Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn al-Khālaf, called Ibn ʿAlqāmā (1036/37–1116 AD [428–509 [[Anno Hegirae|AH]]]), was an Andalusi Muslim official and historian.[1]
A native of the city of Valencia, he wrote a history of the fall of the city to the Christian army of El Cid in 1094 under the title Clear Exposition of the Disastrous Tragedy.[1] He may have completed it before the death of El Cid in 1099,[1] or as late as 1110. It is a lost work that can be partially reconstructed only from excerpts in other works, primarily that of Ibn ʿIdhārī.[1] On one reconstruction it covers the period from September 1092 until May 1102, including the recapture of Valencia after El Cid's death. It is also excerpted in Ibn al-Khaṭīb, and found its way into several Christian chronicles: the Estoria de España, Crónica geral de Espanha de 1344, Tercera crónica general, Crónica de los reyes de Castilla, Crónica de veinte reyes and Crónica particular del Cid.[2]
Ibn ʿAlqāmā was a partisan of the Almoravids.[3] He writes with pathos and clearly detests all agreements between the Valencians and the Christians. His account is lively, as well as detailed to the point of triviality.[2] Partial reconstructions of his work based on excerpts in Christian and Muslim chronicles, respectively, were made by Ramón Menéndez Pidal in 1929.[4] He believed that the Christian sources preserved more and better information from Ibn ʿAlqāmā than the Muslim chronicles, and tried to tease it out accordingly.[5] His position is not now widely accepted.[2] [5] In 1948, Évariste Lévi-Provençal provided an edition of the Arabic excerpts with a French translation,[6] which was later also translated into Spanish.[7]
Ibn ʿAlqāmā died in Dénia in 1116.[2]