Arab Historians

"No scribe is known to have reached a position with regard to his master comparable to that achieved by al-Fāḍil with Saladin. It was said that the lands were not conquered by the armies of Saladin but by al-Fāḍil's pen."

"They advanced like men; like women they vanished."

"Amongst the kings of Sind and Hind none treats the Muslims who are established in their domains with more distinction than the Ballahara."

"Weak in hadith, but pillar in history."

"[he says] “things which it is disgraceful to discuss; matters which would distress certain people; and such reports as al-Bakka’i [Ibn Ishaq’s student, who edited his work] told me he could not accept as trustworthy.”"

"Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 992: - "Fight everyone in the way of Allah and kill those who disbelieve in Allah.""

"Ibn Ishaq 436 - “…they brought them along and questioned them while the apostle was standing praying… The people were dismayed at their report…and so they beat them. When they were beaten soundly…""

"Ibn Ishaq 734 - "So the apostle called Burayra to ask her, and Ali got up and gave her a violent beating, saying “'Tell the Apostle the truth.'”"

"Ibn Ishaq 764 - “Torture him until you extract what he has.” So he kindled a fire with flint and steel on his chest until he was nearly dead. Then the apostle delivered him to Muhammad bin Maslama and he struck off his head.”"

"If you come upon them, deal so forcibly as to terrify those who would follow, that they may be warned. Make a severe example of them by terrorizing Allah’s enemies."

"Allah said, ‘No Prophet before Muhammad took booty from his enemy nor prisoners for ransom.’ Muhammad said, ‘I was made victorious with terror. The earth was made a place for me to clean. I was given the most powerful words. Booty was made lawful for me. I was given the power to intercede. These five privileges were awarded to no prophet before me.’"

"They say that the beginning of stone worship among the sons of Ishmael was when Mecca became too small for them and they wanted more room in the country. Everyone who left the town took with him a stone from the sacred area to do honour to it. Wherever they settled they set it up and walked round it as they went round the Ka‘ba. This led them to worship what stones they pleased and those which made an impression on them. Thus as generations passed they forgot their primitive faith and adopted another religion for that of Abraham and Ishmael. They worshipped idols and adopted the same errors as the peoples before them. Yet they retained and held fast practices going back to the time of Abraham, such as honouring the temple and going round it, the great and little pilgrimage, and the standing on ‘Arafa and Muzdalifa, sacrificing the victims, and the pilgrim cry at the great and little pilgrimage, while introducing elements which had no place in the religion of Abraham."

"“Every household had an idol in their house which they used to worship. When a man was about to set out on a journey he would rub himself against it as he was about to ride off: indeed that was the last thing he used to do before his journey; and when he returned from his journey the first thing he did was to rub himself against it before he went in to his family…"

"“Now Ri’ãm,” reports Ibn Ishãq, “was one of the temples which they venerated and where they offered sacrifices and received oracles when they were polytheists. The two rabbis told Tubba‘ that it was merely a shayTãn which deceived them in this way and they asked to be allowed to deal with it. When the king agreed they commanded a black dog to come out of it and killed it-at least this is what the Yamanites say. Then they destroyed the temple and I am told that its ruins to this day show traces of the blood that was poured over it.”"

"“At this time,” reports Ibn Ishãq, “the people of Najrãn followed the religion of the Arabs worshipping a great palm-tree. Every year they had a festival when they hung on the tree any fine garment they could find and women’s jewels. Then they sallied out and devoted the day to it.” Faymiyûn reported to the nobles that the palm-tree “could neither help nor hurt” and that “if he were to curse the tree in the name of God, He would destroy it, for He was God Alone without companion.” The nobles agreed. Faymiyûn “invoked God against the tree and God sent a wind against it which tore it from its roots and cast it on the ground.” The miracle helped the people of Najran to adopt the “law of Îsã b. Maryam” in which Faymiyûn “instructed them.”"

