The Death of a Prophet. Stephen J. Shoemaker
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lost work on Muhammad’s death, this final section of Ibn Saʿd’s biography of Islam’s prophet preserves the most extensive early Islamic collection of traditions about the end of Muhammad’s life, first assembled nearly two centuries after the events themselves.
Despite the enormous value of both al-Wāqidī’s and Ibn Saʿd’s biographical works, the more recently published Muṣannaf of ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Sanʿānī (d. 827), a collection of ḥadīth addressing a number of topics, presents a much more promising source for recovering some semblance of Maʿmar’s lost Maghāzī. While this text includes a wealth of biographical traditions ascribed to Maʿmar, its attribution to ʿAbd al-Razzāq remains somewhat controversial, and there are significant unresolved issues regarding its authenticity. Most of this Muṣannaf is known only as transmitted by a somewhat later writer, Isḥāq al-Dabarī (d. 898), who in many respects can be seen as its potential author and furthermore seems to have been much too young to receive its contents directly from ʿAbd al-Razzāq, as alleged.21 Nevertheless, Harald Motzki has recently argued that the published edition of ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s Muṣannaf is in some sense “authentic” and can be relied upon as a source of traditions deriving from ʿAbd al-Razzāq in one form or another. Motzki willingly concedes that both Wansbrough and Calder are correct in noting considerable problems concerning the authorship of much early Islamic literature, acknowledging that “if the work [the Muṣannaf] is considered as a book with a definitely fixed text composed by ʿAbd al-Razzāq, the question must be answered in the negative.” But Motzki argues that it was ʿAbd al-Razzāq who “spread the traditions” now compiled in the Muṣannaf, and in this more limited sense his authorship can be largely accepted.22 Thus with some care it may be possible to recover early traditions from this collection, including perhaps many that were originally derived from Maʿmar’s lost biography of Muhammad.
In its modern edition, the fifth volume of this Muṣannaf includes a sizable collection of traditions about Muhammad’s maghāzī, here used in its broader sense to encompass the full span of Muhammad’s life.23 The overwhelming majority of these biographical traditions are ascribed to Maʿmar, suggesting that this section of the Muṣannaf may very well preserve a selection of traditions drawn from Maʿmar’s Maghāzī. Although ʿAbd al-Razzāq is said to have studied with Maʿmar himself, in light of their considerable difference in age, one wonders if perhaps ʿAbd al-Razzāq has instead relied on a written version of Maʿmar’s biography or some other intermediate source. ʿAbd al-Razzāq is reported to have died roughly fifty-seven years after Maʿmar, and if he studied with Maʿmar for seven or eight years as alleged by the later tradition, Maʿmar must have lived to at least eighty years old, instructing ʿAbd al-Razzāq just prior to his death while in his late seventies: although clearly not impossible, this detail certainly invites some question regarding the nature of ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s relationship with Maʿmar.24 Nevertheless, the prospect that the maghāzī section of the Muṣannaf transmits at least some material from Maʿmar’s now lost work seems likely, particularly in those instances where other early sources can confirm this attribution.25 Moreover, in contrast to al-Wāqidī’s Maghāzī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s Muṣannaf includes a short section of traditions related to Muhammad’s death, a collection that adds an important and roughly contemporary supplement to Ibn Isḥāq’s early assemblage of death and funeral traditions.26 In making use of this source, however, it will be essential to bear in mind Motzki’s caution that Ibn Hishām’s Sīra must not be used “as if it were Ibn Isḥāq’s original text,” a warning that applies all the more so to ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s unequaled witness to traditions from Maʿmar’s early biography.27
Two additional early muṣannaf collections, the Muṣannaf of Ibn Abī Shayba (d. 849) and the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī (d. 870), include sections on the maghāzī, and while al-Bukhārī adheres to the more narrow meaning of this term, focusing largely on Muhammad’s campaigns, both authors relate traditions about the end of his life. Like many other sources, these ḥadīth collections often convey traditions not otherwise attested in early Islamic literature, yet given the relatively late origins of all the surviving biographical compilations, it is difficult to assess the historical significance of such isolated traditions. The primary worth of these writings for recovering the earliest Islamic traditions about Muhammad’s life and death tends to be found mainly in their convergences, when they collectively attest to a tradition that may be traced to an early authority, such as Ibn Isḥāq, Maʿmar, or perhaps even al-Zuhrī. Occasionally, however, some less well-attested reports may also be judged as early on the basis of their content, their “matn,” particularly when they run counter to the prevailing doctrinal and literary tendencies of the earliest sources: such dissimilarities suggest an early tradition that has been preserved against these ideological interests on account of its relative antiquity. By carefully sifting these earliest sources according to such principles, it is possible to identify a rather basic account of the end of Muhammad’s life as it was remembered by Medinan scholars of the mid-eighth century.
As will be seen, the resulting sketch of Muhammad’s death and burial is disappointingly meager, and despite the frequent illusion of detailed specificity, the earliest accounts disclose remarkably little about the historical circumstances of Muhammad’s departure from this life. Although repeated attention to concrete details can give these reports a feel of authenticity, their focus on minutia often comes at the expense of broader historical context. As much is in fact typical of the early Islamic historical tradition, whose fragmented, atomistic nature is one of its most characteristic features. By consequence, individual traditions, despite their occasionally remarkable attention to detail, are commonly transmitted without any connection to a broader historical narrative.28 This quality often leaves the sequence of events uncertain, and accordingly, as will be discussed further below, the chronology of the early Islamic historical tradition is widely recognized as one of its most artificial features. Likewise, the narrative detail that occasionally seems to bring these biographical vignettes to life is a common literary device, named by Roland Barthes “the reality effect.”29 With specific regard to the early traditions of Muhammad’s death, Leor Halevi observes that their attention to seemingly trivial details serves “to give the religious narrative a sense of verisimilitude, a certain tangibility that only such casual details could provide.”30 As interesting as such details are for what they reveal about the conceptual world of Muslim believers at the beginning of Islam’s second century, one must take care not to be seduced by these nuances into accepting the veracity of these reports. Rather than validating the accounts in which they occur, they are instead very likely a sign of their literary construction.
Later Biographical Sources: Isnāds, Forgery, and Isnād Criticism
There are, of course, in addition to these early collections, innumerable traditions about the life of Muhammad that survive in only later sources, a great many of which concern his death. One need only consider, for example, the sizable collection of death and burial traditions gathered by Ibn Saʿd in his Ṭabaqāt, the vast majority of which find no parallels in other early Islamic sources.31 More recent works, such as Ibn Kathīr’s Sīra, are even more extensive in their knowledge of Muhammad’s life and death: somewhat paradoxically, it would seem that as the distance from Muhammad’s lifetime increased, so too did the Islamic tradition’s knowledge of what he had said and done.32 Each of the biographical traditions in these collections of course bears an isnād vouching for its authenticity, and these chains of transmitters generally conclude with an early authority, such as al-Zuhrī or ʿUrwa, or even ʿĀʾisha or some other Companion of the Prophet, who is identified as the ultimate source of the report in question. In light of the attribution of these reports to such early authorities, one may perhaps wonder why they are not equally valued as witnesses to the life of Muhammad and the history of Islamic origins. Should not these traditions be taken for what they purport to be, namely, reports from the earliest authorities on the beginnings of Islam, including many who were themselves participants in these very events? While there is certainly no reason to exclude the possibility that some early traditions may survive in these later collections,