Journal article
A good story well told: memory, identity, and the conquest of Iberia
Journal of medieval Iberian studies, Vol.6(2), pp.127-147
07/03/2014
DOI: 10.1080/17546559.2014.932422
Abstract
Arabic accounts of the conquest of Iberia have generally been the purview of historians who view the literariness of these accounts with suspicion, as distorting and obscuring reliable historical information. This article proposes an interdisciplinary approach that appreciates the literary qualities of early Islamic historiography. A close reading of anecdotes about Mūsā b. Nuṣayr from two third/ninth-century sources (Ibn 'Abd al-Ḥakam's Futūḥ Miṣr and Ibn Ḥabīb's Kitāb al-Ta'rīkh) reveals their verbal artistry as well as how their transmitters shaped them to serve identitarian needs. The fact that both authors were Mālikī jurists who studied with the same authorities in Egypt and who transmit many of the same historical materials makes their divergent portrayals of Mūsā especially interesting case studies of the social function of historical memory. Scholarly communities produced and maintained their status as elite by retelling historical narratives. They also expressed divergent regional identities through the selective transmission of certain stories about the conquest of Iberia.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- A good story well told: memory, identity, and the conquest of Iberia
- Creators
- Denise Keyes Filios - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of medieval Iberian studies, Vol.6(2), pp.127-147
- Publisher
- Routledge
- DOI
- 10.1080/17546559.2014.932422
- ISSN
- 1754-6559
- eISSN
- 1754-6567
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 07/03/2014
- Academic Unit
- International Programs; Spanish and Portuguese
- Record Identifier
- 9984397920302771
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