Overview of the Transmission Hišām b. ʿUrwa transmitted several accounts of individual events from the battlefield on the authority of his father. Some of these traditions are very well attested; they exist in versions from several disciples of Hišām. These reports are often typical family traditions in which close relatives of ʿUrwa play an important role: namely his father al-Zubayr and his grandmother Ṣafiyya.

Al-Zuhrī transmits only a few short reports about Uḥud on the authority of ʿUrwa. A long account of the events is traced back to ʿUrwa only in one place in ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s Muṣannaf, but not in ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s Tafsīr: there the chain stops at al-Zuhrī and is not extended to ʿUrwa.

Only for one, admittedly particularly striking tradition, the story of the accidental killing, by Muslims, of the Muslim al-Yamān (the father of the military leader Ḥuḏayfa (who later became famous), do both main transmitters ofʿUrwa, al-Zuhrī and Hišām b. ʿUrwa, refer to ʿUrwa. This tradition is well evidenced for both Hišām (versions on the authority of Abū Usāma, Yaḥyā b. Abī Zakariyyāʾ, ʿAlī b. Mushir, Salama b. Raǧāʾ) as well as for al-Zuhrī (versions relying on Mūsā b. ʿUqba, ʿUqayl and Yūnus b. Yazīd).

The Report on al-Yamān’s Death

The -Zuhrī Recension

Al-Bayhaqī334 and Ibn ʿAsākir present the story of al-Yamān’s death in three different traditions on the authority of al-Zuhrī ← ʿUrwa. Al-Bayhaqī quotes the tradition relying on Mūsā b. ʿUqba ← al-Zuhrī:

Ibn ʿAsākir quotes two other versions of this tradition, a slightly longer one relying on ʿUqayl ← al-Zuhrī and a slightly shorter one with slightly different wording relying on Yūnus b. Yazīd ← al-Zuhrī.