Uyun al-Athar fi Funun al-Maghazi wa-l-Shama'il wa-l-Siyar

Uyun al-Athar fi Funun al-Maghazi wa-l-Shama'il wa-l-Siyar ("Choice Reports on the Campaigns, Character and Life") is a biography of the Prophet by the hadith master Abu al-Fath Muhammad ibn Muhammad Ibn Sayyid al-Nas al-Ya'muri (d. 734 AH). ¹ In his preface the author says he found earlier compilations on the sira either long and tedious or short and deficient, so that his own share in the book is "only a good choice from their words". ²

The editors of the Khatrawi edition summarise his method from his preface: he arranged the sira in the chronological sequence of events, "not as classification would require by putting like with like", except that he placed the Prophet's wives and children in the section on his features and character that follows the campaigns — with the single exception of his marriage to Khadija. ³ He included poetry connected with the events without making it a goal, and closed each topic with a section headed "Notes on this report" explaining rare words and difficulties. ⁴ He cites the Qur'anic verses connected with events and gives hadiths and reports with his own continuous chains, for major and minor reports alike. ⁴

The editors note that he took Ibn Ishaq and al-Waqidi as his foundation and defended them against their critics, and that he documented reports from the Qur'an, then the Sunna, then the books of maghazi that he held by hearing or licence, some of which have not survived. ⁵ They observe that his love of short chains sometimes led him away from works of higher standing to lesser ones. ⁵

He ended the book with a list of his chains to his main sources, which the editors group as: hadith works such as the Six Books, al-Tabarani's three dictionaries, Abu Ya'la's Musnad and the Ghaylaniyyat; works of maghazi and sira such as Ibn Ishaq's Sira in Ibn Hisham's recension, the Maghazi of Musa ibn Uqba and Ibn Sa'd's Tabaqat; and sources cited less often, such as the Muwatta', Ibn Shabba's History of Medina, al-Tabari's History and al-Dimyati's summary of the sira. ^{6 7 2}

The editors quote Ibn Kathir's remark that he compiled a fine sira in two volumes, Ibn Hajar's that it is "a good book of its kind", and al-Shawkani's that people of his time and after benefited from it. ⁸ Al-Salihi al-Shami drew on it in Subul al-Huda wa-l-Rashad and al-Halabi in Insan al-Uyun; Sibt Ibn al-Ajami wrote a commentary on it, Nur al-Nibras; Ibn Abd al-Hadi wrote Iqtibas al-Iqtibas to resolve its difficulties; and the judge Fath al-Din al-Nabulusi versified it in a three-volume rajaz poem, al-Fath al-Qarib fi Sirat al-Habib, completed in 1080 AH. ^{8 9} They add that the author used to copy it out in his own hand, finishing a copy in twenty days. ¹⁰

The editors record that it was printed some sixty years earlier and reissued in 1356 AH by Maktabat al-Qudsi in Cairo, an edition not free of omissions and misreadings. ¹¹ They used manuscripts including the Arif Hikmat library copy in Medina, read before al-Babili (d. 1077 AH), the Zahiriyya copy in Damascus transmitted by chain from the author, and the Egyptian National Library copy read before Jalal al-Din al-Bulqini (d. 842 AH). ¹⁰ There is also an edition by Mahmud al-Sharqawi cleared by the Islamic Research Academy of al-Azhar. ¹²