[Andalusi Studies] Maghribi historiography help

[Liz Lee Spragins]

Hello,

I’m a PhD student at Stanford University working with Alexander Key on a dissertation on Portuguese and Arabic sources about the 1578 battle at al-Qasr al-Kabir. While I have a good sense of the historiographical tradition of the European end of things, I’ve been working to get up to speed on classical Arabic literary conventions surrounding the writing of history. Much of the most widely cited scholarship about Islamic historiography (e.g., Duri, Hodgson, Humphreys, related EI2 articles, Rosenthal) seems to deal almost exclusively with a much earlier period (9th-10th centuries, A.D.) than the one I’m interested in (16th & 17th centuries, A.D.), and with historians writing from major urban centers in the eastern part of the Islamic world. I’ve found one or two sources that mention the Maghrib in passing, mostly to say that any history that was written there was derivative of whatever was being produced in the East, if with a different geographic focus. I was hoping that someone on this listserve might have suggestions as to bibliography that deals more directly with Maghribi historiography, especially that from the late medieval period. I'm seeking to contextualize within their intellectual environment the three primary texts with which I am working: an anonymous chronicle of the Sa'did dynasty, al-Ifrani's Nozhat al-Hadi, and al-Fishtali's Manahil al-Safa.

Thank you in advance for any help!

Best wishes,
Elizabeth
-- 
Elizabeth Spragins
PhD Candidate
Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305