Biographical Traditions: Early Prototypes

The Arabs of pre-Islamic times practiced a type of oral biography in the form of short narratives called akhbār (sing. khabar). When reciting his genealogy, a tribesman would add identifying remarks and accounts of memorable incidents associated with certain figures in the lineage.^[1] Similarly, a poem would be transmitted along with reports about the poet and the occasion for the composition of the verses. These paired elements, the informational khabar and the transmitted text (whether a list of names or a poem), affirmed each other's authority and authenticity, and the joined elements of anecdote and poem, or anecdote and genealogy, commonly remained together in oral tradition as a single discursive unit. For this reason, perhaps, the khabar remained unitary and limited in focus and never expanded to the point of becoming the summation of a life.^[2] With the advent of Arabic writing and the proliferation of literacy, it was primarily by the accumulation and combination of akhbār that biographies (along with various sorts of extended history accounts) were first constructed. The pattern of linking poetry and prose into a single discourse imprinted itself very strongly on early Arabic written literature and greatly influenced the formation of written historical and literary genres during the early Islamic period (seventh–ninth centuries).^[3]

From the rich but fragmentary materials of oral tradition, a written scholarly tradition of compilation and anthologization emerged. Under the early caliphs of the Umayyad dynasty (661–750), the historical lore of the pre-Islamic Arabs, along with reports of events in early Islamic history, was committed to writing. Massive collections of poems, place-names, genealogies, rare and obscure vocabulary, and many other types of knowledge were compiled directly from oral sources. The tenth-century bibliographer Ibn al-Nadīm has left a catalog of these early works, which also included lists of caliphs, compilations of anecdotes about poets, and incidents from the lives of early political figures. From such early collections of akhbār, later historians compiled the first dynastic and annalistic histories, sometimes juxtaposing conflicting accounts in a single work and leaving the reader to choose among them. Finally, reports of the words and actions of the Prophet Muhammad were collected in authoritative compendiums that listed the transmitters of each report by name. Eventually, the written tradition began to generate its own distinctive genres, less dependent on the form of the raw data being collected, among which were a number of genres that can be more properly termed biographical in varying degrees.

Influenced perhaps by the genealogical model, the earliest independent biographical listings take as their subject groups of specialized professionals such as ḥadīth transmitters, poets, singers, and so forth, rather than single individuals.^[4] The treatment of subjects as members of a group, however defined, remained the most common technique of Arabic biographical writing. The major exception was the life of the Prophet Muhammad, recensions of which date back to the eighth century. Early versions of his life story, called maghāzī (military expeditions), deal primarily with his campaigns, while later compilations, called siyar (see below), offer accounts of his career from birth to death.^[5] Although biographies of later figures were never as detailed as those of the Prophet, the siyar provided a model of life narration whose influence is evident in the biographical as well as the autobiographical writings of later centuries.

By the seventh century, the reports of the Prophet's career had been collected and arranged into a sequential narrative. But many scholars were interested in such reports only to the extent that they could support, or produce, a particular interpretation of the law. Reports of legal, ritual, and theological importance were thus separated out and given the name ḥadīth, “reports of the Prophet's exemplary words and deeds.” To confirm the reliability of ḥadīth reports, it was necessary to examine the men and women who had transmitted them. Did the scholar cited as the transmitter of a particular report have a reputation for veracity and good character? Could he have met the teacher from whom he claimed to have heard the ḥadīth? Were the two men actually in Mecca (or Medina, or Kufa) at the same time? Did he receive authorization (ijāza) to transmit this particular report? And so forth. To keep track of such information, ḥadīth scholars compiled lists of the Prophet's companions and of those Muslims of subsequent generations who transmitted on their authority. Many such lists contain little more than names, in chronological or alphabetical order; others, however, notably the compilation of Ibn Sa‘d (d. 845), contain extensive akhbār about many of their subjects. As crucial elements in the authentication of transmitted knowledge, biographical data were rapidly assimilated to, and developed within, the domain of historical writing.^[6]