Ibn Ishaq
Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Yasār ibn Khiyār (; according to some sources, ibn Khabbār, or Kūmān, or Kūtān,Arabic: محمد بن إسحاق بن يسار بن خيار, or simply ibn Isḥaq, ابن إسحاق, meaning "the son of Isaac"; died 767 or 761) was an Arab Muslim historian and hagiographer. Ibn Ishaq collected oral traditions that formed the basis of an important biography of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
Life
Born in Medina about the year A.H. 85 (704 A.D), ibn Isḥaq was the grandson of a Christian man of Kufa (in southern Iraq), by the name of Yasār. Yasār had been captured in one of Khalid ibn al-Walid's campaigns, taken to Medina and became the slave of Qays ibn Makhrama ibn al-Muṭṭalib ibn ʿAbd Manāf ibn Quṣayy. Having accepted Islam, Yasār was manumitted and became his mawlā (client), thus acquiring the nisbat al-Muṭṭalibī. Yasār's three sons, Mūsā, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, and Isḥāq, were all known as transmitters of akhbār, who collected and recounted tales of the past. Isḥāq married the daughter of another mawlā and from this marriage ibn Isḥāq was born.
