Born in Egypt, he spent his entire life there. Although he wrote a book on South Arabian antiquities, Kitab al-Tidjan , that has survived down to our times, Ibn Hisham is, of course, more famous for his edition of the Sira of Ibn Ishaq. Ibn Hisham derived his knowledge of the latter's work from Ziyad al-Bakka'i (d. 183/799), a pupil of Ibn Ishaq who lived mostly in Kufa, but may have travelled to Iraq to study. Al-Bakkai made two copies of Ibn Ishaq's work, one of which reached Ibn Hisham, "whose text, abbreviated, annotated, and sometimes altered, is the main source of our knowledge of the original work."