Abu Bakr Mohammed ibn Ali al Sanhaji al-Baydhaq () (died after 1164) was a Maghribi historian mainly known as a companion of

Ibn Tumart Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad Ibn Tūmart (, ca. 1080–1130) was a Muslim religion, religious scholar, teacher and political leader, from the Sous in southern present-day Morocco. He founded and served as the spiritual and first military leader ...

and chronicler of the

Almohads The Almohad Caliphate (; or or from ) or Almohad Empire was a North African Berber Muslim empire founded in the 12th century. At its height, it controlled much of the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus) and North Africa (the Maghreb). The Almohad ...

. Al-Baydhaq (meaning

pawn Pawn most often refers to: * Pawn (chess), the weakest and most numerous chess piece in the game * Pawnbroker or pawnshop, a business that provides loans by taking personal property as collateral Pawn or The Pawn may also refer to: Places * Pa ...

) was his nickname, because he was small in stature. He was from the tribe of

Senhaja The Sanhaja (, or زناگة ''Znāga''; , pl. Iẓnagen, and also Aẓnaj, pl. Iẓnajen) were once one of the largest Berber tribal confederations, along with the Zanata and Masmuda confederations. Many tribes in Algeria, Libya, Mali, Mauritan ...

. The title of his main work is: ''Al moqtabass min kitabi al anssab fi maärifati al ashab'' (written ca. 1150).Al-Baydhaq (Abû Bakr ibn 'Alî al-Sinhâdjî), Histoire des Almohades, texte et traduction É. Lévi-Provençal, « Documents inédits d'histoire almohade », Paris, Geuthner, 1928, includes ''Kitab al-Muwahiddin'', i.e. the chronicles of the Almohads, letters and sermons by

and

Abd al-Mumin Abd al-Mu'min (c. 1094–1163) (; full name: ʿAbd al-Muʾmin ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAlwī ibn Yaʿlā al-Kūmī Abū Muḥammad) was a prominent member of the Almohad movement. Although the Almohad movement itself was founded by Ibn Tumart, Abd al-Mu'm ...

and Ibn Tumart's biography from the first person perspective of al-Baydhaq. It is the most important source on the period. Written in

Classical Arabic Classical Arabic or Quranic Arabic () is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notably in Umayyad Caliphate, Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphate, Abbasid literary texts such as poetry, e ...

, Berber words, names and sayings are used throughout the text, making it an important work for scholars of the medieval

Berber language The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight, are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related but mostly mutually unintelligible languages spoken by Berber communities, who ar ...

References

*Akhbār al-Mahdī Ibn Tūmart wa-bidāyat dawlat al-Muwaḥḥidīn (or. text in Arabic) ed. Al-Ribā, 1971 *Ed. in Algeria as: ''Kitāb Akhbār al-Mahdī ibn Tūmart'' (Algiers: al-Mu’assasa al-Waṭaniyya li-l-Kitāb, 1982)

External links

*Al kindi catalogu

*An annotated guide to Arabic autobiographical writings (ninth to nineteenth centuries c.e

12th-century Berber people 12th-century Moroccan historians Berber historians Moroccan Berbers Moroccan autobiographers Historians from the Almohad Caliphate People from Tinmel Sanhaja 12th-century historians of the medieval Islamic world {{Morocco-writer-stub