Al-Bakri

Abū ʿUbayd ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad ibn Ayyūb ibn ʿAmr al-Bakrī (Arabic: أبو عبيد عبد الله بن عبد العزيز بن محمد بن أيوب بن عمرو البكري), or simply al-Bakrī (c. 1040–1094) was an Arab Andalusian historian and a geographer of the Medieval Maghreb (including Al-Andalus).¹

Life

Al-Bakri was born in Huelva, the son of the sovereign of a short-lived principality established there by his family when the Caliphate of Cordoba fell in 1031.²³ Al-Bakri belonged to the Arab tribe of Bakr.⁴ When his father was deposed by al-Mu'tadid (1042–1069) of the ruler of Taifa of Seville, he then moved to Córdoba, where he studied with the geographer al-Udri and the historian Ibn Hayyan. He spent his entire life in Al-Andalus, most of it in Seville and Almeria. While in Seville, he was there when El Cid arrived to collect tributes from Alfonso VI.³ He died in Córdoba without ever having travelled to the locations of which he wrote.⁵

Works

Al-Bakri wrote about Europe, North Africa, and the Arabian peninsula. Only two of his works have survived. His contains a list of place names mostly within the Arabian peninsula with an introduction giving the geographical background. His most important work is his ("") (كتاب المساليك والمماليك). This was composed in 1068, based on literature and the reports of merchants and travellers, including (904–973) and . It is one of the most important sources for the history of West Africa and gives crucial information on the , the and the . Although the material borrowed from al-Warraq dated from the 10th century, he also included information on events that occurred close to the time that he wrote.