Al-Bayan al-Mughrib

Kitāb al-bayān al-mughrib fī ākhbār mulūk al-andalus wa'l-maghrib (Book of the Amazing Story of the History of the Kings of al-Andalus and Maghreb)[1][2] by Ibn Idhāri (var. Ibn Athari) of Marrakech in the Maghreb (now Morocco); an important medieval Arabic history of the Maghreb and Iberia, written at Marrakech ca. 1312 / 712 AH . Generally known by its shorter title al-Bayān al-Mughrib (The Amazing Story; البيان المغرب), or even just as the Bayān, it is valued by modern researchers as a unique source of information, and for its preservation of excerpts from lost works.

Ibn Idhāri divides the work into three parts:

• History of the Maghreb from the coming of Islam to the twelfth century
• History of Al-Andalus (Muslim Iberia) over the same period
• History of the Almoravids and Almohads

The Arabic text of the first two parts was first published in a Latin edition by Reinhart Dozy (1848-52); a second corrected edition of these two parts was published in 1948 by Colin and Levi-Provençal.

Several Spanish translations include a notable version by Ambrosio Huici Miranda, who originally published a part of the text as an anonymous work based on manuscripts from Madrid and Copenhagen and later the full text under Ibn Idhāri's name. A French translation by Fagnan (1901) based on Dozy's edition, received unfavourable reviews. However to date few translations of this work have been published.

Portions of the incomplete and insect-damaged manuscript of the third part were discovered in the 20th century. Despite lacking the beginning and end and several folios,[3] the preserved MS fragments importantly provide for the correction of many of errors and information omitted by the more widely known Rawd al-Qirtas. An Arabic edition published by Ihsan Abbas (Beirut, 1983) includes the incomplete Part 3.