Al-Istiqsa

Al-Istiqsa (Arabic: الاستقصا) or Kitab al-Istiqsa li-Akhbar duwal al-Maghrib al-Aqsa (كتاب الاستقصا لأخبار دول المغرب الأقصى) is a multivolume history of Morocco by Ahmad ibn Khalid an-Nasiri first published in Cairo in 1894.[1][2][3] It was the first comprehensive national history of Morocco, covering the history of al-Maghrib al-Aqsa (Morocco) from the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb to the reign of Abdelaziz of Morocco in 1894.[1][2][3]

The book was pioneering in using non-Muslim sources, annotating and contextualizing citations, and using exact quotations.[1]

The Scottish orientalist H. A. R. Gibb described an-Nasiri's work as the "last worthy representative" of tarikh, or the old Arabic historiographical tradition,[2] while the French orientalist Évariste Lévi-Provençal considered it a novel work on three accounts: that it was read by a local and foreign audience—Muslims and non-Muslims alike, that it is a general history and not restricted to a specific dynasty or city, and that it was the first Moroccan historical work to cite non-Muslim European sources.[2][1]