"In Qubã’ there was an unmarried Muslim woman and he noticed that a man used to come to her in the middle of the night and knock on her door; she would come out and he would give her something. He felt very suspicious of him and asked her what was the meaning of this nightly performance as she was a Muslim woman without a husband. She told him that he was Sahl b. Hunayf b. Wãhib who knew that she was all alone and he used to break up the idols of his tribe at night and bring her the pieces to use as fuel…"

"Had you seen Muhammad and his troops The day the idols were smashed when he entered, You would have seen God’s light become manifest And darkness covering the face of idolatry.”"

"I smashed RuDã’ so completely that I left it a black ruin in a hollow."

"[An] outrage had been committed by an Arab who came from the temple in Mecca where the Arabs went on pilgrimage, and that he had done this in anger at his threat to divert the Arabs’ pilgrimage to the cathedral, showing thereby that it was unworthy of reverence... [Abraha felt] “enraged and swore that he would go to the temple and destroy it.”"

"O people, listen to my words. I do not know whether I shall ever meet you again in this place after this year. O people, your blood and your property are sacrosanct until you meet your Lord, just as this day and this month of yours are sacred. Surely you will meet your Lord and He will question you about your deeds. I have [already] made this known. Let he who has a pledge return it to the one who entrusted him with it; all usury is abolished, but your capital belongs to you. Wrong not and you shall not be wronged. God has decreed that there will be no usury, and the usury of ‘Abbās b. ‘Abd al-Muṭṭalib is abolished, all of it. All blood shed in the pre-Islamic days is to be left unavenged. The first such claim I revoke is that of Ibn Rabī‘ah b. al-Ḥārith b. ‘Abd al-Muṭṭalib, who was nursed among the Banū Layth and was slain by the Banū Hudhayl. His is the first blood shed in the pre-Islamic days with which I shall set an example. O people, indeed Satan despairs of ever being worshipped in this land of yours. He will be pleased, however, if he is obeyed in a thing other than that, in matters you minimize. So beware of him in your religion, O people, intercalating a month is an increase in unbelief whereby the unbelievers go astray; one year they make it profane, and hallow it another, [in order] to agree with the number that God has hallowed, and so profane what God has hallowed, and hallow what God has made profane. Time has completed its cycle [and is] as it was on the day that God created the heavens and the earth. The number of the months with God is twelve: [they were] in the Book of God on the day He created the heavens and the earth. Four of them are sacred, the three consecutive [months] and the Rajab [which is called the month of] Muḍar, which is between Jumādā [II] and Sha‘bān." "Now then, O people, you have a right over your wives and they have a right over you. You have [the right] that they should not cause anyone of whom you dislike to tread on your beds; and that they should not commit any open indecency (fāḥishah). If they do, then God permits you to shut them in separate rooms and to beat them, but not severely. If they abstain from [evil], they have the right to their food and clothing in accordance with custom (bi’l-ma‘rūf). Treat women well, for they are [like] domestic animals ('awan) with you and do not possess anything for themselves. You have taken them only as a trust from God, and you have made the enjoyment of their persons lawful by the word of God, so understand and listen to my words, O people. I have conveyed the Message, and have left you with something which, if you hold fast to it, you will never go astray: that is, the Book of God and the sunnah of His Prophet. Listen to my words, O people, for I have conveyed the Message and understand [it]. Know for certain that every Muslim is a brother of another Muslim, and that all Muslims are brethren. It is not lawful for a person [to take] from his brother except that which he has given him willingly, so do not wrong yourselves. O God, have I not conveyed the message?" It was reported [to me] that the people said, "O God, yes," and the Messenger of God said, "O God, bear witness."

"I was told that the last injunction the apostle [Muhammad] gave [before his death] was in his words `Let not two religions be left in the Arabian peninsula.""

"Ishaq 734 - "As for Ali, he said, 'Women are plentiful, and you can easily change one for another.""

"Ishaq 969 - "Lay injunctions on women kindly, for they are prisoners with you having no control of their persons.""

