Documenting the Genealogy of the Prophet Muhammad ﵌: Sources & Method
What is this project?
The genealogy of the Prophet Muhammad ﵌ is a research project documenting his lineage, household, kin and Companions: his ancestors up to Ibrāhīm (Abraham), the uncles, aunts and cousins around him, his wives and descendants, and the tribes his family married into and descended from, over 1,200 individuals across some 41 generations. It is compiled from the recognized classical works of sīra (biography), ansāb (genealogy) and the Companion dictionaries, organized into a structured database in which every statement is traced to its source.
The aim is to bring this noble lineage to people in a documented, organized, interactive form, not to replace a researcher’s return to the primary sources. It is a reference aid that states its own limits and invites correction.
The sources: twelve works
We rely only on the authentic classical sources; no general encyclopaedia or unverified website is accepted. The twelve books are the references scholars rely on in this field: Ibn Hishām’s Sīra, Ibn Saʿd’s Ṭabaqāt, al-Kalbī’s Jamharat al-Nasab, al-Zubayrī’s Nasab Quraysh, al-Balādhurī’s Ansāb al-Ashrāf, al-Ṭabarī’s History, Ibn Ḥazm’s Jamharat Ansāb al-ʿArab, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s al-Istīʿāb, Ibn al-Athīr’s Usd al-Ghāba, Ibn Kathīr’s al-Bidāya wa’l-Nihāya, Ibn ʿInaba’s ʿUmdat al-Ṭālib, and Ibn Ḥajar’s al-Iṣāba.
Each book has a page in the platform’s "editions & references" listing its author, year of death, the pinned print edition that citations resolve to, its role in the tree, and the number of anchored passages within it.
Method of collection and citation
- Each person has a single record with a stable identifier, reused everywhere they appear, to prevent duplication and confusion.
- Every fact is attributed to its source(s): lineage, marriage, birth, death, and tribal affiliation.
- Where sources disagree we do not adjudicate and drop the other; we record both and mark the confidence.
- A strict automated check prevents contradiction before publishing: two confirmed parents, no cycle in the lineage, no unapproved source, no biography without a name.
- Every name is written in both Arabic and Latin script, and honorific titles are kept separate from the name for precision.
Confidence grades & disputed lineage
Every fact carries a confidence grade reflecting how the sources stand toward it: confirmed, probable, or disputed. The agreed-upon lineage stops at ʿAdnān; above him to Ismāʿīl son of Ibrāhīm it is sound in principle, but its middle layers are disputed, so they are recorded marked as "disputed", shown in the tree with a dashed line and a visible badge, not asserted as certain. The known points of dispute among genealogists are likewise preserved, not erased.
Where sources disagree we do not adjudicate; we record what was transmitted and show the source’s reservation.
"From the source": the feature that sets it apart
On many a person’s page the visitor finds "from the source": a verbatim quotation anchored to the volume and page of the pinned edition, byte-verified against the book’s text. Instead of "historians said," you see the original wording itself. Many of these witnesses are on recovered mother-links, shown on both the child’s and the mother’s page.
The women and the mothers
Where a source named a woman we record her name and then indicate her status if she was an umm walad, shown as "Name (umm walad)," never a diminished name. Where the source preserved no name at all, she is entered by description, not by an invented name, stating plainly that the name is unrecorded. We do not fabricate names for real women; silence is not negation, an absent name means "not mentioned," not "did not exist."
Narrative isolation
The public tree shows only what is agreed upon. Details particular to one school and not another are kept in separate files and never blended into the common tree. You will not find in the public tree a name or lineage belonging to a single tradition, for the sake of neutrality and honest presentation.
An invitation to correct
This is research and may contain errors; what is marked "probable" or "disputed" is the first place to look. From any person’s page you can flag an error, provided the correction is backed by one of the approved sources. It is by review and correction that a work like this is completed. May God have mercy on the scholars who preserved these lineages.