Ahmed Mohammed al-Maqqari

Who was Ahmed Mohammed al-Maqqari?

Abu-l-'Abbas Ahmad ibn Mohammed al-Maqqari was a historian born in Tlemcen, present day Algeria.

After an early training in Tlemcen, al-Maqqari moved to Fes in Morocco and then to Marrakech, following the court of Ahmad al-Mansur, to whom he dedicated his Rawdat al-As about the ulemas of Marrakech and Fes. After al- Mansur's death in 1603, al-Maqqari established himself in Fes, where he was appointed both as mufti and as the imam of the Qarawiyyin mosque by al-Mansour's successor Zidan Abu Maali in 1618, but he had to leave Fes in that same year, probably because of the civil war between the Saadian sultans. He then made the pilgrimage to Mecca.

In the following year he settled in Cairo. In 1620 he visited Jerusalem and Damascus, and during the next six years made the pilgrimage five times. In 1628 he was again in Damascus, where he gave a course of lectures on Bukhari's collection of Traditions, spoke much of the glories of Muslim Iberia, and received the impulse to write his work on this subject later. In the same year he returned to Cairo, where he spent a year in writing his history. He was just making preparations to settle definitely in Damascus when he died.