Musa¦ ibn `Oqba is one of the biographers who, along with Ibn Isha¦q, has a significant contribution to the recording of the Prophet's life style (sira) and the early battles led by him. However, his book of the accounts of the Prophet's early battles (maqa¦zi) was badly damaged with the passage of time and the reasons have not been so clear uptonow. Due to its antiquity, the book was one of the references upon which the succeeding biographers relied in writing their biographies. From the accounts related by other writers who made use of Musa¦ ibn `Oqba's book, one can develop the idea that these accounts are, in fact, the format of Musa ibn `Oqba's book. `Oqba's book of the accounts of the Prophet's early battles gained
widespread fame probably because it provides the reader with a list of the names of those who entered into an alliance with the prophet at Aqaba, a nearby pass between Mina¦ and Mecca, the emigrants to Abyssinia and the battle champions, especially the ones in the Battle of Badr. This article, points to the cultural and scholarly status of Musa¦ ibn `Oqbah, his master, his pupils, the scholars' views of the accounts he related about the early battles of Islam, his style in writing the accounts of the early battles, his resources, his accounts of the early battles of Islam as a reliable source for later biographers in compasion with the Ibn Ishaq's accounts of the early battles of Islam.
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