Isa al-Razi

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Isa al-Razi, ʿĪsā ibn Aḥmad al-Rāzī (died 980), was a Muslim historian who continued the chronicle Akhbār mulūk al-Andalus, started by his father Ahmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Mūsa al-Rāzī. The original Arabic version of the work, including Isa’s continuation, has been lost; only quotations survive in later histories. Isa seems to have begun his part with the accession of Abd al-Rahmān III as emir in 912. His sections are richer in detail than his father’s and reflect the cultural interests of the court of Abd al-Rahmān III and his successor al-Ḥakam II. The work may have been dedicated to al-Ḥakam II, who died in 976. There is evidence that Isa used Christian sources as well, such as the Spanish era in addition to the Islamic era. He may have had access to the Franks’ history through Bishop Gotmar, whom Abd al-Rahmān had commissioned. Ibn Ḥayyān later quotes Isa’s history of al-Ḥakam’s reign from 971 to 975 in his Muqtabis, and he praises Ahmad and Isa, saying they “endowed the Andalusis with a science [historiography] they had not hitherto practised with success.”