Welcome to the Sīrah Defragmentation and Reconstruction (SDR) Project

The goal of the SDR project is to serve as a starting point for new understandings of not just the Sīrah compiled and composed by Muḥammad b. Isḥāq (85/704-150/767), but also for new approaches to early Islamic texts. The SDR seeks to provide readers with insights into how early Islamic texts were composed, transmitted, and preserved in the centuries after the ʿAbbāsid Revolution. It is also designed to allow readers to see how texts developed over time and how variations in textual traditions emerged that are all but hidden by the production of modern critical print editions. Instead of harmonizing different readings of the text, the SDR reading room allows users to examine variations as the work developed over the course of Ibn Isḥāq’s life, as well as in the centuries that followed. As of the October 2023 release, there are 67 individual witnesses to the work provided in the SDR reader. There are 115 witnesses in the database, totaling almost 1.5 million words, with the remaining witnesses to be released by the Spring of 2024. Each passage has been drawn from quotations attributed to a specific witness from over 560 texts composed from the late 8th century until the early 16th century. Most are brief, including a story or just a story fragment. As of the October 2023 release, the overall project is approximately 40% complete. New methods of text location are being implemented that will allow for easier defragmentation, although arranging fragments into story units and then arranging these into narrative arches, is a manual process that is time consuming.

The most important contribution to date is the defragmentation and reconstruction of the text witnessed by Ibrāhīm b. Saʿd al-Zuhrī (d. 183/799), the first witness version produced by Ibn Isḥāq while he lived in Madīnah, before his departure from the city around 134/751. The Ibn Saʿd witness version (as of the October 2023 release) consists of 1546 passages and 209,910 words. By comparison, the Ziyād b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Bakkāʾī (d. 183/799) witness version, used by Ibn Hishām (d. 218/833) in his redaction and commentary, consists of 1659 passages and 241,725 words (as of the October 2023 release). The Ibn Saʿd witness contains 412 passages not currently found in the al-Bakkāʾī witness, and the analogous passages found in both contain many variations and differences. As of the October 2023 release, there remain 253 passages that have yet to be added to the Ibn Saʿd witness, with more located regularly, so that it will be larger than the al-Bakkāʾī witness version contained in the Ibn Hishām redaction.

Most witness files have not been arranged into stories units (for the short witnesses) or structured chronologically (for the extended witnesses) as of the October 2023 release. Only the Ibn Saʿd, al-Bakkāʾī, Salamah b. al-Faḍl, and Yūnus b. Bukayr witness versions have been formatted into story units or chronological order, based on the form used by Ibn Hishām in his redaction (for Ibn Ibn Saʿd and al- Bakkāʾī), al-Ṭabarī (for Ibn al-Faḍl), and the edited base-text used in the Kitāb sīrah waʾl-maghāzī composed and arranged by Ibn Bukhayr (note: the Yūnus b. Bukayr witness will be included in a forthcoming release), none of which are arranged in the same way. As will be explained in a forthcoming monograph on the formation of the Ibn Isḥāq corpus, there is evidence that the original scripts were composed on loose sheets and carried in a thatch folder referred to as a qamāṭir. The Sīrah, thus, should not be thought of as a "book," in the sense of a fixed "codex," but as a series of performance scripts that Ibn Isḥāq used before audiences, some members of which transcribed what he said, while other purchased copies directly from him. Some enthusiasts appear to have acquired extended versions (copied by the scribe Ibn Abī ʿĪsā) that contained scripts divided into four large units: the Mubtadā (stories about the world before the beginning of Muḥammad’s life), the Mabʿath or the Sīrah (stories about events just before Muḥammad’s birth up to the beginning of revelation), the Maghāzī (stories about the community and Muḥammad’s life in Madīnah), and finally, the Ayyām or possibly Taʾrīkh that recounted the events in the early community following Muḥammad’s death up to the early portions of Ibn Isḥāq’s life. Some of these enthusiasts acquired one or two divisions while others acquired all of them. The scripts carried in the qamāṭir appear to have been arranged into story units but not structured chronologically, or at least not in a consistent order that all extended versions followed. Furthermore, as is demonstrated by comparing the extended witness versions (which will be automatically provided in future iterations of the reader), even these texts contain variations in stories, as well as stories found in some but not other versions.

Until they can be arranged into story units, each witness version should be used as a repository of traditions related by Ibn Isḥāq to a particular witness. Future iterations of the reader will allow users to rearrange passages to suit their specific ideas on the structure of each version. Upcoming releases will included the further restructuring of witness versions as time permits. Please see the revision and update notes for details.

The comments under each passage contain information on the source of the passage, references to other witnesses where variations of the passage can be found, and in the Ibn Saʿd and al-Bakkāʾī witnesses, cross references between the two texts that allow users to easily find analogous passages located in each. The cross-referencing is approximately 50% complete as of the October 2023 release but should be concluded by the next quarterly release. The al-Bakkāʾī witness also contains several passages not found in the redaction of Ibn Hishām, poems and especially stories that recount events following the death of Muḥammad.

The current iteration of the SDR reader allows users to compare variations within each witness. Analogous passages in each witness are arranged chronologically, with the oldest source text arranged to the right and the more recent source texts arranged to the left. Users can choose the versions to compare by selecting the versions if there are more than two versions of the same (or apparently similar) passage. Future iterations will allow users to compare analogous passages across witnesses to see how the performance of the Sīrah changed as Ibn Isḥāq traveled to different communities from Madīnah to the Jazīrah, to ʿIrāq, Central Asia, and finally in Baghdād. Future iterations will also allow users to arrange the witnesses chronologically based on the apparent location of the performance of production of the witness copy. Currently, witnesses are arranged alphabetically by the witness’ ism.

Each new witness edition will be distinguished by the date of the release in the url. Users can return to the release they used in the past and cite that release in their work as well as use later releases as new material is added to the reader.

Please direct comments and questions to Kevin Jaques.