Abu al-Hasan al-Bakri and New Perspectives in the Reconstruction of the Sira of the Prophet Muhammad

Abu al-Hasan al-Bakri was a great Shafi‘i jurist and renowned Sufi scholar who lived toward the end of the Mamluk period in Egypt. He was a prolific writer and was known by his contemporaries as ‘Shaykh Shuyukh al-Islam’. Among his works is a book on the Sira of the Prophet Muhammad entitled Al-Durra al-Mukallala fi Fath Makka al-Mubajala which provides new perspectives about the conquest of Makka not found in Ibn Ishaq, al-Waqidi, al-Tabari, Ibn Sa‘d, and others. Al-Bakri narrated the events in Al-Durra al-Mukallala in prose and poetry which is unprecedented and never done before him. There are other books which follow the same style as Al-Durra al-Mukallala, namely Qisat Mu‘adh ibn Jabal, Kitab Futuh al-Yaman, Kitab Fath Khaybar, and the story of the camel who complained to the Prophet. These works may have been composed in the same cultural milieu as al-Durra al-Mukallala which could suggest that this genre of the Sira of the Prophet was either initiated by al-Bakri or that he followed the trend other scholars of his time when writing about certain episodes in the Prophet’s life. The research will undertake an overview of all of these works in order to understand when and by who they were composed, for what purpose, and the sources which they used.