Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Abī Zarʿ al-Fāsī () (d. between 1310 and 1320) is the commonly presumed original author of the popular and influential medieval history of

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

known as ''

Rawd al-Qirtas ''Rawḍ al-Qirṭās'' () short for ''Kitāb al-ānīs al-muṭrib bi-rawḍ al-qirṭās fī ākhbār mulūk al-maghrab wa tārīkh madīnah Fās'' ('', The Entertaining Companion Book in the Gardens of Pages from the Chronicle of the Kings of ...

'',''Encyclopedia of Arabic literature: A-J'', Vol.1, Ed. Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey, (Routledge, 1998), 307. said to have been written at the instigation of

Marinid The Marinid dynasty ( ) was a Berber Muslim dynasty that controlled present-day Morocco from the mid-13th to the 15th century and intermittently controlled other parts of North Africa (Algeria and Tunisia) and of the southern Iberian Peninsula ...

Sultan

Abu Sa'id Uthman II Abu Sa'id Uthman II (; Abū Sa'īd 'Abdullāh 'Uthmān ibn Yūsuf Abū Ya'qūb; ) (December 1276 – August 1331) was the 9th Marinid sultan, reigning from 1310 to 1331. A younger son of Abu Yusuf Yaqub ibn Abd al-Haqq, Abū Sa'īd 'Uthmān succe ...

. His full

nasab Arabic names have historically been based on a long naming system. Many people from Arabic-speaking and also non-Arab Muslim countries have not had given, middle, and family names but rather a chain of names. This system remains in use througho ...

is sometimes given as ''ibn Abd Allah ibn Abi Zar'' and sometimes as ''ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Umar ibn Abi Zar''. The uncertainty about his name and authorship of the Rawd is caused by the many variant manuscripts in circulation since the Middle Ages. Very little is known about his life except that he was evidently a scholar at

Fes Fez () or Fes (; ) is a city in northern inland Morocco and the capital of the Fez-Meknes administrative region. It is one of the largest cities in Morocco, with a population of 1.256 million, according to the 2024 census. Located to the nort ...

Notes

See also