Wahb ibn Munabbih (Arabic: وَهْبُ بْنُ مُنَبِّهٍ) was a Yemenite Muslim traditionist of Dhimar (two days' journey from Sana'a) in Yemen.
He was a member of Banu Alahrar (Sons of the free people), a Yemeni of Persian origin.
[6] Wahb ibn Munabbih was recorded as a native of Dhamar region, with alleged Jewish ancestry.
[citation needed] His father, Munabbih ibn Kamil, had been a convert to Islam and a companion of Muhammad.
The fact that he was well versed in the Isra'iliyyat, on which he wrote much, probably gave rise to the statement that he was Jewish, although he might have acquired his knowledge from his teacher Ibn 'Abbas.
[1] According to Jawad Ali, Wahb ibn Munabbih claimed that he had read about 10,000 excerpts about the wisdom of Luqman.
[1] Wahb also had a brother named Hammam ibn Munabbih, who is reported to have written 138 Hadiths in his Sahifa.
[11] Wahb is said to have read more than seventy books on the prophets, and he was an extremely prolific narrator ("rawi") of stories regarding Mohammed and Biblical personages.
[13] Among Wahb's many writings may be mentioned his "Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiya'" ("Story of the Prophets") and "Kitab al-Isra'iliyat" ("Book of the Israelites",[dubious – discuss] "Ḥajji Khalfa", iv.
The former, which is believed to be his earliest literary work, is, as its title indicates, a collection of narratives concerning Biblical personages, the accounts being drawn from Jewish folk-lore though presented in Islamitic guise.
In the latter collection there are indeed many stories that bear the Jewish stamp, and some of them, such as the "Angel of Death", are ascribed to Wahb by the author of "Al-Tibr al-Masluk".
[1] According to Al-Baghawi in his "Ma'alim al-Tanzil" (Ignác Goldziher, "Abhandlungen zur Arabischen Philologie", i.
544), in recording the fact that the Israelites sometimes took the Ark of the Covenant into battle when they were at war with their enemies (comp.
V. Chauvin, in a special treatise on the Egyptian recension of "One Thousand and One Nights" (Brussels, 1899), has suggested that these Jewish tales and others were introduced by one of the last redactors, a converted Jew, probably the author of the "Story of a Man of Jerusalem," sometimes attributed to Abraham, son of Maimonides.
The numbers are those in W. F. Kirby's comparative list given in all forms of Burton's edition; the letters in parentheses refer to the identifications by Perles:[14] 22.
[14] Although Muslims regarded him as a reliable authority in these accounts, many of them, such as Ibn Khaldun, declared that in his other writings he simply lied (comp.
"Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits," xx.part 1, p. 461; De Slane, Ibn Challikan, iii.
Scholars like Abd Allah ibn Mas'ud had warned people not to learn the Tafsir from the People of the Book, arguing that they used to interpolate their own biblical beliefs, teachings and history with the Islamic creeds and preaching.
[15] Ahmad ibn Hanbal said "he was a man of Persian descent" and also "Anyone from Yemen and has a 'Dhee' in his name, then his lineage is noble.