Abu Bakr Mohammed ibn Ali al Sanhaji al-Baydhaq () (died after 1164) was a Moroccan historian mainly known as a companion of

Ibn Tumart Abu Abd Allah Amghar Ibn Tumart ( Berber: ''Amghar ibn Tumert'', ar, أبو عبد الله امغار ابن تومرت, ca. 1080–1130 or 1128) was a Muslim Berber religious scholar, teacher and political leader, from the Sous in southern M ...

and chronicler of the

Almohads The Almohad Caliphate (; ar, خِلَافَةُ ٱلْمُوَحِّدِينَ or or from ar, ٱلْمُوَحِّدُونَ, translit=al-Muwaḥḥidūn, lit=those who profess the unity of God) was a North African Berber Muslim empire fo ...

. Al-Baydhaq (meaning

pawn Pawn most often refers to: * Pawn (chess), the weakest and most numerous piece in the game * Pawnbroker or pawnshop, a business that provides loans by taking personal property as collateral Pawn may also refer to: Places * Pawn, Oregon, an his ...

) was his nickname, because he was small in stature. He was from the tribe of

Senhaja The Sanhaja ( ber, Aẓnag, pl. Iẓnagen, and also Aẓnaj, pl. Iẓnajen; ar, صنهاجة, ''Ṣanhaja'' or زناگة ''Znaga'') were once one of the largest Berber tribal confederations, along with the Zanata and Masmuda confederations. Ma ...

. The title of his main work is: ''Al moqtabass min kitabi al anssab fi maärifati al ashab'' (written ca. 1150).Al-Baydhaq (Abû Bakr ibn 'Alî al-Sinhâdjî), Histoire des Almohades, texte et traduction É. Lévi-Provençal, « Documents inédits d'histoire almohade », Paris, Geuthner, 1928, includes ''Kitab al-Muwahiddin'', i.e. the chronicles of the Almohads, letters and sermons by

and

Abd al-Mumin Abd al Mu'min (c. 1094–1163) ( ar, عبد المؤمن بن علي or عبد المومن الــكـومي; full name: ʿAbd al-Muʾmin ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAlwī ibn Yaʿlā al-Kūmī Abū Muḥammad) was a prominent member of the Almohad move ...

and Ibn Tumart's biography from the first person perspective of al-Baydhaq. It is the most important source on the period. Written in

Classical Arabic Classical Arabic ( ar, links=no, ٱلْعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ, al-ʿarabīyah al-fuṣḥā) or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notab ...

, Berber words, names and sayings are used throughout the text, making it an important work for scholars of the medieval

Berber language The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight,, ber, label=Tuareg Tifinagh, ⵜⵎⵣⵗⵜ, ) are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related languages spoken by Berber commun ...

References

*Akhbār al-Mahdī Ibn Tūmart wa-bidāyat dawlat al-Muwaḥḥidīn (or. text in Arabic) ed. Al-Ribā, 1971 *Ed. in Algeria as: ''Kitāb Akhbār al-Mahdī ibn Tūmart'' (Algiers: al-Mu’assasa al-Waṭaniyya li-l-Kitāb, 1982)

External links

*Al kindi catalogu

*An annotated guide to Arabic autobiographical writings (ninth to nineteenth centuries c.e

12th-century Berber people 12th-century Moroccan historians Berber historians Berber Moroccans Moroccan autobiographers Almohad historians People from Tinmel Sanhaja 12th-century historians of the medieval Islamic world {{Morocco-writer-stub