Translation-Based Chronicles, Twelfth to Thirteenth Centuries. New Sources for the Arabo-Latin Translation Movement in the Iberian Peninsula

Abstract

AbstractWithin the well-known panorama of the Arabo-Latin translation movement in the Iberian Peninsula from the twelfth century onwards, the transfer of Arabic biographical and historiographical texts into Latin writing is clearly understudied. Earlier research has focussed on the Arabo-Latin transfer of philosophical, scientific and religious texts without taking into account the role of biohistorical material within the history of cultural exchange and entanglements between Muslims and Christians. And even more recent research on Latin historiographical writing has still not been fully aware of these processes of Arabo-Latin transfer and transformation that also exist. The article analyzes three outstanding Arabo-Latin chronicles from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Chronica gothorum Pseudo-Isidoriana, the Chronica latina regum Castellae and Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada’s Historia Arabum, thus examining different types of written and oral transfer of Arabo-Latin historical knowledge and finally introducing the notion of ‘frontier historiography’ to describe these translation-based chronicles.