The Tracing of Ibn ʿAbbās Interpretive Circle in the Muslims Holy Historiography

Interference of religious reports of events during the Prophet time in Muslim historiography leads to an overlap between theology and history. In examining the relationship between these two approaches, the strong presence of Ibn ʿAbbās and his students as the interpretative circle of Mecca raises a question: what is the relationship between the understanding of interpretation, as a layer of divine understanding, and the trans-historical narrative of the Prophet’s life? This essay claims that the interpretative approach is the origin of the holy narratives in Muslim historiography. It extracts the theological narratives of the Prophet’s life from three sources: the Al-Sīrah al-Nabawiyyah by Ibn Hisham, the The Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt al-Kabīr by Ibn Sa'd and the Tārīkh al-Rusul wa al-Mulūk by al-Ṭabarī, tracing this circle relating to the aforementioned claim. The result shows that the tendency of the circle of Ibn ʿAbbās towards the Occasions or circumstances of revelation and the tendency of historians to interpret them figuratively led to the interaction of interpretive and historical approach, portraying Prophet’s life in Mecca as sacred and trans-historical.