Ibrahim ibn ar-Raqiq

Who is Ibrahim ibn ar-Raqiq?

Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn al-Qāsim ar-Raqīq al-Qayrawānī known as Ibn ar-Raqīq or even just as ar-Raqīq, 11th century courtier and author in the court of the Zirids in Ifriqiya.

ar-Raqiq served as Secretary to two Zirid princes for over a quarter of a century and gained a reputation as a diplomat, poet and historian. He enjoyed wine, women and song, and in fact wrote treatises on each of those subjects. His work on the enjoyment of wine is the only one of his prose works to survive in its entirety, but Yaqut has preserved some of his poems. The following is a few lines from one:

And at the convent of al-Quṣayr, what nights have I passed not knowing

Morning from evening, without ever waking from drunkenness!

An innocent virgin presents me with nectar

As soon as the bell chimes at dawn.

Slender Christian beauty, at her slightest movement

Her waist slays me, so slim in size!

He wrote a history of North Africa which enjoyed a very high reputation, and was quoted from by later authors such as Ibn Idhari, Ibn Khaldun and Al-Nuwayri. This is fortunate, as the complete work is now lost. In 1965, a Tunisian scholar working in Morocco discovered a manuscript which he believed might be a small part of ar-Raqiq's Tarikh, dealing with the Umayyad conquest of North Africa. This was rushed into print by someone else who got hold of a photocopy and published it as definitely the work of ar-Raqiq.