Akhbar Majmu'a (anonymous chronicle of al-Andalus)

"Akhbar Majmu'a" ("A collection of reports"), an anonymous short chronicle of al-Andalus. It records the Arab conquest of the peninsula, the period before the foundation of the Marwanid amirate of Cordoba, and the history of the amirate up to the reign of 'Abd al-Rahman III al-Nasir. ¹

The work is known from a single manuscript, the unicum in the Bibliotheque nationale in Paris. It was published on that basis and translated into Spanish by Lafuente y Alcantara (Madrid, 1867). The Encyclopaedia of Islam calls it a late, ill-proportioned work, probably contemporary with the reconquest of Valencia. It has had little documentary interest since most of Ibn Hayyan's Muqtabis was discovered. ¹

The chronicle contains long passages from earlier chronicles, notably from that of Isa b. Ahmad al-Razi, but it does not name the sources it copies or adapts. Dozy, in the preface to his edition of Ibn Idhari's al-Bayan al-Mughrib (Leiden, 1848–51), and Ribera, in the introduction to his translation of Ibn al-Qutiyya's Iftitah (Madrid, 1926), were misled into taking it for an original work. The article notes that the study by the Spanish historian C. Sanchez Albornoz, El "Ajbar maymu'a", cuestiones historiograficas que suscita (Buenos Aires, 1944), is highly debatable. Bibliography: Brockelmann, Supplement I, 23–32. ¹