3.1. Pedro I of Castile in al-ʿIbar

One of the Christian kings of Iberia who receives the most attention in al-ʿIbar is Pedro I of Castile, ³⁰ For secondary literature on this king, in addition to Estow’s monograph, see, e.g., Díaz Martín, Pedro I el Cruel; Valdeón Baruque, Pedro I el Cruel y Enrique de Trastámara; Vadaliso Casanova, Pedro I de Castilla. whom Ibn Ḫaldūn met in person. The focus of the fragment devoted to this Castilian king is on the conflict with his half-brother Enrique, Count of Trastámara, future king Enrique II of Castile. The news on Pedro I’s death, whom Ibn Ḫaldūn had met when he was to Granada, possibly produced a deep impression on him, and he recounts the episode in two additional places of his al-ʿIbar, specifically, in the sections on the Nasrids and on the regain of Algeciras by the Nasrid sultan Muḥammad V (r. 755-760/1354-1359 and 763-793/1362-1391).

Both al-Qalqašandī and al-Maqrīzī relied on al-ʿIbar for the reports on Pedro I’s reign included in Ṣubḥ al-aʿšà and Durar al-ʿuqūd, respectively, although this statement requires further qualification in the case of al-Maqrīzī, as we will see.

The narrative in the chapter on Christian Iberia in Ibn Ḫaldūn’s al-ʿIbar (vol. 7, pp. 575-576)Ibn Ḫaldūn, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Kitāb al-ʿIbar wa-dīwān al-mubtadaʾ wa-l-ḫabar fī ayyām al-ʿarab wa-l-ʿaǧam wa-l-barbar wa-man ʿāṣarahum min ḏawī l-sulṭān al-akbar, 7 vols., Būlāq, 1867. runs as follows:

Although this passage has an evident historical basis, it contains a few important mistakes and inaccuracies that deserve commentary. According to Ibn Ḫaldūn, Enrique of Trastámara, who is referred to as al-qumṭ, ‘count’, took possession of Castile in the year of the Hegira 768, which covers from 7 September 1366 to 27 August 1367. Enrique was crowned king of Castile on 5 April 1366, that is, 23 raǧab 767 H. ³⁴ The chronicler Pedro López de Ayala (d. 1407) matches the year 1366 CE with 768 H. See López de Ayala, Crónicas de los reyes de Castilla, vol. 1, p. 396.

The king of England referred to as “their greatest king” (malikihim al-aʿẓam) is Edward III of England (r. 1327-1377), whereas “al-Bins Ġālis”, that is, ‘the Prince of Wales’ - heir apparent to the English throne - was his eldest son: Edward of Woodstock, known to history as the Black Prince (1330-1376). When his brother Enrique proclaimed himself king of Castile, Pedro fled to the court of the Prince of Wales in Bordeaux. They met in the summer of 1366. However, the Prince of Wales did not marry Pedro’s daughter as Ibn Ḫaldūn affirms. Two of Pedro’s daughters, Constanza and Isabel, were instead married to two other sons of Edward III of England: John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, respectively. Both marriages took place after Pedro’s death (in 1371 and 1372, respectively).

The forces of Pedro I, with the aid of the troops of the Black Prince, defeated Enrique at the Battle of Nájera, which took place on 3 April 1367 (2 šaʿbān 768). After the battle, the Black Prince remained in Castile (Burgos, Valladolid and Soria) for several months, waiting for the money Pedro owed him, which never arrived. Both he and many of his men fell ill, afflicted with dysentery and other diseases. They returned to Aquitaine in late August 1367.

Two years later, on 14 March 1369, the forces of Pedro - supported by Nasrid troops - and Enrique - with the support of the French - met in Montiel, and on this occasion the outcome was the opposite. After his defeat, Pedro took refuge in the fortress at Montiel. The fratricide was committed some days later, on 23 March 1369, which corresponds to 13 šaʿbān 770 (not 772 as stated by Ibn Ḫaldūn).

Following Pedro I’s death there were several candidates to the Castilian throne, among them, Fernando I of Portugal and the Prince of Wales himself. However, the Prince of Wales did not lay claim to the Crown of Castile by right of his son by Pedro’s daughter as stated by Ibn Ḫaldūn, but his brother John of Gaunt by right of his wife Constanza.

