Casa Árabe is hosting the presentation of the book Moorish Historiography: Manual of Arab sources in the history of Al-Andalus (Madrid: Spanish Society of Medieval Studies, University of Extremadura, CSIC, 2022), by Juan Martos Quesada, professor emeritus of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

In addition to the author, Javier Albarrán Iruela, a professor of Medieval History at the UAM and the director of the Al-Andalus Collection, and Maribel Fierro, a research professor at the ILC-CSIC, will also be taking part in the presentation. Moderating the session on behalf of Casa Árabe will be Olivia Orozco, Casa Árabe’s Training and Economic Coordinator.

The purpose of the book, which is the first edition in the Al-Andalus Collection published by the Spanish Society of Medieval Studies, is to serve as a useful working tool for those people -medievalists, historians, Arabists, professors, students, experts any in general that is interested in the topic- who are in need of finding Arab sources related to the history of Al-Andalus. The intention is to make it a compendium, a handbook or orderly map to grow oriented and avoid getting lost within the complicated world of sources related with the civilization of Al-Andalus.

The central core of the work is made up of nearly two hundred files on Arab sources, about which it gives accounts. Each of these contains a succinct set of basic data on each source and, in addition, its content and historiographical value, based on comments by specialists who have studied that source, as well as mentioning which stages in Al-Andalus history its consultation may be of interest for, and, for those researchers who wish to delve further into analysis of that source, a brief bibliography in which the effort has been made to gather those historiographical pieces that were fundamental for their study back in the day, along with the most current bibliographical references on the subject.

The basic data on each source include: the source’s name, including both the full name and abbreviated name by which it is known, as well as its translation; the name of the author, along with the full name, the short name by which the author may be known historiographically; essential biographical information on the author, in order to set the source in its proper time framework; the genre and type of work in question, as well as the level of its importance and value as a source, in our opinion. Other details that have been included are the various editions to have been published, whether full or partial, chronologically ordered, of which we are aware, in a comprehensive listing; any full or partial translations, also ordered by their order of appearance, as well as the translation language.