Ummahat al-Nabi li-Ibn Habib
- Author died
- 245 AH
- Editions
- Dār Ibn Ḥazm
Ummahat al-Nabi (The Mothers of the Prophet) is a specialized genealogical treatise by the Baghdadi scholar Muhammad ibn Habib (d. 245 AH / 859–860 CE) that documents the maternal lineage and grandmothers of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ .
Content and Structure
The treatise focuses specifically on tracing the maternal ancestry of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, arranging the figures according to their names and tribal affiliations . It opens by identifying the Prophet's mother, Aminah bint Wahb, and ascends systematically through consecutive maternal foremothers—such as her mother Barrah bint Abd al-Uzza, her grandmother Umm Habib bint Asad, and earlier maternal ancestors—and traces the lines of the grandmothers of his patrilineal ancestors back to the wife of Ma'add ibn 'Adnan .
Method and Scope
The work is characterized by brevity . Ibn Habib restricts his treatment to listing the names of the Prophet's maternal grandmothers, their lineages, and the ancestors of the Prophet who married them, without delving into detailed biographical accounts or personal circumstances . This conciseness is partly due to the scarcity of genealogical records regarding the deeper ancestral generations, as surviving chains of named grandmothers diminish significantly beyond the Prophet's eighth paternal ancestor .
The text was transmitted through the narration of Abu al-Hasan Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Jahm al-Samarri, who read it directly to Ibn Habib .
Historical Significance and Editions
While earlier independent works on the Prophet's maternal lineage were attributed to scholars such as Ali ibn Muhammad al-Mada'ini (d. 225 AH) and Muhammad ibn Ishaq al-Musayyabi (d. 236 AH), those titles were lost, leaving Ibn Habib's text as the sole surviving independent treatise dedicated to this specific topic from the early Islamic biographical tradition .
The treatise has been edited and published in modern print:
- Edited by Husayn Ali Mahfuz and published by Maktabat al-Ma'arif in Baghdad (1372 AH / 1952 CE) .
- Edited by Muhammad Khayr Ramadan Yusuf and published by Dar Ibn Hazm (1416 AH / 1996 CE) .
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