Efforts to locate traces of his work have produced little. His material is often confused with that of another author of a Kitāb al-Maghāzī, the early Shiʿite scholar Abān ibn ʿUthmān al-Aḥmar al-Bajalī (d. ca. 200/816), whose work is also lost. Portions of the latter’s work seem to be preserved by Amīn al-Dīn al-Ṭabrisī (d. 548/1154) in the portion of his Iʿlām al-warā dedicated to the biography of Muḥammad. See Modarressi, Tradition and Survival, 130 and Jarrar, “Early Shīʿī Sources.”
Shoemaker (“In Search of ʿUrwa’s Sīra”) provides the most thorough critique of the recent attempts to rediscover ʿUrwah’s corpus in later sources; now, cf. the riposte by Görke, Schoeler, and Motzki, “First Century Sources.”
Cited in Lecker, “Biographical Notes,” 34. As Lecker demonstrates (ibid., 37–40), al-Zuhrī served as a judge (qāḍī) for at least three caliphs, administered the collection of taxes, and was known, moreover, for wearing the clothing of the high-ranking Umayyad soldiery (al-jund).
Lecker, “Biographical Notes,” 25–28; cf. Cook, “The Opponents of the Writing of Tradition,” 459–62 and Schoeler, Oral and Written, 140–41 on the controversy.
Ibn Abī Khaythamah, Tārīkh, 1:271, 325–26: Ibn ʿAsākir, Dimashq, 59:412. On collation in the transmission of knowledge, see Déroche, Qurʾans of the Umayyads, 70; Gacek, Arabic Manuscripts, 65 ff.; al-Qāḍī, “How ‘Sacred’ Is the Text of an Arabic Medieval Manuscript,” 28 f.; and Mashūkhī, Anmāṭ al-tawthīq, 47.
Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, 2(2):136; Fasawī, Maʿrifah, 1:479, 637–38; Ibn ʿAsākir, Dimashq, 59:400; cf. the discussion in Cook, “The Opponents of the Writing of Tradition,” 459–60. The fate of these writings is unknown, but it is significant that they survived al-Zuhrī’s death despite al-Walīd II’s antipathy toward al-Zuhrī. The caliph allegedly declared that he would have killed the scholar had he survived to see his caliphate. See Horovitz, Earliest Biographies, 58–59. The dislike was apparently mutual. According to one account, al-Zuhrī pleaded with Zayd ibn ʿAlī to delay his revolt against Hishām so that he might openly offer Zayd his support once al-Walīd II had come to power. Zayd, of course, did not follow al-Zuhrī’s council and was crucified as a rebel by Hishām in 122/740. See Balādhurī, Ansāb, 2:621 and Anthony, Crucifixion, 46 ff.
This applies not only to the Kitāb al-Maghāzī but also to Maʿmar’s al-Jāmiʿ and, to a lesser extent ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s Tafsīr, or Qurʾan commentary, the bulk of which derives from Maʿmar.
See Cook, “The Opponents of the Writing of Tradition”; Kister, “Notes on the Transmission of Ḥadīth”; and Schoeler, Oral and Written, 111–41 et passim on this issue.
Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb, 10:220. Indeed, Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq, Maʿmar’s contemporary, courted controversy by merely integrating the books of others into his Kitāb al-Maghāzī rather than only including materials from scholars under whom he directly studied. See Schoeler, Biography, 26.
Ibn Abī Khaythamah, Tārikh, 1:324; cf. Cook, “The Opponents of the Writing of Tradition,” 469–70 for further material on Maʿmar’s ambivalent attitude toward written materials.
