A Majorcan in Baghdad. Al-Ḥumaydī’s Jamʿ bayn al-Ṣaḥīḥayn and Its Reception in the Mashriq

Abstract

Almost anyone who has worked on the history of al-Andalus, whether political, intellectual or religious, will have had occasion to consult the work entitled Jadhwat al-muqtabis by al-Ḥumaydī (d. 488 H/1095 CE), which is one of the main sources for the period prior to the rise of the Party-Kings (mulūk al-ṭawāʾif). This work, a biographical dictionary, contains 988 entries mainly on ḥadīth experts, judges and other legal scholars, poets and literary figures who either were native to al-Andalus or settled there.2 The biographies are preceded by a brief survey of the political history of al-Andalus, starting with the conquest by Ṭāriq b. Ziyād in 92 H/711 CE and ending with the last of the Ḥammūdid rulers in the author’s own days. What distinguishes this work from similar ones, such as Ibn al-Faraḍī’s (d. 403 H/1013 CE) Tārīkh ʿulamāʾ al-Andalus, Ibn Bashkuwāl’s (d. 578 H/1183 CE) Kitāb al-Ṣila and Ibn al-Abbār’s (d. 658 H/1260 CE) al-Takmila li-Kitāb al-Ṣila, is