Abd al-Wahid was a boy of fifteen at Fez and Marrakesh in 1200 and later moved in Almohad court circles, so his account of Yaqub al-Mansur (died January 1199) and of the first years of Muhammad al-Nasir is partly from memory and from men he knew: the character of the new caliph, the weakness that let the Banu Ghaniya overrun Ifriqiya, the Majorca expedition of 1203 and the Ifriqiya campaign of 1205 to 1206. He explains how the Almohad state worked (the sayyids of the ruling house, the Almohad shaykhs, the talaba and huffaz, the ranking of the tribes) and gives portraits of scholars such as Ibn Rushd (died 1198). Short on dates and anecdotal, but the only account by a man who lived under al-Nasir; his view of al-Nasir is unfavourable and coloured by Las Navas (1212).
About this source
- Title
- Kitab al-mu'jib fi talkhis akhbar al-Maghrib
- Author
- Abd al-Wahid al-Marrakushi
- Author's dates
- born 1185, died after 1224
- Written
- completed in 1224, in the East, after the author left the Maghreb in 1217
- Language
- Arabic
- Covers
- 711 to 1224, with the Almoravids and Almohads as its subject
- Kind
- History
Dozy's 1847 edition rests on the single Leiden manuscript; his 1881 revision and the Cairo editions are the ones cited. Huici Miranda's Spanish translation (1955) is under copyright and not freely online. Fagnan's French is old but serviceable. The Halle record sits behind a JavaScript check but holds a full scan.
Where to read it
Editions
- R. Dozy (ed.), The History of the Almohades, preceded by a sketch of the history of Spain (Leiden, 1847), Arabic text from the Leiden manuscript
- The same 1847 edition, digitised by the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Halle
- R. Dozy (ed.), 2nd revised edition (Leiden, 1881) (not freely online)
- M. Said al-Aryan (ed.), al-Mu'jib fi talkhis akhbar al-Maghrib (Cairo, 1949; several reprints), Arabic (not freely online)
Translations
- E. Fagnan (tr.), Histoire des Almohades d'Abd el-Wah'id Merrakechi (Algiers, 1893), French
- A. Huici Miranda (tr.), Kitab al-Mu'yib fi taljis ajbar al-Magrib: Lo admirable en el resumen de las noticias del Magrib, Colección de crónicas árabes de la Reconquista 4 (Tetuan, 1955), Spanish (not freely online)
Read it online
- Arabic text (Dozy 1847) at the Internet Archive
- French translation (Fagnan 1893) at the Internet Archive