What if what is known about the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula was wrong? This is what the Moroccan historian Ahmed Tahiri defends in his book “Fath al-Andalus y la incorporation de Occidente a Dar al-Islam”, which will be presented this Friday, March 2, at 18 pm, at the Municipal Library Vicente Campinas in Vila Real de Santo António.
The multiple meanings of the Arabic term “Fath”, which can be translated into Portuguese as invasion, conquest, opening, victory or incorporation, serves as a pretext for Professor Tahiri for a deep and original analysis, thirteen hundred years after the birth of Al-Andalus, bringing to light Arab sources that are little or poorly known, when not silenced, in a controversial narrative that also stimulates an enriching debate around the period of conquest of al-Andalus.
The point, according to the historian, is that what was known so far about that historical period was based on Christian sources, while his investigation was in search of ancient Arab sources, some of them unknown until now.
Ahmed Tahiri (Alhucemas, Morocco, 1958), doctor in Medieval History (Al-Andalus) and professor at the Universities Hassam II of Mohammedia and Abdel Malik Essaadi of Tetuán, visiting professor at the University Ain Shems in Cairo and Lumière II of Lyon, assiduous lecturer in Arab and European countries, renowned researcher and author of works in Arabic, Spanish, French, English and Portuguese.
Ahmed Tahiri is also president of the Hispano-Moroccan Al-Idrisi Foundation with whom the Municipality of Vila Real de Santo António has maintained a close collaboration that has already materialized in the organization of the congress “Itinerários e Reinos. A Discovery of the World. The Gharb Al-Andalus in the Work of the Geographer Al-Idrisi” (2008), whose minutes were published last year, and in the edition of his book “Cacela and his poet Ibn Darraj al-Qastalli in the history and literature of al -andalus” (2009), whose investigation was based on an extensive consultation of ancient Arab sources, with the pretext of better knowing the poet's biography and the history of Cacela (Qastalla) in the Islamic period.
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