This paper begins by introducing the project, its aims, the roles of the different panelists, and how the team is generating and improving the quality of its data (including through the development of an isnad classifier that allows us to better distinguish meaningful alignments from meaningless lists of names detached from textual transmissions). I contextualise the Sirah by Ibn Ishaq in light of what we can now see, in general, of the different ways that texts circulated in the 7th-15th centuries CE. After an overview of statistics relating to the Sirah and its circulation, I compare it to other texts - including distant “versions” of the same titles, such as the Muwatta’ of Malik b. Anas (d. 796). I argue that, with time, texts became more fixed, but there remained two general expectations that shaped the reception of the Sirah and, in general, written tradition until the arrival of print. First, readers and authors generally expected authors to reuse past works, and seem not to have been much troubled by the scope of reuse (judging firstly by the growth of books). For authors, reusing past works freed intellectual energy. Secondly, authors and readers frequently accessed texts only through other texts. This willingness to read texts through texts helps to explain the non-survival of distinct texts, like the Sirah, from the first centuries of Islam, and also the general lack of manuscript evidence for literary works prior to the 10th or 11th centuries. For the Sirah, I trace these expectations to the orality of early writing and argue that this manner of textuality generated a cultural willingness, and at times preference, for interiorizing texts and for making them one’s own, a preference that passed on into purely written practices.

The aim of this paper is to apply the text reuse algorithms to examine the life of Asm?? bint Ab? Bakr as related in the S?rah of Ibn Is??q (d. 150/761) in comparison to ?Abb?sid and Sh??ah historiographical traditions, especially her stance against the Umayyads following the killing of her son, ?Abd All?h b. Zubayr (d. 73/692). Asm??’s life was remarkable for its longevity and its depth. Dying at the age of 100, her life spanned the landmark events of early Islamic history. She was the 18th person to enter Islam and the last of the emigrants to Medina to die. Her son, ?Abd All?h, is considered the first baby born to Muslims and aged Asm?? would bury him. Like her sister ???ishah, the wife of the Prophet Mu?ammad, Asm?? was close to the Prophet and a transmitter of ?ad?th. She is recorded as transmitting over 200 traditions, varying from fiqh to politics. She related material to several people, including her son ?Urwah b. Zubayr, who was famous for gathering many historical traditions and for laying the foundations for what has come to be known as S?ra literature. Given Asm??’s remarkable longevity and her participation in the events which shaped the early Muslim community, many stories and traditions have emerged around her life. The aim of this study is to examine the portrayal of Asm?? in the S?ra of Ibn Is??q. Ibn Is??q knew many of Asma’s grandsons and Hish?m b. ?Urwah reportedly accused Ibn Is??q of lying about getting a tradition from his wife. As a contemporary of Asma’s sons and grandsons, Ibn Is??q would have been very familiar with stories relating to her. Digital textual reuse tools will allow me to search for parallels and variations in the accounts about Asm?? in Ibn Hish?m’s recension of Ibn Is??q as well as al-?abar?’s T?r?kh and his tafs?r. In doing so I hope to throw light on how early Muslims viewed Asm?? as a historical figure and as a ?ad?th transmitter.

The composition of traditional Arabic texts is a complex problem. The field has produced a number of studies where excerpts of excessively long texts are analyzed in the most meticulous manner. Unfortunately, since the studied samples are usually short, we can hardly hope to gain a deep understanding of the writing practices of Arab authors. Relying on computer-based algorithms, the paper argues that we can surpass this limitation and start evaluating massive Arabic texts in their entirety and understand patterns of text reuse at the level of specific books as well as at the level of specific authors, i.e. analyzing all of their available works. Taking this approach further, we can use the generated text-reuse data to identify parts of a text that a given author 1) borrows verbatim; 2) omits from his sources; and 3) supplements (or modifies) with his own information. The resultant aggregations of text bits can then be analyzed with different clustering techniques in order to identify patterns in borrowings, amendments, and omissions which should lead to a better understanding of authorial practices. The paper will present the inner workings of the proposed method and will focus on one of the major historical texts written during the Mamluk period of Islamic history—“Ta?rikh al-islam” of al-Dhahabi (d. 1348). In the section on the biography of the Prophet, al-Dhahabi draws on extensively on materials from “Sirat al-Nabi” by Ibn Hisham, “al-Tabaqat al-Kubra” by Ibn Sa?d, “Ta?rikh” by al-Tabari, and particularly “Dala?il al-Nubuwwa” by al-Bayhaqi. Current analysis of text-reuse patterns strongly suggests that al-Dhahabi is genuinely trying to preserve information from his sources, mostly quoting them verbatim; at the same time he does modify reused text, but largely in a non-destructive manner (most commonly, al-Dhahabi drops repetitions of long names or replaces them with pronouns). The paper will present the most recent findings in al-Dhahabi’s text reuse patterns; in order to get a more robust perspective on al-Dhahabi’s text reuse patterns for the Prophetic materials, they will be presented in comparison with al-Dhahabi’s text reuse from Andalusian sources.

Alfred Guillaume first noted the differing accounts of Tubba?’s aborted attack on Mecca as recorded by Ibn Ish?a?q’s acolytes al-Bakka??i?, Ibn Bukayr, ?Uthma?n b. Sa?j, and Salamah b. al-Fad?l. Guillaume attributed these differences to unimportant lexical variations and to Ibn Hisha?m’s later redactions of al-Bakka??i?’s copy. In doing so, Guillaume treats the Ibn al-Fad?l and al-Bakka??i? copies as largely the same and examines any new information found in Ibn Sa?j and Ibn Bukayr only in so far as he thinks it has historical merit. In fact, most discussions of Ibn Ish?a?q focus on his historical reliability and ignore the rather copious evidence that Ibn Ish?a?q’s collection was designed to entertain, edify, and enrich. I argue that the Tubba? stories gives us a window into the work’s compositional history and demonstrates that the majority of variations between witness traditions are due to changes made by Ibn Ish?a?q as he traveled across the early ?Abba?sid world performing stories drawn from a collection of scripts that he developed since his youth. While the narrative structure of these stories remained fairly stable, Ibn Ish?a?q inserted and removed material to cater to the tastes of his various audiences. Over the past decade I have reconstructed all or part of 60 performances and reconstructed substantial portions of 14 “generic copies” produced for followers such as Ibra?hi?m b. Sa?d, al-Bakka??i?, Ibn al-Fad?l, and others. The total corpus of Ibn Ish?a?q material contains almost 750,000 words of material, and this body of material has served as the key basis for modeling text reuse by the team. The paper will demonstrate that the al-Bakka??i? and Ibn al-Fad?l versions are more similar because each was composed from a fairly fixed “base” document. To understand these copies, it is necessary to examine the relationship between names, events, and ideas found in other portions of the larger work. The Ibn Sa?j and Ibn Bukayr versions were copies of performances made for audiences in specific locales and were told in local dialects in such a way that no wider frame of reference was necessary, using names and ideas important to each audience. While there may be some value to Ibn Ish?a?q as a record of historical information its value is the text’s capacity to teach us about the world of Ibn Ish?a?q and his audiences.