Hisham Ibn Al-Kalbi

Ibn al - Kalbi, Arabic هشام بن محمد بن السائب الكلبي Hisham ibn Muhammad ibn al - Kalbi as- Sa'ib, DMG Hisham b. Muḥammad b. as- Sā ʾ ib al - Kalbi (* 737, † 819 or 821 in Kufa ), known as Ibn al - Kalbi, was a Muslim historian and genealogist.

His scholarship

It dealt mainly with the Arab antiquity, the history and the customs of the Arab tribes in pre-Islamic times. About his life little is known. He acquired his knowledge from his father Muhammad ibn as- Sā ʾ ib al - Kalbi († 763 ) in his hometown of Kufa; later, during the caliphate of al -Mahdi, he moved to Baghdad, in what was then the center of Islamic scholarship, where he developed his teaching. The Sunnis were to him as hostile to Shiites; Ahmad ibn Hanbal († 855) were judging him with these words: "Who handed down by Hisham? He's just the author of night entertainments and genealogies. I do not think that someone would betray him " In the vicinity of the Caliph al -Mahdi, he again took general recognition. ; a report by al - Waqidi († 823 ) According to the case at- Tabari († 923 ) is obtained, he had in the field of mathālib, " the salacious stories that told each other the Arab tribes ", exceptional knowledge, thereby reached the Caliph to reputation and assets.

His contemporaries and successors in the scholarly life accused him, like his father, who lie. He is said to have even admitted to having lied in genealogies. " I lied in the genealogy as Khalid ibn ʿ Abd Allāh al - Qasrī has asked about ( the origin) of his grandmother Umm Kuraiz me the first time. I said to him: she is Zainab bint ʿ Ar ʿ ara ibn Ǧazīma .... Since he was pleased and presented me plenty of "In reality she was a prostitute in the North Arabian tribe of Asad, a servant ( ama) without descent, named. Zainab.

Ibn al - Nadim, the title of his writings - monographic essays on the Arab tribes, their leaders, poets and " the day of battle " - on three printed pages in his Fihrist together. Few of these works have been preserved either in manuscript fragments, or in print.

• Dschamharat to - nasab جمهرة النسب / Ǧamharat to - nasab /, summary of Genealogie'ist in Islamic literature, the most prominent genealogical work on the Arab tribes, however, this is not completely preserved. al - Baladhuri has evaluated it in his ANSAB al -Ashraf, for the most part. Ibn al - Kalbi, the processes in this work and the work of his father, is considered the founder of the science of the relationships between the ancient Arabs. The work has been edited and commented on by the German orientalist Werner Caskel. This work edition does not contain Arabic text, but 334 genealogical tables as pedigrees with about 35,000 names.

• In Kitaab al - Asnam كتاب الأصنام / Kitabu ʾ l - Asnam /, The idol book ' Ibn al - Kalbi describes the ancient Arabian deities and their associated customs mainly after oral traditions of his time. This work have several Muslim historians evaluated to the 13th century, and cited in the manuscript before us today provided with marginal notes. Extracts from it - even if only paraphrased - are subsequently literature also obtained from the 12th and 13th centuries. The geographer and literary historian Yaqut († 1229 ) transferred most of the " idol book" of Ibn al - Kalbi in his geographical dictionary, distributed to the individual gods name in the alphabetical arrangement of his work.

The German orientalist Julius Wellhausen has analyzed in his still significant work remains Arab paganism cited by Yaqut Ibn al - Kalbi information on the pre-Islamic idolatry and for the first time presented a valuable monograph on the ancient Arabian deities of the pre-Islamic period.

At the beginning of the 20th century did the Egyptian explorer Ahmed Zeki Pacha أحمد زكي باشا / Aḥmad Zakī Basa to identify the then classified as unique manuscript of Ibn al - Kalbīs " Götz book" in the private collection of an Algerian scholar and by purchase to acquire. The previously unknown manuscript he presented at the World Congress of Orientalists at Athens in 1912 for the first time to the public. 1914 appeared in a careful edition, the first edition: Ibn el Kalbi: Le livre des idoles ( Kitab el Asnam ). The editors counts in the appendix to the edition (p. 107-111 ) 49 more idols that are not mentioned by Ibn al - Kalbi.

The idol book is a valuable source of religious history dar. In the historically important period of transition from the Dschahiliya to Islam in the 7th century it has " a say in the issue of religious conversion a very weighty word." The illustrations are accompanied by numerous poems on the deities whose origins according to the current state of research stretching back to the pre-Islamic period. The traditional poems by the author provide a very good insight into the primitive " customs of pagan Arabia, which provide many of the old, characteristic forms of this religion stage ".

A faithful reissue of a reprint of the edition of Ahmed Zeki Pacha got the orientalist Pink jack Rosenberger with a German translation and an extensive commentary.

The English translation of the work has N. A. Faris ( Princeton 1952) concerned with scientific annotations. W. Atallah has translated the book into French and commented: Les Idoles de Hicham Ibn al - Kalbi, Paris 1969.