Al-Andalus Chair: Arab sources for the history of al-Andalus

Historiographical sources are an essential tool for the knowledge of any society. In the case of al-Andalus, Arabists and historians emphasise the existence of an immense written corpus, unparalleled in any other early Mediterranean society. This vast arsenal of Arabic manuscripts encompasses texts of all kinds, from chronicles to biographical dictionaries, treatises on medicine, agriculture or astrology, legal compendia, collections of letters, poetry or notarial forms. 

In the numerous sessions of the Al-Andalus Chair over the years, many have been interested in learning about these Andalusian historiographic sources, as their dissemination is usually limited to specialised academics. 

The objective of this session of the Al-Andalus Chair is, therefore, to offer an approach to the knowledge of these sources by the hand of the researcher and Arabist Juan Martos Quesada, author of a relevant work in this field: Historiografía andalusí. Manual de fuentes árabes para la historia de al-Ándalus, published by the Spanish Society of Medieval Studies in 2022.

As the author himself explains, the purpose of this book is to serve as a guide or ‘an organised map to help you find your way and not get lost in the complicated world of sources relating to the Andalusí civilisation, focusing, so that it reaches a greater number of readers, on those sources that, in whole or in part, have been edited in an easy-to-understand Arabic or have been translated into a Western language (...)’. ​