The Expeditions

An Early Biography of Muhammad

Ma'mar Ibn Rashid, Sean W. Anthony

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781479800476
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Geschichte des Nahen Ostens

The Expeditions is one of the oldest biographies of the Prophet Muhammad to survive into the modern era. Its primary author, Ma'mar ibn Rashid (714-770 AD/96-153 AH), was a prominent scholar from Basra in southern Iraq who was revered for his learning in prophetic traditions, Islamic law, and the interpretation of the Qur'an. This fascinating foundational seminal work contains stories handed down by Ma'mar to his most prominent pupil, 'Abd al-Razzaq of Sanaa, relating Muhammad’s early life and prophetic career as well as the adventures and tribulations of his earliest followers during their conquest of the Near East.

Edited from a sole surviving manuscript, the Arabic text offers numerous improved readings over those of previous editions, including detailed notes on the text’s transmission and variants as found in later works. This new translation, which renders the original into readable, modern English for the first time, is accompanied by numerous annotations elucidating the cultural, religious and historical contexts of the events and individuals described within its pages.

The Expeditions represents an important testimony to the earliest Muslims’ memory of the lives of Muhammad and his companions, and is an indispensable text for gaining insight into the historical biography of both the Prophet and the rise of the Islamic empire.

NOTES

1I.e., the sacred precincts encompassing the cultic centerpiece of Mecca: the cubed structure known as the Kaaba. Tradition asserts that at this time the Kaaba had not yet become the object of a monotheistic cult of worship but rather was the principal cultic site of the local pagan religion focused on the worship of idols housed therein. As a cultic center, it was forbidden to wage war within its environs. The early tradents of this tradition thus regarded the siege as a sacrilegious one.

2“the Elephant Troop” (Ar. aṣḥāb al-fīl): see Q 105, Sūrat al-Fīl, which alludes to Mecca’s deliverance from a Christian army remembered for its war elephant. Islamic historical and exegetical traditions relate these events, imbuing them with legendary details that are often contradictory and irreconcilable. The historical personality that led the Elephant Troop was a Christian regent for Abrahah, the negus of Axum (located in modern Ethiopia). From his base in Yemen, he ostensibly marched against Mecca to destroy the Kaaba in order to secure unrivaled cultic status for his recently constructed cathedral of al-Qullays (or al-Qalīs). Cf. de Prémare, “L’attaque de la Kaʿba,” 261–367 (esp. 325 ff.): most notable here for Muḥammad’s biography is that al-Zuhrī, and thus Maʿmar, reject the notion that Muḥammad was born in the year of these events, called the “Year of the Elephant”—often dated, likely incorrectly, to AD 570. Cf. EI3, art. “Abraha” (U. Rubin). Recent research suggests that Abraha’s campaign against Mecca, if historical, likely dates to shortly after the year AD 558. See Robin, “Abraha et la Reconquête de l’Arabie déserte,” 75 f.

3“House” (Ar. al-bayt): i.e., “the house” wherein the divinity abides. All references to the House in this text refer to Mecca’s cultic centerpiece, the Kaaba.

4“their cross”: a reference to the Christian identity of the attackers. The cross as an object of reverence among Abrahah’s troops is a common theme of the historiography of the events; e.g., see de Prémare, “L’attaque de la Kaʿba,” 325–26 and Tottoli, “Muslim Attitudes towards Prostration,” 12. Abraha’s usage of the iconography of the cross is also confirmed by epigraphic evidence; see Robin, “Abraha et la Reconquête de l’Arabie déserte,” 14.

5Purposely ambiguous, the text makes no mention of the identity of the visitor. Implied here, however, is that the visitor is divine, semidivine, or angelic in nature. Other early Muslim historians, such as Ibn al-Kalbī (204/819), portray ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib as an adherent of the cult of the idol Hubal, to which the Kaaba was ostensibly dedicated during his time. In Maʿmar’s version, the ambiguity of the language may imply that this detail has been expurgated.

6“most honored shaykh”: often identified with Ishmael, the son of Abraham and regarded at this time as the progenitor of the inhabitants of Arabia, or “Ishmaelites”; cf. Gen. 16, 21:8–21 and Millar, “Hagar, Ishmael, Josephus, and the Origins of Islam.”

7“between the viscera and blood” (Ar. bayna’l-farth wa-l-dam): an idiomatic phrase used to describe the inedible contents of the animal’s innards, as opposed to the consumable flesh of the slaughtered animal.

8“altars” (Ar. anṣāb): the term may also be rendered as “idols”; however, these were not just any idols, but stone idols upon which sacrifices were made. Tradition attributes their establishment to Abraham, who erected them under Gabriel’s guidance. See Q Māʾidah 5:3 and Crone, “The Religion of the Qurʾānic Pagans,” 169.

