| Religion: | Shi'ite |
| Hishām ibn al-Kalbī | |
| Birth Date: | 737 CE |
| Birth Place: | Kufa, Iraq |
| Death Date: | 819 CE |
| Main Interests: | History |
| Notable Ideas: | |
| Works: | Jamharat al-Ansab, Kitab al-Asnam |
| Influenced: | Yaqut al-Hamawi, Tabari, Al-Masudi, Ibn Sa'd |
Hishām ibn al-Kalbī (Arabic: هشام بن الكلبي), 737 AD – 819 AD/204 AH, also known as Ibn al-Kalbi, was an Arab historian.[1] His full name was Abu al-Mundhir Hisham ibn Muhammad ibn al-Sa'ib ibn Bishr al-Kalbi. Born in Kufa,[2] he spent much of his life in Baghdad. Like his father, he collected information about the genealogies and history of the ancient Arabs.
One of the notable works of Ibn al-Kalbi is the Book of Idols (Kitab al-Asnam), which aims to document the veneration of idols and pagan sanctuaries in different regions and among different tribes in pre-Islamic Arabia. In this work, Hisham posited a genealogical link between Ishmael and the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and put forth the idea that all Arabs were descended from Ishmael.[1] He relied heavily on the ancient oral traditions of the Arabs, but also quoted writers who had access to Biblical and Palmyran sources.[1] According to the, he wrote 140 works. His account of the genealogies of the Arabs is continually quoted in the .
In 1966, Werner Caskel compiled a two volume study of Ibn al-Kalbi's ("The Abundance of Kinship") entitled Das genealogische Werk des Hisam Ibn Muhammad al Kalbi ("The Genealogical Works of Hisham ibn Muhammad al-Kalbi").[3] It contains a prosopographic register of every individual mentioned in the genealogy in addition to more than three hundred genealogical tables based on the contents of the text.