Origins: the Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing (Princeton, 1998); Lawrence
I. Conrad, "Muhammad, the Prophet" in Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey, eds., En­
cyclopedia of Arabic Literature (London and New York, 1998), II, 539-43. Other valuable
studies include Theodor Noldeke, "Die Tradition iiber das Leben Muhammeds," Der Islam
5 (1914), 160-70; Rudi Paret, "Das Geschichtsbild Muhammeds," Die Welt als Geschichte
4 (1957), 214-24; John Wansbrough, The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of
Islamic Salvation History (London, 1978); Maher Jarrar, Die Prophetenbiographie im is-
lamischen Spanien: Ein Beitrag zur Uberlieferungs- und Redaktionsgeschichte (Frankfurt
am Main, 1989); Tarif Khalidi, Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period (Cam­
bridge, 1994), 17-48; Uri Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder: the Life of Muhammad as
Viewed by the Early Muslims (a Textual Analysis) (Princeton, 1995); Jacqueline Chabbi,
"Histoire et tradition sacree—la biographie impossible de Mahomet," Arabica 43 (1996),
189-205; Gregor Schoeler, Charalcter und Authentic der muslimischen Uberlieferung iiber
das Leben Mohammeds (Berlin, 1996); Clinton Bennett, In Search of Muhammad (London
and New York, 1998), 17-65. Important articles are collected in Toufic Fahd, ed. La vie
du Prophete Mahomet (Paris, 1983); Harald Motzki, ed., The Biography of Muhammad:
the Issue of the Sources (Leiden, 2000); Ibn Warraq, ed., The Quest for the Historical
Muhammad (Amherst, 2000); Lawrence I. Conrad, ed. History and Historiography in
Early Islamic Times: Studies and Perspectives (Princeton, forthcoming). Useful bib­
liographies are available in C.L. Geddes, An Analytical Guide to the Bibliographies on
Islam, Muhammad, and the Koran (Denver, 1973); Salah al-Dln al-Munajjid, Mu'jam ma
ullifa an Rasul Allah (Beirut, 1402/1982); Munawwar Ahmad Anees and Alia N. Athar,
Guide to Sira and Hadith Literature in Western Languages (London, 1986), 29-203.
IX
Editor's Introduction
X
sues of the Hyderabad journal Islamic Culture in 1927 and 1928.2 It is a
companion to a second volume, Studies on Early Islam, containing article-
length essays by the same author. Fuller details on Horovitz' life, career, and
general perspectives 011 his chosen subject are dealt with in the introduction
to that volume;3 here my remarks will be limited to some observations on
Horovitz' place in the development of the study of early Islamic history and
sira historiography within European Orientalism and a few comments on the
present edition of his work.
Nineteenth-Century Scholarship 011 Early Islam
European scholarship 011 early Islamic history and historiography made im­
portant advances in the half century prior to the career of Josef Horovitz. In a
pattern reflective of a broad trend toward the professionalisation of Oriental­
ist scholarship, which was centred in Germany and the Netherlands,4 studies
011 the field were increasingly becoming the preserve of professors in the uni-
2Josef Horovitz, "The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet and Their Authors," IC 1
(1927), 535-59; 2 (1928), 22-50, 164-82, 495-526.
3There are informative memorial notices 011 him by Gotthold Weil in MGWJ 75 (1931),
321-28, and S.D.F. Goitein in Der Islam 22 (1935), 122-27. See also the biographical
sketch, with a full list of Horovitz' writings, by Walter J. Fischel and S.D. Goitein, Joseph
Horovitz, 1874-1931 (Jerusalem, 1932); Johann Fuck, Die arabischen Studien in Europa
Ins in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1955), 313-14; Menahem Milson, "The
Beginnings of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem," Judaism
4o (1996), 171-73; Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, "The Transplantation of Islamic Studies from
Europe to the Yishuv and Israel," in Martin Kramer, ed., The Jewish Discovery of Islam:
Studies in Honor of Bernard Lewis (Tel Aviv, 1999), 250-53. I have also benefitted from
discussions about Horovitz many years ago with the late S.D. Goitein, who had studied
wi 11111111 111 Frankfurt. We shared an common interest in early Islamic historiography,
anc ie topic of Horovitz was one of the few guaranteed means of luring the conversation
away from his absolutely favourite topic-the Cairo Geniza.
