Sirah, or al-sirah al-nabawiyya, commonly translated as prophetic biography, is the genre of traditional biographies of the Islamic prophet Muhammad written by Muslim historians over centuries, chronicling his life and the early history of Islam. The term was first linked to Muhammad's biography by Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri and later popularized by the work of Ibn Hisham, building on earlier oral storytelling traditions and heroic-expedition narratives known as maghazi. The genre evolved from oral storytelling into compiled written works incorporating military campaigns, political treaties, speeches, poetry and Quranic commentary, with scholars developing the isnad, a chain-of-transmission method, to evaluate the authenticity of the material each work compiled.
Facts
Notable ExampleAl-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah by Ibn Hisham (died 833) 1 Defining TraitCompiled from multiple historical reports called khabar 1 Sources
1. Sirah - Wikipedia
Section Terminology, third paragraph
Early works of sīrah consist of multiple historical reports called
Section Terminology, second paragraph, last sentence
later popularized by the work of
In Group: Biographical Compendia, Lead section
Al-sīrah al-nabawiyya (Arabic: السيرة النبوية), commonly shortened to sīrah and translated as prophetic biography, are the traditional biographies of the Islamic prophet Muhammad written over centuries by Muslim historians, from which, in addition to the Quran and hadith literature, most historical information about his life and the early history of Islam is derived.
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