Summary: | This study is about the Muslim scholar Aḥmad al-Maqqari (d. 1041/1632), who is widely recognized in Western scholarship as the compiler of the eleventh-/seventeenth-century Arabic history of al-Andalus (Muslim Iberia) and biography of the eighth-/fourteenth-century Andalusi polymath Lisan al-Din b. al-Khaṭib (d. 776/1374), Nafḥ al-ṭib min gḥn al-Andalus al-raṭib wa-dhikr waziriha Lisan al-Din b. al-Khaṭib (The Fragrant breeze from the fertile branch of al-Andalus and the remembrance of its minister Lisan al-Din b. al-Khaṭib). Although al-Maqqari is credited as the intellectual force behind the work, his role as its author as well as that of an array of works, not to mention in Arabic scholarly production more broadly, have generally been neglected to date. This study offers scholars the opportunity to reconsider al-Maqqari as more than simply the compiler of Nafḥ al-ṭib , but also as a thinker, writer, teacher, and belle-lettrist whose life, travels, and experiences contributed to his thought and left a major imprint on his writings. By exploring a wide range of texts in which al-Maqqari is discussed as well as those that he produced, including Rawd&dotbelow;at al-as (The Garden of myrtle), Azhar al-riyad&dotbelow; (The Flowers of the garden), Nafḥ al-ṭib , his correspondence, and related writings, this study proposes that his scholarly contributions are far more significant than previously understood. Specifically, a consideration of these texts in light of the themes of genealogy, mobility, authority, and patronage highlights the centrality of the author and his authorial concerns and produces new understandings of the myriad landscapes of the tenth-/sixteenth- and eleventh-/seventeenth-century Islamic world. Furthermore, this study places these texts in the context of intellectual and religious life in North Africa by demonstrating how cities such as Tlemcen, Fez, and Marrakesh emerged and flourished as unique centers of scholarly activity and how these cities were connected to the transmission and circulation of scholars and scholarly production in the Islamic world more broadly.
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