A short Andalusi geography fifty years before 1200 with notices on the Sahara and the Sudan that are independent of al-Bakri: the Lamtuna and the veiled Sanhaja, Sijilmasa and the gold road, and Ghana, which al-Zuhri says accepted Islam at the time of the Almoravid movement (he gives the year 469 of the Hijra, 1076 to 1077), the only source for that statement. He also describes al-Andalus and the Maghreb under the Almoravids. Thin, and the manuscript tradition is confused, but useful for the Ghana question.
About this source
- Title
- Kitab al-Ja'rafiyya
- Author
- Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr al-Zuhri
- Author's dates
- died between 1154 and 1161
- Written
- about 1140 to 1150, at Granada
- Language
- Arabic
- Covers
- the world as known from a mid twelfth-century Andalusi standpoint
- Kind
- Geography
No free copy of Hadj-Sadok's edition was found in this search; the Bulletin d'études orientales is partly on Persée, which could not be checked here. Al-Zuhri's dates and the shape of his text are both uncertain.
Where to read it
Editions
- M. Hadj-Sadok (ed.), Kitab al-Dja'rafiyya: mappemonde du calife al-Ma'mun reproduite par Fazari (IIIe/IXe s.) rééditée et commentée par Zuhri (VIe/XIIe s.), Bulletin d'études orientales 21 (1968), pp. 7 to 312, Arabic with French introduction (not freely online)
Translations
- English extracts in Levtzion and Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (1981) (not freely online)