76 | CHAPTER 3
Muslim historians, by contrast, enjoyed the privilege of making a fresh
start. yet when we turn to Ibn Ishāq in the mid- eighth century, we find that
they too could see important continuities with the pre- Islamic past. Ibn
Ishāq prefaced his massive and much- read Life of the Prophet of God^65 —
which survives only in an abridged edition prepared by Ibn Hishām (d.
828/33)—with the Book of the beginning, an account of history, especially
the earlier prophets, from creation to the eve of Islam. Its latter parts concen-
trated on South Arabia and increasingly on Mecca, to prepare for Muham-
mad’s life- story.^66 Ibn Ishāq recognized South Arabia to be a remote region in
which neither Ctesiphon nor Constantinople was willing, or most of the
time able, to intervene directly.^67 Rome nonetheless acted through its Chris-
tian proxy Aksum (Ethiopia) and the local Christian Churches, while Iran
did eventually conquer and for a time control the region.^68 In this sense, Ibn
Ishāq manages to provide an imperial—Sasanian as well as Roman—back-
drop for the birth of Islam,^69 just as Eusebius had linked Christ to Augus-
tus.^70 But there is no denying that religious communities—notably the
Christians of Najrān—or even individuals play the leading part in his narra-
tive, rather than empires. Ibn Ishāq delineates the circumstances under which
Judaism and Christianity became established in South Arabia.^71 He also tells
at length the story of Salmān from Isfahān, who abandoned Mazdaism for
Christianity and Christianity for the Prophet after a long search. Ibn Ishāq
builds an atmosphere of expectancy before the appearance of Muhammad,
65 Ibn Ishāq, Life of the Prophet of God (Sīrat rasūl Allāh) (recension of Ibn Hishām, d. 828/33) [ed.
M. al- Saqqā, I. al- Abyārī, ʿA. Shalabī (Cairo 1936; reprint Beirut 1994); tr. A. Guillaume, The life of Mu-
hammad (London 1955), with marginal references to F. Wüstenfeld’s edition (Göttingen 1858–60), here
cited for convenience; passages excluded by Ibn Hishām have come to light in Fez and Damascus manu-
scripts: M. Hamīdullāh, Sīrat Ibn Ishāq (Rabat 1396/1976), summarized by A. Guillaume, New light on
the life of Muhammad (Manchester n.d.)]. See also R. Sellheim, “Prophet, Chalif und Geschichte,” Oriens
18–19 (1967) 33–91.
66 On the fragmentarily preserved Kitāb al- mubtadaʾ, see J. Horovitz (ed. L. I. Conrad), The earli-
est biographies of the Prophet and their authors (Princeton 2002) 80–83; L. Conrad, “Recovering lost
texts,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 113 (1993) 258–63, many of whose strictures on the re-
construction by G. D. Newby, The making of the last Prophet (Columbia, S.C. 1989), also apply to that by
M. K. al- Kawwāz, Muhammad ibn Ishāq: Al- Mubtadaʾ fī qisas al- anbiyāʾ (Beirut 2006).
67 Ibn Ishāq, Life [3:65] 25–26, 41–42.
68 Ibn Ishāq, Life [3:65] 26, 42–47.
69 For a modern perspective see J. Retsö, “Arabia and the heritage of the Axial Age,” in Arnason and
others (eds), Axial civilizations [2:117] 337–58.
70 For the possibility Ibn Ishāq was familiar with the genre, or at least the assumptions, of ecclesi-
astical history, see J. Wansbrough, The sectarian milieu (Oxford 1978) 98, 116, 117, 123, 125; cf. C. F.
Robinson, Islamic historiography (Cambridge 2003) 135, and more generally M. Di Branco, “A rose in the
desert? Late antique and early Byzantine chronicles and the formation of Islamic universal historiogra-
phy,” in Liddel and Fear (eds), Historiae mundi [3:47] 189–206. But there are no Arabic translations of
Greek ecclesiastical historians to compare to that of the Latin Orosius (with continuation) done in tenth-
century Spain: M. Penelas (ed.), Kitāb Hurūšiyūš (Madrid 2001).
71 Ibn Ishāq, Life [3:65] 17, 22.