in full Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Yasār ibn Khiyār
born с 704, Medina, Arabia
died 767, Baghdad
Arab biographer of Muhammad .
His father and two uncles collected and transmitted information about Muhammad in Medina, and Ibn Isḥāq soon became an authority on the Prophet's military campaigns ( maghāzī ). He studied in Alexandria and subsequently moved to Iraq, where he met many people who provided him with information for his biography, which became the most popular biography of Muhammad in the Muslim world but which survives only in the recension by Ibn Hishām.