Unearthing the Umayyad History of the Conquest of the Maghrib
Document Type : Research
Author
Student of Islamic history at Institute of Imam Reza
10.22081/iqiri.2024.70114.1171
Abstract
In this article, the narratives related to the conquest of North Africa, focusing on the conquest of Egypt by Ibn Abd al-Hakam, were analyzed with the aim of discovering the history of the Umayyads from the conquest of the Maghreb. Carefully in Ibn Abd al-Hakam's account of Fatah, one can identify a key account that acts as the backbone of the overall narrative. Ibn Abd al-Hakam received that narration in the form of a package of information, not that he himself was responsible for compiling the complete narration of the conquest by putting together scattered narrations. Of course, we have seen that he sometimes strengthens or weakens a part of that key narrative by mentioning narrations from alternative sources. Paying attention to this key narration solves the dating issue of Ibn Abd al-Hakam's narration and enables us to logically assign it to the end of the Umayyad period, that is, about 120 years before the compilation of the Fatuh of Egypt. According to this issue, it is possible to understand the way of producing and transmitting historical knowledge in the ambiguous period before the compilation of the first available Arabic texts, and also to evaluate the authoring and correcting role of the compilers of these texts.
Keywords
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