Circular letters from the caliphs to governors, tribes and towns announcing victories, appointments and policy, preserved in later manuscript collections. The collections run from Abd al-Mu'min to the 1260s; those from the reigns of al-Mansur and al-Nasir include victory bulletins and letters of appointment, and Azzawi's collection adds letters bearing on the Ifriqiya and Andalus fronts of these years. They are the state's own voice, formal and propagandist, with exact dates and names of officials. Nothing comparable survives from the Banu Ghaniya side.
About this source
- Title
- Rasa'il muwahhidiyya
- Author
- Various
- Author's dates
- secretaries of the Almohad diwan al-insha, 1140s to 1260s
- Written
- 1140s to 1260s; the letters nearest 1200 are of the reigns of al-Mansur and al-Nasir
- Language
- Arabic
- Covers
- the reigns of Abd al-Mu'min to the last caliphs
- Kind
- Letters
Neither collection is freely online. Some letters are also quoted in Ibn Idhari and Ibn Sahib al-Sala. Attribution of individual letters to a year sometimes rests on internal evidence only.
Where to read it
Editions
- E. Lévi-Provençal (ed.), Majmu rasa'il muwahhidiyya min insha kuttab al-dawla al-mu'miniyya / Trente-sept lettres officielles almohades (Rabat, 1941), Arabic, with his French analysis, Un recueil de lettres officielles almohades, in Hespéris 28 (1941) (not freely online)
- A. Azzawi (ed.), Rasa'il muwahhidiyya: majmu'a jadida, 2 vols (Kenitra, 1995 to 2001), Arabic (not freely online)