''Kitāb al-bayān al-mughrib fī ākhbār mulūk al-andalus wa'l-maghrib'' (''Book of the Amazing Story of the History of the Kings of al-Andalus and Maghreb'') by
Ibn Idhāri (var. Ibn Athari) of
Marrakech
Marrakesh or Marrakech ( or ; ar, مراكش, murrākuš, ; ber, ⵎⵕⵕⴰⴽⵛ, translit=mṛṛakc}) is the fourth largest city in the Kingdom of Morocco. It is one of the four Imperial cities of Morocco and is the capital of the Marrakes ...
in the
Maghreb (now
Morocco); an important medieval Arabic history of the
Maghreb and
Iberia, written at
Marrakech
Marrakesh or Marrakech ( or ; ar, مراكش, murrākuš, ; ber, ⵎⵕⵕⴰⴽⵛ, translit=mṛṛakc}) is the fourth largest city in the Kingdom of Morocco. It is one of the four Imperial cities of Morocco and is the capital of the Marrakes ...
ca. 1312 / 712 AH . Generally known by its shorter title ''al-Bayān al-Mughrib'' (''The Amazing Story''; ), or even just as ''the Bayān'', it is valued by modern researchers as a unique source of information, and for its preservation of excerpts from lost works.
Ibn Idhāri divides the work into three parts:
*History of the
Maghreb from the coming of Islam to the twelfth century
*History of
Al-Andalus (Muslim Iberia) over the same period
*History of the
Almoravids and
Almohads
The Arabic text of the first two parts was first published in a Latin edition by
Reinhart Dozy (1848-52); a second corrected edition of these two parts was published in 1948 by Colin and
Levi-Provençal.
Several Spanish translations include a notable version by Ambrosio Huici Miranda, who originally published a part of the text as an anonymous work based on manuscripts from Madrid and Copenhagen and later the full text under Ibn Idhāri's name. A French translation by Fagnan (1901) based on Dozy's edition, received unfavourable reviews. However to date few translations of this work have been published.
Portions of the incomplete and insect-damaged manuscript of the third part were discovered in the 20th century. Despite lacking the beginning and end and several folios,
[The various discoveries of Part 3 are detailed in Huici Miranda's introduction to the Spanish translation.] the preserved MS fragments importantly provide for the correction of many of errors and information omitted by the more widely known ''
Rawd al-Qirtas''. An Arabic edition published by Ihsan Abbas (Beirut, 1983) includes the incomplete Part 3.
Notes
References
*Spanish Translation of Parts 1 and 2: A. Huici Miranda, ''Colección de crónicas árabes de la Reconquista'' vols. 2 and 3, Tetuan, 1953-4.
*Spanish Translation of Part 3: A. Huici Miranda, ''Al-Bayán al-Mugrib. Nuevos fragmentos almorávides y almohades''. Anubar Ediciones, Valencia, 1963.
*
N. Levtzion & J.F.P. Hopkins, ''Corpus of early Arabic sources for West African history'', Cambridge University Press, 1981, (reprint: Markus Wiener, Princeton, 2000, ). English translation of extracts dealing with the
Almoravids.
Comparative notes (in English) on sources of Moroccan history during the Almoravid period by French historian Lagadère{{DEFAULTSORT:Bayan
1312 books
1310s
14th century in Morocco
History books about Algeria
History books about Morocco
History books about Spain
History books about the Iberian Peninsula
Iberian chronicles
Literature of the Marinid Sultanate