9In the ancient world, the inhabitants of Arabia were renowned for their ability to speak to and divine the behavior of animals; see Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus, 221 f.

10“mosque” (Ar. masjid); lit. “where one does prostrations (in worship)”: the word “mosque” here is a catchall term for all places of congregational worship, and thus is not used in the narrower sense as a Muslim place of worship. See al-Aqṣā Mosque in the glossary.

11“swords . . . buried in the well Zamzam”: an omen of the conquests soon to come with the advent of Islam.

12Presumably, ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib receives this injunction from a deity or angel, although the language here is again circumspect, leaving the meaning ambiguous.

13“I shall cast lots for them”: the casting of lots reflects an ancient Near Eastern method for determining the will of a deity. Here, ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib employs arrows, a popular technique that survived the coming of Islam, though not without controversy. See Crone and Silverstein, “Lot-Casting.”

14The episode of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib’s vow to sacrifice his son and his subsequent ransoming of him constitutes a subtle parallel with Islamic literary traditions regarding Abraham and his nearly sacrificed son, Isaac/Ishmael (Islamic tradition is conflicted on the identity of the son Abraham attempted to sacrifice to God). Indeed, this parallelism is noted by early purveyors of the sīra tradition, as well as evidenced by reference to Muḥammad as ibn al-dhabīḥayn—i.e., “the descendant of the two sacrifices,” ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib and Ishmael (cf. Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 1:291)—as the Meccans were seen to be the descendants of Abraham (see Q Ḥajj 22:78).

15This light is prophetic and represents the unborn Muḥammad; below, this light will be transferred to Muḥammad’s mother who, after the prophet’s birth, witnesses the light “fill the castles of Syria.” The story here plays off a well-known prophetological trope in Late Antique accounts of Moses; see Lowin, The Making of a Forefather, 243–46.

16Arabian custom, and subsequently Islamic law, recognizes not only kinship through blood relations but also via milk relations. Children nursed from the same woman are regarded as siblings and are therefore forbidden to intermarry but allowed to socialize. See Giladi, Infants, Parents, and Wetnurses.

17“One of the diviners” (Ar. kāhin min al-kuhhān): the kuhhān were diviners who spoke in oracular, rhyming utterances via contact with a familiar spirit and who acted as the main representatives of Arabian, polytheistic religious authority; e.g., see van Gelder, Anthology, 110–13. In the sīra-maghāzī literature, the kuhhān usually regard Muḥammad as a threat, in stark contrast to the righteous monotheists (usually monks or rabbis) who herald Muḥammad’s future role as a Prophet.

18“her house”: other traditions state more explicitly that Muḥammad’s milch-mother was a Bedouin woman to whom his birth mother had handed over her son to acquaint him with the customs of the desert nomads. The theme of surrogacy is also salient to the Late Antique “prophetic lives” of Abraham and Moses—accounts after which the present one appears to have been modeled. See Lowin, The Making of a Forefather, 234–38.

19Cf. Q 94, Sūrat al-Sharḥ, which seems to have inspired the story. The story, only briefly told here, expands in subsequent retellings and details how angelic beings were sent down to split open the infant Muḥammad’s breast and purify his heart in preparation for his future as God’s Messenger. See Rubin, Eye of the Beholder, 59 ff. This story is rooted in a common literary topos of late antique hagiography; see Sizgorich, “The Martyrs of Najran,” 130 f.

20“palaces of Syria” (Ar. quṣūr al-Shām): Āminah’s vision is an omen of the Prophet’s future destiny to conquer Syria.

21A foreshadowing of the destiny of Muḥammad and his community to overtake the Levant, this anecdote also mirrors similar Muslim traditions concerning the threat of Saul to the young, soon-to-be-king David; see Maghen, “Davidic Motifs,” 104.

22“cornerstone” (Ar. al-rukn): the black stone at the base of the Kaaba and, according to pious legend, present at every iteration of the Kaaba’s construction since Abraham and regarded to be of heavenly origin.

23Cf. Gen. 36:7.

24The mention of Khadījah’s sister is odd here, insofar as it potentially leaves the impression that the muntashiyah who acted as a matchmaker between the couple was in fact Khadījah’s sister. However, given that the muntashiyah was slave-born (Ar. muwalladah) and not a full Qurashī, this is highly unlikely. Some traditionists identify this matchmaker with Nafīsah bint Munyah, the sister of a tribal ally (ḥalīf) of the Nawfal ibn ʿAbd Manāf clan of Quray...