As-Sīrah an-Nabawiyyah (), 'The Life of the Prophet'; is an edited recension of
Ibn Isḥāq's classic
Sīratu Rasūli l-Lāh () 'The Life of God's Messenger'. Ibn Isḥāq's now lost work survives only in Ibn Hishām's and
al-Tabari's recensions, although fragments of several others survive, Ibn Hishām explains in the preface of the work, the criteria by which he made his choice from the original work of Ibn Isḥāq in the tradition of his disciple Ziyād al-Baqqāʾi (d. 799). Accordingly, Ibn Hishām omits stories from
Al-Sīrah that contain no mention of Muḥammad, Al-Tabari includes controversial episodes of the
Satanic Verses including an apocryphal story about Muḥammad's attempted suicide. Ibn Hishām gives more accurate versions of the poems he includes and supplies explanations of difficult terms and phrases of the Arabic language, additions of genealogical content to certain proper names, and brief descriptions of the places mentioned in
Al-Sīrah. Ibn Hishām appends his notes to the corresponding passages of the original text with the words: "qāla Ibn Hishām" (Ibn Hishām says).
Translations and editions Later Ibn Hishām's
As-Sira would chiefly be transmitted by his pupil, Ibn al-Barqī. The German orientalist Gernot Rotter produced an abridged (about one third) German translation of
The life of the Prophet. As-Sīra An-Nabawīya. (Spohr, Kandern in the Black Forest 1999). In 1955, the British orientalist
Alfred Guillaume published an English translation with
Oxford University Press titled ''The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Isḥāq's Sīrat Rasūl Allāh.'' ==Other works==