"“Nothing from the contents of Ibn Ishaq is confirmed by inscriptions or other archeological material. Testimonies from non-Muslim contemporaries do not exist. Greek, Armenian, Syriac and other sources about the beginnings of Islam are very difficult to date, but none of them is convincingly contemporary with the Prophet of Islam. Under such circumstances, no biography can be a scholarly work in the modern sense of that word, not even with the help of an omniscient Ibn Ishaq.”"

"Even if modern day Muslims are prepared to reject the Mohammed as portrayed by Ibn Ishaq, the book has still been immensely powerful in shaping the Islamic view of the world, since Muslims throughout the last millennium did not reject Mohammed as portrayed in Ibn Ishaq: that is the Mohammed that Muslim cultures throughout the world have passed on by word of mouth to their children for generation after generation. Moreover, the current edition of this book was reissued in modern day Pakistan, a state whose full title is The Islamic Republic of Pakistan. This Islamic state condemns to death those convicted of defaming the Prophet Mohammed. Since 1967 Oxford University Press have been selling this Guillaume edition of The Life of Muhammed, which is printed in Pakistan. No-one from that company has been charged with “defaming the Prophet Mohammed”, so we can take take from this continued publication and the lack of prosecutions, that contemporary Pakistani Muslims do not consider this work blasphemous. Thus we regard any rejection of the Sira of Ibn Ishaq by contemporary Muslims living in the West as either a sign of their duplicity or a sign of their ignorance about Islam."

"Ibn Ishaq (693) - "Then the apostle sent Sa-d b. Zayd al-Ansari, brother of Abdu'l-Ashal with some of the captive women of Banu Qurayza to Najd and he sold them for horses and weapons.""

"Ibn Ishaq (970) - "The adulterer must be stoned.""

"Ishaq 956 & 962 - "He who withholds the Jizya is an enemy of Allah and His apostle.""

"Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 879: The apostle told them to tell Malik that if he came to him as a Muslim he would return his family and property to him and give him a hundred camels."

"Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 484: - “Allah said, ‘A prophet must slaughter before collecting captives. A slaughtered enemy is driven from the land. Muhammad, you craved the desires of this world, its goods and the ransom captives would bring. But Allah desires killing them to manifest the religion.’”"

"Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 990: "I leapt upon him and cut off his head and ran in the direction of the camp shouting 'Allah akbar' and my two companions did likewise"."

"Eventually, Aristotle appeared among the Greeks. He improved the methods of logic and systematized its problems and details. He assigned to logic its proper place as the first philosophical discipline and the introduction to philosophy. Therefore he is called the First Teacher."

"Businesses owned by responsible and organized merchants shall eventually surpass those owned by wealthy rulers."

"Their qualities of character, moreover, are close to those of dumb animals. It has ever been reported that most of the Negroes of the first [climatic] zone dwell in caves and thickets, eat herbs, live in savage isolation and do not congregate, and eat each other. The same applies to the Slavs. The reason for this is that their remoteness from being temperate produces in them a disposition and character similar to those of the dumb animals, and they become correspondingly remote from humanity."

"Royal authority is a noble and enjoyable position. It comprises all the good things of the world, the pleasures of the body, and the joys of the soul. Therefore, there is, as a rule, great competition for it. It rarely is handed over (voluntarily), but it may be taken away. Thus, discord ensues. It leads to war and fighting, and to attempts to gain superiority."

"(Unlike Muslims), the other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty to them, save only for purposes of defence... They are merely required to establish their religion among their own people. This is why the Israelites after Moses and Joshua remained unconcerned with royal authority for about four hundred years. Their only concern was to establish their religion... The Israelites dispossessed the Canaanites of the land that God had given them as their heritage in Jerusalem and the surrounding region, as it had been explained to them through Moses. The nations of the Philistines, the Canaanites, the Armenians, the Edomites, the Ammonites, and the Moabites fought against them. During that time political leadership was entrusted to the elders among them. The Israelites remained in that condition for about four hundred years. They did not have any royal power and were harassed by attacks from foreign nations. Therefore, they asked God through Samuel, one of their prophets, that he permit them to make someone king over them. Thus, Saul became their king. He defeated the foreign nations and killed Goliath, the ruler of Philistines. After Saul, w:David became king, and then Solomon. His kingdom flourished and extended to the borders of the land of the Hijaz and further to the borders of Yemen and to the borders of the land of the Byzantines. After Solomon, the tribes split into two dynasties. One of the dysnaties was that of the ten tribes in the region of Nablus, the capital of which is Samaria(Sabastiyah), and the other that of the children of Judah and Benjamin in Jerusalem. Their royal authority had had an uninterrupted duration of a thousand years."

