Ibn al-Qutiyya . He was an important Muslim historian. He wrote the Ta’rīj iftitāh al-Andalus (History of the Conquest of al-Ándalus).
Biographical synthesis
He was born in Córdoba , in the year 977 . He was a member of an important Sevillian family directly descended from Witiza, Visigothic king, through Sara, the king’s granddaughter and Artobas (Artubās), who had married one of the Muslim conquerors of al-Andalus.
The Banu Hayyay, also Sevillians, were close relatives of Ibn al-Qutiyya, as they also belonged to the same Andalusian lineage of royal Visigothic descent.
Career path
He was a delicate poet who versified with exquisite skill. He studied traditions and jurisprudence, but above all he excelled in philology , to whose teaching he dedicated himself. His History of the conquest of al- Andalus has reached us , which covers the period between 711 and 912 . Of this work, which gave him great fame in his lifetime, the null sympathy that its author felt for Christians stands out today .
In certain episodes such as that of Witiza’s children (his ancestors), he does not hesitate to misrepresent certain details about their intervention in the days immediately following the battle of Guadalete, for which reason, already in the 10th century , we can imagine that the The author conceived his story as a controversial work. His work was widely disseminated and cited by various authors, especially in the second volume of Al-Muqtabis by the Arab chronicler Ibn-Hayyān.
His vision of the Muslim conquest is that of the descendants of the peninsular natives, who insist on the value of the established pacts. It is very different from that of the Palatine Umayyad chroniclers, who, on the contrary, attach great importance to the acts of arms in order to justify the dominance of all al-Andalus by the Umayyad state of Cordoba.
