Hisham ibn al-Kalbi

Hisham ibn al-Kalbi (737 AD - 819 AD/204 AH), also known as Ibn al-Kalbi (Arabic: ابن الكلبي‎‎) was an Arab historian.^[1] His full name Abu al-Mundhir Hisham bin Muhammed bin al-Sa'ib bin Bishr al-Kalbi. Born in Kufa, he spent much of his life in Baghdad. Like his father, he collected information about the genealogies and history of the ancient Arabs. According to the Fihrist, he wrote 140 works. His account of the genealogies of the Arabs is continually quoted in the Kitab al-Aghani.

Hisham established a genealogical link between Ishmael and Mohammed 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 Palmyran sources.^[1] In 1966, W. Caskel compiled a two volume study of Ibn al-Kalbi's Djamharat al Nasab ("The Abundance of Kinship") entitled Das genealogische Werk des Hisam Ibn Muhammad al Kalbi.^[2] 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

Arabic Wikisource has original text related to this article: Hisham Ibn Al-Kalbi

• The Book of Idols (Kitab Al-Asnam)
• The Abundance of Kinship (Djamharat al Nasab)

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "^{article name needed}". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.