Ibn Ishaq

Ibn Ishaq was born around 699 in Medina, decades after the prophet's death, into a world still thick with living witnesses and their children. He spent years traveling and collecting oral accounts—stories passed down from companions and their descendants—then wove them into a continuous life story called "Al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah." The original text is lost, but it survived through later scholars who copied, edited, and transmitted his work, most famously in the recension by Ibn Hisham. He died around 768, but his framework became the skeleton on which nearly all subsequent biographies of Muhamm…