Abstract:

In Islam, the obligation to perform five ṣalāt-prayers at specific times of the day is commonly traced to the Ascension of the Prophet and the Descension of the angel Jibrīl, both reported in the sīra and the ḥadīth. In the sīra, which assumes a chronological order, a variant of the Descension story which describes in detail the exact prayer-times, conflicts with the Ascension story. This is especially the case in Ibn Hishām’s recension of Ibn Isḥāq’s Sīra, according to which Muḥammad received the obligation to perform five ṣalāts daily after the five prayer-times had already been established during Jibrīl’s Descension. This article investigates (1) the origins and development of these traditions through a careful isnād analysis, taking into account certain narratological aspects of the tradition, and (2) attempts to explain the anomaly present in Ibn Hishām’s prophetic biography through a comparison of his chronology of events with that in other recensions or biographical traditions. It is established that the Ascension tradition dates back to the first Islamic century (contra Juynboll), however, the detailed Descension tradition is half a century younger. Its late origin, legalistic purport, and the fact that it is absent in the other recensions of the same corpus, suggest it was not part of Ibn Isḥāq’s Prophetic biography, but a later insertion by one of its transmitters.