1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ḥishām ibn al-Kalbī

by Griffithes Wheeler Thatcher

HISHĀM IBN AL-KALBĪ [Abū-l Mundhir Hishām ibn Maḥommed ibn us-Sā’b ul-Kalb] (d. c. 819), Arabic historian, was born in Kufa, but spent much of his life in Bagdad. Like his father, on whose authority he relied largely, he collected information about the genealogies and history of the ancient Arabs. According to the Fihrist (see Nadīm) he wrote 140 works. As independent works they have almost entirely ceased to exist, but his account of the genealogies of the Arabs is continually quoted in the Kitāb ul-Aghāni.

Large extracts from another of his works, the Kitāb ul-Asnām, are contained in the Khizānat ul-Adab (iii. 242-246) and in the geography of Yāqūt (q.v.). These latter have been translated with comments by J. Wellhausen in his Reste des arabischen Heidentums (2nd ed., Berlin, 1897).  (G. W. T.)