Abd al-Aziz al-Fishtali

Abd al-Aziz al-Fishtali
Born	1549 CE
Died	1621 CE
Occupation(s)	Historian, Poet, Secretary of State
Academic work
Era	Saadian dynasty
Main interests	History, Poetry
Notable works	Manahil al-safa fi ma'athir mawalina al-shurafa

Abd al-Aziz al-Fishtali (Arabic: عبد العزيز الفشتالي) (1549 – 1621), fully Abu Faris 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Sanhaji al-Fishtali was a Moroccan writer, head of the chancery (wazīr al-ḳalam al-aʿlā), official historiographer and official poet of the Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur.^[1]

Biography

Abd al-Aziz was a member of the Fishtala tribe, a Berber Sanhaja tribe situated north of the city of Fez. He studied under teachers such as Abu al-Abbas al-Manjur, al-Humaydi and al-Zammuri.^[2] He composed most of the pieces of verse which were engraved, on marble or wood, on the façades and inside the pavilions of the El Badii Palace in Marrakech. His friend and biographer, the historian al-Maqqari, recognized in him the greatest poet of his time and reported that the Moroccan sultan, Ahmad al-Mansur, said: "al-Fishtali made us more illustrious than all the other princes of the earth. We can compare him to Lisan ed-Din Ibn al-Khatib."^[3]

Works

al-Fishtali wrote 69 poems, numbering 1016 verses.^[4]

Some of his works are:^[5]

• Manahil al-safa fi ma'athir mawalina al-shurafa (مناهل الصفا في أخبار الملوك الشرفا), the one surviving work of al-Fishtali, as the chief scribe of al-Mansur's state. It is considered to be the main source of information for the dynasty of Ahmad al-Mansur.
• Tartīb Dīwān al-Mutanabbī
• Madad al-Jaysh, a postscript for Ibn al-Khatib's Jaysh al-tawshīḥ

References

1. J. D. Fage, Roland Anthony Oliver The Cambridge History of Africa, ed. Cambridge University Press, 1986, ISBN 978-0-521-20413-2, p. 629
2. Lamrini, Najat (2004). "al-Fishtali, Abd al-Aziz ibn Muhammad". In Toufiq, Ahmed; Hajji, Mohamed (eds.). Ma'lamat al-Maghrib (Encyclopedia of Morocco) (in Arabic). Vol. 19. al-Jamī‘a al-Maghribiyya li-l-Ta’līf wa-l-Tarjama wa-l-Nashr. p. 6463.
3. Lévi-Provençal, Évariste (1922). Les historiens des Chorfa: essai sur la littérature historique et biographique au Maroc du XVIe au XXe siècle (in French). Paris: Émile Larose. pp. 93–94.
4. Roger Allen ed., Arabic literature in the post-classical period, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p.62
5. Lamrini, Najat (2004). "al-Fishtali, Abd al-Aziz ibn Muhammad". In Toufiq, Ahmed; Hajji, Mohamed (eds.). Ma'lamat al-Maghrib (Encyclopedia of Morocco) (in Arabic). Vol. 19. al-Jamī‘a al-Maghribiyya li-l-Ta’līf wa-l-Tarjama wa-l-Nashr. p. 6464.