Spanish historians have always manifested contempt for the writings of the Arabs. Rejecting the means afforded them by abundant Moorish records, they have compiled their histories from one-sided national authorities, disdaining to cast a glance on writings of the enemies of their country and religion. The effects of such illiberality need scarcely be pointed out. The history of Spain, during the Middle Ages, has been, and still is, notwithstanding the labours of modern critics, a tissue of fable and contradiction.
Nevertheless, it was reserved for a Spaniard--Don Pascual de Gayángos--to give to the world the true history of the Mohammedans in Spain. He fixed upon the manuscript account of _Ahmed Ibn Mohammed Al-makkarí_, which gives an uninterrupted narrative of the conquests, wars, and settlements of the Spanish Moslems from their first invasion of the Peninsula to their final expulsion; and Don Pascual so enriches his author’s text with a mass of notes and illustrations that the work forms, if not the only, certainly the most valuable history of the Arabs in Spain--even the recondite production of the German _savant_, the late Dr. R. Dozy, of Leyden, _Histoire des Musulmans d’Espagne_, yields on the score of usefulness.
_Al-makkarí_ wrote at the close of the sixteenth century. His life was spent in literary pursuits, and in the society of the learned. He appears to have resembled our own John Aubrey in his genius for taking the greatest pains to collect his material from the most authentic sources at his command; and, if he sometimes falls into slight inaccuracies, his editor--Don Pascual--promptly sets the matter right in a note of profound and judicious scholarship. That portion of _Al-makkarí_ which most concerns the present volume is contained in the second part of his work, and consists of extracts from various Arab authors relating to the history of the kingdom of Granada. In a note upon the etymology of the name “Andalus,” _Al-makkarí_ derives it from _Andalosh_, a Moorish corruption for _Vandalocii_ (Vandals), with which attribution Don Pascual seems to agree. _Al-makkarí_ concludes his history with a pious ejaculation for the re-occupation of the country: “May Allah restore it entire to the Moslems!”