The Effect of the Muhadithins’ Methodologies in Writing the Prophetic Biography (PB)
Dr. Saleh Ahmed Al-Busaidi
Introduction
All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds, and peace and blessings be upon the best of His Prophets
and Messengers, the Prophet Muhammad and his family and Companions and those who followed him truthfully
until the Day of Judgment. Writing the prophetic biography (PB) is essentially the job of the historians as they were
the first to take interest in writing the prophetic biography (PB) as an integrated work. This was done either as a
dedicated work like that of Ibn Hisham, Ibn Is’haq, Al-Halabi and others; or as a part of historic encyclopedias like
those of Al Tabari, Ibn Al Atheer, Ibn Kuthair, Al-Mas’udi, Al Yaqubi, and others. The Muhaddithin have left on
impact on highlighting some of the chief points in the prophetic biography (PB). It is well known that the writers of
the prophetic biography tended to apply the methodologies of the historians in conveying the events of the PB,
however, at times, they used to adopt the methodology of the Muhaddithin in weighing between the conflicting
narrations, particularly those who had a wide scope of knowledge of the Muhaddithin’s methodologies. In fact, they
may have considered themselves as muhaddithin like Ibn Kuthair and Ibn Al-Athir. This blending of the two
methodologies (historians and Muhaddithin) created a strong bond between the Muslim historians and the
Muhaddithin and contributed in filtering the BP from a lot of the forged narrations through which, some tried
character assassination to the Prophet (PBUH) as we shall elaborate by examples.
Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/jisc.v3n1a10
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