"Thus, the founders of grammar were Sîbawayh and, after him, al-Fârisî and Az-Zajjâj. All of them were of non-Arab (Persian) descent. They were brought up in the Arabic language and acquired the knowledge of it through their upbringing and through contact with Arabs. They invented the rules of (grammar) and made it into a discipline (in its own right) for later (generations to use). Most of the ḥadîth scholars who preserved traditions for the Muslims also were Persians, or Persian in language and upbringing, because the discipline was widely cultivated in the 'Irâq and the regions beyond. Furthermore all the scholars who worked in the science of the principles of jurisprudence were Persians. The same applies to speculative theologians and to most Qur'ân commentators. Only the Persians engaged in the task of preserving knowledge and writing systematic scholarly works. Thus, the truth of the following statement by the Prophet becomes apparent: 'If scholarship hung suspended in the highest parts of heaven, the Persians would attain it.'"

"All the sciences came to exist in Arabic. The systematic works on them were written in Arabic writing."

"Arabic writing at the beginning of Islam was, therefore, not of the best quality nor of the greatest accuracy and excellence. It was not (even) of medium quality, because the Arabs possessed the savage desert attitude and were not familiar with crafts. One may compare what happened to the orthography of the Qur’an on account of this situation. The men around Muhammad wrote the Qur’an in their own script which, was not of a firmly established, good quality. Most of the letters were in contradiction to the orthography required by persons versed in the craft of writing.... Consequently, (the Qur’anic orthography of the men around Muhammad was followed and became established, and the scholars acquainted with it have called attention to passages where (this is noticeable). No attention should be paid in this connection with those incompetent (scholars) that (the men around Muhammad) knew well the art of writing and that the alleged discrepancies between their writing and the principles of orthography are not discrepancies, as has been alleged, but have a reason. For instance, they explain the addition of the alif in la ‘adhbahannahU "I shall indeed slaughter him" as indication that the slaughtering did not take place ( lA ‘adhbahannahU ). The addition of the ya in bi-ayydin "with hands (power)," they explain as an indication that the divine power is perfect. There are similar things based on nothing but purely arbitrary assumptions. The only reason that caused them to (assume such things) is their belief that (their explanations) would free the men around Muhammad from the suspicion of deficiency, in the sense that they were not able to write well. They think that good writing is perfection. Thus, they do not admit the fact that the men around Muhammad were deficient in writing."

"It should be known that at the beginning of a dynasty, taxation yields a large revenue from small assessments. At the end of the dynasty, taxation yields a small revenue from large assessments."

"Religious propaganda gives a dynasty at its beginning another power in addition to that of the group feeling it possessed as the result of the number of its supporters... This happened to the Arabs at the beginning of Islam during the Muslim conquests. The armies of the Muslims at al-Qadisiyah and at the Yarmuk numbered some 30,000 in each case, while the Persian troops at al-Qadisiyah numbered 120,000, and the troops of Heraclius, according to al-Waqidi, 400,000. Neither of the two parties was able to withstand the Arabs, who routed them and seized what they possessed."

"On account of their savage nature, the Bedouins are people who plunder and cause damage. They plunder whatever they are able to lay their hands on without having to fight or to expose themselves to danger. They then retreat to their pastures in the desert. They do not attack or fight except in self-defence. Every stronghold or (locality) that seems difficult to attack, they by-pass in favour of some less difficult (enterprise). Tribes that are protected by inaccessible mountains are safe from their mischief and destructiveness. The Bedouins would not cross hills or undergo hardship and danger in order to get to them. Flat territory, on the other hand, falls victim to their looting and prey to their appetite whenever they (have the opportunity of) gaining power over it. Then they raid, plunder, and attack that territory repeatedly, because it is easily (accessible) to them. Eventually, its inhabitants succumb utterly to the Bedouins and then are pushed around by them in accordance with changes of control and shifts in leadership. Eventually, their civilization is wiped out. God has power over His creatures."