And not, pace Edward Said, in Great Britain and France, as argued for personal
Smn'T118 V1 hlr 0rieutallsm (London, 1978), e.g. 1, 3-4, 6, 17-18, 19, 105, 130-
,T ' ' niir!le * f, Germany 111 the Orientalist study of the Middle East, see Martin
"D eT"' ?6Utschland u»d ^er Islam," Der Islam 1 (1910), 72-92; Carl Brockelmann,
ischen c/Tr p Studlen ln Deutschland," ZDMG 76 (1922), 1-17; Fiick, Die arab-
dtZhln U1 m n 47' 90-94, 239-45; Rudi Paret, Arabistik and Islamkunde an
ego q_40 'nversitaten- Deutsche Orientalisten seit Theodor Ndldeke (Wiesbaden, 1966),
the Emerpenrp f fT the 193°S; J°Sef Van Ess< "Fro™ Wellhausen to Becker:
a Tradl KuhZ9rtlC,lte 111 Islamic Studies>" in H. Kerr, ed., Islamic
der deutschen 'nZ* H ^ ^ 27"51= Fritz StePPat- "Der Beitra§
35 (1985) 386 90 ' f1Stlk zum Ve^taiidnis des Islam," Zeitschrift fiir Kulturaustausch
(198o), 386-90, Baber Johansen, "Politics and Scholarship: the Development of Islamic
Editor's Introduction
XI
versities. Research was primarily of a philological and textual orientation,
largely but not entirely due to the decisive role played by one scholar, H.L.
Fleischer (1801-88), who took up the chair of Semitic studies at Leipzig in
1835 and remained there for more than 50 years. Fleischer was a major force
behind the foundation of the Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft in 1845,
and he trained three generations of students who went on to teach all over
Europe and certainly dominated the study of the Middle East in Germany.5
It would be accurate but unfair to say that he was a scholar with no ability
for synthesis:6 though the texts whose study Fleischer encouraged and pro­
moted so decisively were historical and cultural documents, history was only
an emerging discipline in European universities anyway, "Kulturgeschichte"
was unknown until the last decade of his life, and Fleischer never claimed
to be anything other than a philologist. For example, when a group of Ori­
entalists led by the renowned R.P.A. Dozy (1820-83) in Leiden7 edited the
Nafh al-tib of al-Maqqarl (d. 1041/1631), a text of enormous importance to
the political, social, religious, and cultural history of al-Andalus,8 Dozy's
subsequent public discussion of the book with Fleischer was limited to tex­
tual matters only and produced a 280-page ''letter" full of emendations and
philological comments.9
Orientalist scholarship on history and historiography likewise tended to
be largely philological, in that new research appeared when the publication
Studies in the Federal Republic of Germany," in Tareq Ismael, ed., Middle East Studies:
International Perspectives on the State of the Art (New York, 1990), 71-130. On the study
of the Middle East in the Netherlands, see Fuck, Die arabischen Studien in Europa, 79-84,
181-83, 211-16, 325-27; J. Brugman and F. Schroder, Arabic Studies in the Netherlands
(Leiden, 1979), 34-47; VVillem Otterspeer, ed., Leiden Oriental Connections, 1850-1940
(Leiden, 1989), 1-113.
°On his career and influence, see Fuck, Die arabischen Studien in Europa, 170-72;
Paret, Arabistik und Islamkunde, 8-9; van Ess, "From Wellhausen to Becker," 39; Jo-
hansen, "Politics and Scholarship," 77-79.
6Van Ess, "From Wellhausen to Becker," 39.
'On him see M.J. de Goeje, Biographie de Reinhart Dozy, trans. Victor Chauvin (Lei­
den, 1883); Fuck, Die arabischen Studien in Europa, 181-85; Brugman and Schroder,
Arabic Studies in the Netherlands, 36-39; J. Brugman, "Dozy: a Scholarly Life According
to Plan," in Otterspeer, ed., Leiden Oriental Connections, 62-81.
8A1-Makkarl, Nafli al-tib min ghusn al-Andalus al-ratib (Analectes sur l'histoire et la
litterature des arabes d'Espagne), ed. R.P.A. Dozy, Gustave Dugat, Ludolf Krehl, and
William Wright (Leiden, 1855-61), in two volumes.
9R.P.A. Dozy, Lettre a M. Fleischer contenant des remarques critiques et explicatives
sur le texte d'al-Makkari (Leiden, 1871).