Al-Waqidi
c. 747 CE–c. 823 CE · Medina
Muhammad ibn Umar al-Waqidi (born c. 130 AH / 747-748 CE in Medina; died 207 AH / 822-823 CE in Baghdad) was one of the earliest Muslim historians of the life and battles of the Prophet Muhammad. The genre he worked in, maghazi (literally "raids" or military expeditions), gathered traditions about the Prophet's campaigns. His Kitab al-Maghazi is among the oldest detailed accounts of those expeditions to survive, and it remains a foundational source for the study of early Islam.
By trade al-Waqidi is reported to have been a grain or wheat dealer in Medina, while devoting himself to collecting historical traditions. Tradition holds that he was so expert on Mecca and Medina that the vizier Yahya ibn Khalid, of the powerful Barmakid family, chose him to guide the caliph Harun al-Rashid on pilgrimage. Sources report that, burdened by debt, al-Waqidi later moved to Iraq, where Barmakid patronage and afterward the caliph al-Ma'mun secured him posts as a judge (qadi) in Baghdad, which he held until his death.
His standing is genuinely contested. Specialists in hadith criticism (the science of grading the chains, isnad, behind Prophetic reports) judged him severely: figures such as al-Shafi'i, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Bukhari, al-Nasa'i, and later al-Dhahabi and Ibn Hajar classed his hadith as weak or worse. Yet many of the same scholars, and historians after them, continued to treat his historical material on the campaigns as valuable. Reading him thus means weighing a celebrated historian against a distrusted traditionist.
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Medina
What they did here
Al-Waqidi was born in Medina, c. 130 AH / 747-748 CE, and spent his early career there. He is reported to have traded in grain while collecting historical and Prophetic traditions, and tradition holds he was an acknowledged authority on Mecca and Medina. Sira/biographical tradition adds that the Barmakid vizier Yahya ibn Khalid chose him to guide Harun al-Rashid on pilgrimage (placed by some reports around al-Rashid's hajj of 186 AH / 802 CE) — a detail that is traditionally reported rather than independently attested.
About Medina
Medina (al-Madina, formerly Yathrib), in the Hejaz of western Saudi Arabia, is the city to which the Prophet Muhammad emigrated in 622 (the hijra), establishing the first Muslim community; it contains his tomb and is Islam's second-holiest city. As the cradle of early Islamic law and hadith scholarship it remained a major centre of learning that drew the scholars connected here.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Al-Waqidi’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
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