Hisham ibn al-Kalbi

Not to be confused with Ibn Hisham.

Hishām ibn al-Kalbī (Arabic: هشام بن الكلبي), 737 – 819 CE / 204 AH, also known as Ibn al-Kalbi (ابن الكلبي), was an Arab historian.^[1] His full name was Abu al-Mundhir Hisham ibn Muhammad ibn al-Sa'ib ibn Bishr al-Kalbi. Born in Kufa,^[2] he spent much of his life in Baghdad. Like his father, he collected information about the genealogies and history of the ancient Arabs. His genealogies are well-cited among Arabs, but Sunni scholars considered his hadith to be unreliable since he was Shia.

Hishām ibn al-Kalbī
Personal life
Born	737 CE Kufa, Iraq
Died	819 CE
Parent	Muhammad ibn as-Sā'ib al-Kalbī (father)
Main interest(s)	History
Notable idea(s)	Theory of all Arabs being descended from Ishmael, the son of Abraham
Notable work(s)	Jamharat al-Ansab, Kitab al-Asnam
Religious life
Religion	Islam
Denomination	Shia
Muslim leader
Influenced Yaqut al-Hamawi, Tabari, Al-Masudi, Ibn Sa'd

Ibn al-Kalbi's most famous work is the Book of Idols (Kitab al-Asnam), which aims to document the veneration of idols and pagan sanctuaries in different regions and among different tribes in pre-Islamic Arabia.^[3] In this work, Hisham posited a genealogical link between Ishmael and the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and put forth the idea that all Arabs were descended from Ishmael.^[1] He relied heavily on the ancient oral traditions of the Arabs, but also quoted writers who had access to Biblical and Palmyrene sources.^[1] According to the Fihrist, he wrote 140 works. His account of the genealogies of the Arabs is continually quoted in the Kitab al-Aghani.^[3] He also wrote the Strain of Horses (Ansab al-Khayl), which tries to document the history of the Arabian horse from 3000 BC to his own time.^[4]

Scholarship

In 1966, Werner Caskel compiled a two volume study of Ibn al-Kalbi's Jamharat al-Nasab ("The Abundance of Kinship") entitled Das genealogische Werk des Hisam Ibn Muhammad al Kalbi ("The Genealogical Works of Hisham ibn Muhammad al-Kalbi").^[5] It contains a prosopographic register of every individual mentioned in the genealogy in addition to more than three hundred genealogical tables based on the contents of the text.

Works

• The Book of Idols (Kitab Al-Asnam)
• The Abundance of Genealogy/Kinship (Jamharat Al-Ansab)
• The Strain of Horses (Ansab al-Khayl)