2009/08/01 by Carl Dávila · 1 citation
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Islamic Finance and Banking Studies #Islamic Studies and History #Historical Studies of Medieval Iberia
paper · doi:10.1080/09503110902875475
openalex publication_date 2009/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
The generally accepted biography of the famous Cordovan musician and composer, Alī b. Nāfi‛ Ziryāb (d. 242/857), contains evident problems of chronology and content and is based almost entirely upon one source, al-Maqqarī's Naf[hdot] al- ⃛īb min ghu⋅n al-Andalus al-ratīb, written in the eleventh/seventeenth century. Modern scholarship generally has overlooked the fifth/eleventh-century source for this late version of his biography and has not taken other, earlier, sources into account. The result is a misbegotten biography that distorts both its subject and the Mediterranean world in which Ziryāb lived. This article refines the biography of Ziryāb by using the earliest available Arabic sources, including works by Ibn ‛Abd Rabbih (d. 328/940), Ibn al-Qūtiyya (d. 365/977), Ibn [Hdot]ayyān (d. 469/1076), A[hdot]mad al-Tīfāshī (d. 651/1253) and Ibn Khaldūn (d. 803/1402). By comparing these accounts and attempting to reconcile their inconsistencies, the paper proposes a more logical chronology for Ziryāb's career that not only resolves obvious problems with the standard biography, but also portrays this important artist in relation to the network of political and economic institutions that united the eastern and western ends of the Islamic Mediterranean world in the early third/ninth century.