Birth-recording during the First Century with Emphasis on the Role of the Companions of Imams

Birth-recording is a branch of Islamic historiography founded by Imams’ companions after politico-ideological changes in the second century. Imams’ companions have written various books with fine various topics within prophetic and Ahl ul-Bayt tradition. But despite of the presented experience in prophetic tradition, they did not compile a comprehensive tradition of all of the Imams of their own era. Although among these works there may be found some cases of birth-recording comprehensive in terms of time and including all Imams, they lack an all-embracing biography of them. Analyzing the birth of Imams was taken into account in this field and gradually began to be organized and promoted. As a result, various functions and approaches were emerged among which we can refer to an independent branch called “death-recording”. At first, these two branches were conducted side by side but death-recording had taken acceleration and had undergone its own evolution until Ibn Khallakan provided a turning point by writing the book Vafyat ul-A’yan. This paper intends to analyze the historical emergence, expansion and evolution of the birth-recording of the Imams’ companions as well as its internal changes and causes of the approach.