Sirat Rasul Allah

Sirat Rasul Allah (Arabic: سيرة رسول الله, Romanization: Sīrat Rasūl-Allāh, Abv: Sirat), or Biography of the Prophet of Allah, refers to the collected biographies of Muhammad. It is also the title of one of the most important early Siras, namely that of Ibn Ishaq. In addition to the hadith (oral account of Muhammad's statements and actions), the Siras provides an integral foundation to the sunnah (example, customs, and practices) set forth by Muhammad. Throughout Islamic history, the Siras and Sunnah have established the foundation of much of Islamic Law (Shariah) and Jurisprudence (Fiqh), including but not limited to the Five Pillars of Islam, societal code, and dietary standards.

Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Yasār (704-770 AD), commonly known as Ibn Ishaq, was responsible for the earliest-known collection of Hadith arranged in chronological order, eponymously known as Sirat Rasul Allah (Biography of the Prophet of Allah). This collective biographical account is the earliest surviving, and most heavily relied upon biography of Muhammad. Along with the Qur'an and Hadith, are commonly referred to as the Trilogy of Islam, as all major doctrines are found within these three sources. Earlier biographical material include the letters of 'Urwa b. al-Zubayr (d. 713), and Kitāb al-Maghāzī by Musa ibn ʿUqba (d. 725 to 737), which was a notebook thought lost, but recently rediscoverd in 2021. Musa ibn ʿUqba was a student of Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (d. 737), whose narrations feature heavily in the sira literature.

Ibn Ishaq's work, while the original manuscripts have not survived, is substantially extant through revisions of his editors, most notably Ibn Hisham and Ibn Jarir al-Tabari. According to Islamic scholar Fred Donner at the University of Chicago, the material in ibn Hisham's and al-Tabari's recensions are "virtually the same."^[1] However, some material found in al-Tabari was deliberately not preserved by ibn Hisham, most notably al-Tabari's inclusion of the episode known as the Satanic Verses.^[2][3]