The autobiography of Ibn al-Jaá¹­Ä«b

Abstract

Spanish translation and study of the autobiography of Ibn al-Khaṭīb, a work that reveals important milestones in the life and work of the Loja-born author, such as: 1) The diplomatic mission of the great-grandfather Sa‛īd, as a result of S. Fernando’s attack on Loja in 1227, by letter to D.ª Berenguela, on behalf of the emir Ibn Hūd al-Mutawakkil and his son Abū Bakr al-Wāṯiq bi-Llāh. 2) The second  marriage of the grandfather Sa‛īd with the grandmother of the sage Lojeño, first cousin of Nuzha, the wife of Muḥammad II, since both women were Daḥḥūnī of the Umayyad lineage. 3) Ibn al-Khaṭīb’s father was not an only child. 4) The construction, in the 2nd reign of Muḥammad V, of a pious complex of a hallway, madrassa and mausoleum for the king, of which no more trace has been left in Granada than the strictly literary one. 5) The date of the conclusion of the Jatibian autobiography (beginning of the year 771 [= 5 August 1369]) coincides with that of the completion of the book of the Iḥāṭa. 6) Ibn al-Khaṭīb spent his last moments, according to Abū Ŷa‛far al-Baqannī, the copyist of the Iḥāṭa, in a tower in Fez.