Hisham ibn al-Kalbi

Not to be confused with Ibn Hisham.

Hishām ibn al-Kalbī (Arabic: هشام بن الكلبي), 737 AD – 819 AD/204 AH, also known as Ibn al-Kalbi (إبن 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. He was considered unreliable by Hadith scholars.

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	Shi'ite
Senior posting
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)