Ibn Hisham has been said to have grown up in Basra and moved afterwards to Egypt. His family was native to Basra but he himself was born in Old Cairo. He gained a name as a grammarian and student of language and history in Egypt. His family was of Himyarite origin and belongs to Banu Ma‘afir tribe of Yemen.
Biography of Prophet Muḥammad
As-Sīrah an-Nabawiyyah, 'The Life of the Prophet'; is an edited recension of Ibn Isḥāq's classic Sīratu Rasūli l-Lāh 'The Life of God's Messenger'. Ibn Isḥāq's now lost work survives only in Ibn Hishām's and al-Tabari's recensions, although fragments of several others survive, and Ibn Hishām and al-Tabarī share virtually the same material. Ibn Hishām explains in the preface of the work, the criteria by which he made his choice from the original work of Ibn Isḥāq in the tradition of his disciple Ziyād al-Baqqāʾi. Accordingly, Ibn Hishām omits stories from Al-Sīrah that contain no mention of Muḥammad, certain poems, traditions whose accuracy Ziyād al-Baqqāʾi could not confirm, and offensive passages that could offend the reader. Al-Tabari includes controversial episodes of the Satanic Verses including an apocryphal story about Muḥammad's attempted suicide. Ibn Hishām gives more accurate versions of the poems he includes and supplies explanations of difficult terms and phrases of the Arabic language, additions of genealogical content to certain proper names, and brief descriptions of the places mentioned in Al-Sīrah. Ibn Hishām appends his notes to the corresponding passages of the original text with the words: "qāla Ibn Hishām".
Translations and editions
Later Ibn Hishām's As-Sira would chiefly be transmitted by his pupil, Ibn al-Barqī. This treatment of Ibn Ishāq's work was circulated to scholars in Cordoba in Islamic Spain by around 864. The first printed edition was published in Arabic by the German orientalist Ferdinand Wüstenfeld, in Göttingen. The Life of Moḥammad According to Moḥammed b. Ishāq, ed. 'Abd al-Malik b. Hisham. Gustav Weil was the first published translation. In the 20th century the book has been printed several times in the Middle East. The German orientalist Gernot Rotter produced an abridged German translation of The life of the Prophet. As-Sīra An-Nabawīya.. An English translation by the British orientalist Alfred Guillaume: The Life of Muhammad. A translation of Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah. ; 11th edition..
Other works
'The Book of Crowns, on the kings of yesteryear in the accounts of the Qahtān' ; a genealogical work with historico-legendary accounts of the southern Arabs and their monuments in pre-Islamic times.
