Overview of the Transmission

The events of (or immediately preceding) Badr are attested in the ʿUrwa corpus by two long transmissions: The first is a letter from ʿUrwa to the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik, which is recorded in al-Ṭabarī's Taʾrīḫ (pieces from it also in his Tafsīr). The letter has the same isnād as all the other letters of ʿUrwa cited by al-Ṭabarī, i.e., it is traced back to ʿUrwa's son Hišām via Abān al-ʿAṭṭār (Hišām recension). He reports the events that took place immediately before the battle up to its beginning. A text without isnād that corresponds to the letter, in part verbatim or almost verbatim, is also found in Mūsā b. ʿUqba's account of the events of Badr. The other long transmission consists of traditions that Ibn Isḥāq traces back to ʿUrwa in his biography of the Prophet, relying on Yazīd b. Rūmān, a client of the family of a son of ʿUrwa b. al-Zubayr. Ibn Isḥāq prefaces his long account of Badr with a collective isnād; one of the five chains of tradition that make up this collective isnād is Yazīd b. Rūmān ← ʿUrwa. For most of his account, Ibn Isḥāq claims to have combined the texts of the Yazīd ← ʿUrwa tradition with the texts of other informants about the event; but in three cases he says that he relies on Yazīd ← ʿUrwa alone for the tradition that follows. For two other traditions he cites two isnāds each, one of which is the Yazīd ← ʿUrwa chain. Among the shorter traditions concerning Badr, several traditions according to Hišām b. ʿUrwa ← ʿUrwa are worth mentioning. Some of them, e.g., the account of the Prophet's address to the fallen Meccans at the pit of Badr, are well attested, i.e., they exist in different versions (according to Abū Usāma, ʿAbda b. Sulaymān, Yūnus b. Bukayr, Wakīʿ).

Compared with Hišām b. ʿUrwa's traditions on Badr, those according to al- Zuhrī ← ʿUrwa are much fewer in number and importance. The most important -Zuhrī tradition, which is admittedly not certain to go back to ʿUrwa, exists in several versions (Maʿmar ← al-Zuhrī, Yūnus ← al-Zuhrī, Layṯ ← ʿUqayl ← al-Zuhrī). It is a compilation of various “statistical” details and data on the Battle of Badr. Corresponding traditions on the authority of al-Zuhrī (← ʿUrwa) (?) are also available for the Battle of Uḥud and the Battle of the Trench.