"While it is true that many Muslim scholars who composed their works in Arabic, both in the religious and in the intellectual sciences, have been of non-Arab descent, Ibn Khaldūn's use of the term Arab in his history seems to indicate a class of people and not a group. Most scholars believe that, in many instances, Ibn Khaldūn uses the name Arab to mean bedouin. Other scholars, such as Mohamed Chafik, deny this."

"Why should you read a book on economic growth? Because the subject is important: it is about the well-being of our societies today and in the future; and because it is beautiful. It carries wonderful ideas, some exposed more than 2000 years ago, spanning all civilizations. You will certainly marvel at Ibn Khaldun’s prescience, at Mo Tzu’s wisdom, at Solow’s depiction of transition phases, at Dorfman’s incredible intuition in solving variational problems."

"Ibn Khaldūn’s Muqaddimah provides insights into his theories on taxation within the broader context of his analysis of societies and civilizations. The Arab historian recognized taxation as a necessary means for funding the operations of the state. Taxes were crucial for maintaining social order, providing public services, and ensuring the security and stability of the kingdom. But Ibn Khaldūn advocated for a [taxational] system that ensured an equitable distribution of the [taxational] burden among the population. He believed that excessive taxation of certain groups or classes could lead to social unrest and undermine the stability of the state."

"Ibn Khaldun, writing in the 14th century, [had] famously argued that injustice is the surest path to the destruction of civilization. … He wrote, and I quote in summary: when rulers impose unjust taxes, confiscate property without right, or fabricate accusations, they erode trust. Once the people lose confidence in [worldly] justice, the state’s foundations crumble. Injustice, Ibn Khaldun declared, is not only morally wrong—it is a sociological poison. Thus, for him, peace was inseparable from justice. A community cannot live in harmony if its members are subjected to false accusations, economic exploitation, or denial of their rights. … When injustice becomes systemic [… the] society is harmed. Ibn Khaldun warned that injustice leads to decline because it breaks the moral contract between the rulers and the ruled. Citizens or communities that see their rights trampled lose confidence in [the] government, solidarity fractures, and the legitimacy of authority collapses. … peace cannot be proclaimed while injustice persists. Ignoring such injustices will court social unrest, spiritual alienation, and the corrosion of civil trust. Restoring justice, however, will rebuild peace—both within the affected community and within the larger society."

"Indeed, you should not desire to weigh with the intellect the issues of Tawhīd and the Hereafter; the reality of Prophethood; the reality of divine attributes and every other thing beyond the scope of the intellect, for such a desire is futile. An example of this would be a man who has a scale used for weighing gold suddenly desiring to weigh mountains with it! This does not mean that the scale is wrong in its measures; rather, the intellect has a limit it cannot surpass and a boundary it cannot transcend."

"The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to their low degree of humanity and proximity to the animal stage. Other persons who accept the status of slave do so as a means of attaining high rank, or power, or wealth, as is the case with the Mameluke Turks in the East and with those Franks and Galicians who enter the service of the state [in Spain]."

"The sciences of only one nation, the Greeks, have come down to us, because they were translated through Al-Ma'mun's efforts. He was successful in this direction because he had many translators at his disposal and spent much money in this connection."

"When civilization [population] increases, the available labor again increases. In turn, luxury again increases in correspondence with the increasing profit, and the customs and needs of luxury increase. Crafts are created to obtain luxury products. The value realized from them increases, and, as a result, profits are again multiplied in the town. Production there is thriving even more than before. And so it goes with the second and third increase. All the additional labor serves luxury and wealth, in contrast to the original labor that served the necessity of life."