Ibn 'Idhari

Ibn 'Idhari
Born	Late 13th century Marrakech,Morocco
Died	After 1312 CE
Occupation(s)	Historian, Qāʾid (commander)
Academic work
Era	Medieval Islamic period
Main interests	History of theMaghrebandAl-Andalus
Notable works	Al-Bayan al-Mughrib

Abū al-ʽAbbās Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʽIḏārī al-Marrākushī(Arabic:أبو العباس أحمد ابن عذاري المراكشي) was a Maghrebi historian of the late-13th/early-14th century, and author of the famousAl-Bayan al-Mughrib,an important medieval history of theMaghreb(Morocco,North Africa) andAl-Andalus(now theIberian Peninsula) written in 1312.

Ibn Idhāri was born and lived inMarrakech(present-dayMorocco), and was aqāʾid('commander') ofFez.Little is known of his life. His only surviving work,Al-Bayan al-Mughrib,is a history ofNorth Africafrom the conquest ofMiṣrin 640/1 AD to theAlmohadconquests in 1205/6 AD.Its value to modern scholarship lies in its extracts from older works, now lost, and in its material not found elsewhere, including reports of the firstVikingraids onAl-Andalusin the ninth century.He mentions another biographic work on thecaliphs,imāmsandamīrsfrom across the Islamic world, which has not survived. He died after 1312 / 712 AH.

References

• Ahmed Siraj:L'Image de la Tingitane. L'historiographie arabe médiévale et l'Antiquité nord-africaine.École Française de Rome, 1995.ISBN2-7283-0317-7.Short biographical note.
• N. Levtzion& J.F.P. Hopkins,Corpus of early Arabic sources for West African history,Cambridge University Press, 1981,ISBN0-521-22422-5(reprint: Markus Wiener, Princeton, 2000,ISBN1-55876-241-8). Short biographical note and English translation of extracts fromAl-Bayan al-Mughrib.