The previous ʿIbar section on the Nasrids (vol. 7, pp. 551-552) provides a different, somewhat longer, version of this account. To begin with, the Count is referred to as al-qund (a spelling closer to the Spanish conde), not al-qumṭ. Furthermore, some parallel fragments are phrased differently, normally in a more expanded way - the difference in length between the fragments immediately preceding the report on Pedro turning to the Prince of Wales for aid in both sections is, in this regard, self-evident. More interestingly, the section on the Nasrids contains information that is not found in the following section on the Christian kings. Thus, Ibn Ḫaldūn informs us about Pedro calling on the Nasrid sultan Muḥammad V for help, ³⁵ On the relationship between Muḥammad V and Pedro I (and other Christian and Muslim rulers), see e.g. al-ʿAbbādī, El reino de Granada en la época de Muḥammad V, ch. 1 and 3 of the first part; Vidal Castro, “Historia política”, pp. 134-135, 138-141; Boloix Gallardo, “The Banū Naṣr”, pp. 53-56. the devastation of several towns (including Jaén, Úbeda, and Utrera), and the siege of Córdoba. By contrast, the section on the Nasrids lacks the report on the disease that caused the Black Prince and his troops to return to their country, and the one on Pedro’s son and Martín López de Córdoba surrendering from Carmona.³⁶ Martín López de Córdoba was an official loyal to Pedro I who took refuge in Carmona together with his own family and Pedro I’s illegitimate children. He was executed in 1371 at Enrique II’s behest. See Valdaliso Casanova, “Martín López de Córdoba”.

Ibn Ḫaldūn narrates the conflict between Pedro I and his brother Enrique II in yet another part of al-ʿIbar, specifically in the section entitled “al-Ḫabar ʿan irtiǧāʿ al-Ǧazīra”, ‘On the recovery of Algeciras’ (al-ʿIbar, vol. 14, pp. 405-408Ibn Ḫaldūn, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Kitāb al-ʿIbar wa-dīwān al-mubtadaʾ wa-l-ḫabar fī ayyām al-ʿarab wa-l-ʿaǧam wa-l-barbar wa-man ʿāṣarahum min ḏawī l-sulṭān al-akbar, Ibrāhīm Šabbūḥ et al. (eds.), 14 vols., Tunis, al-Dār al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Kitāb and Dār al-Qayrawān li-l-Našr, 2006-2013.) ³⁷ Ed. Šihāda/Zakkār, vol. 7, pp. 433-434. included in the fragment devoted to the Marinids (volume 14 of the Tunisian edition). This section begins with a brief report on Alfonso XI’s (Alhunšuh) conquest of Algeciras in 743 H (1342-3 CE)³⁸ It was taken in March 1344. and his death from the Black Death while laying siege to Gibraltar in 751 H (1350 CE). This is followed by a rather long excursus on Alfonso XI’s son and successor Pedro. In this section, the word “count” takes the same form as in the section on the Christian kings of Iberia (i.e., al-qumṭ), but it is otherwise a version independent of both this section and the one dealing with the Nasrids. This third version lacks the reports on the Prince of Wales’s marriage to Pedro’s daughter and the disease that afflicted the English troops, and finishes with the report on Pedro’s death at the hands of his brother. By contrast, it contains some remarkable additions. Already in the first three lines of the Tunisian edition (vol. 14, p. 405Ibn Ḫaldūn, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Kitāb al-ʿIbar wa-dīwān al-mubtadaʾ wa-l-ḫabar fī ayyām al-ʿarab wa-l-ʿaǧam wa-l-barbar wa-man ʿāṣarahum min ḏawī l-sulṭān al-akbar, Ibrāhīm Šabbūḥ et al. (eds.), 14 vols., Tunis, al-Dār al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Kitāb and Dār al-Qayrawān li-l-Našr, 2006-2013.), we find interesting pieces of information that are not found in the other versions:

In this small fragment we are told that Enrique was the son of a mistress (ḥaẓiyya) of Alfonso XI, denoting Leonor de Guzmán, his favourite. ³⁹ She was executed in 1351 at the behest of Maria de Portugal, Alfonso XI’s wife and Pedro I’s mother. On her, García Fernández, “Leonor de Guzmán”. According to the Tunisian edition of Ibn Ḫaldūn’s al-ʿIbar, her name was “ʾ.l.rīq hamza”. However, the reading of other editions is “ʾ.l.rīq bi-hamza”,⁴⁰ Ed. Šihāda/Zakkār, vol. 7, p. 434. This, however, may be an emendation of the editors because the Būlāq edition (vol. 7, p. 327) has the same reading as the Tunisian one. that is, ‘ʾ.l.rīq with the grapheme hamza’ (< ء>, transliterated as /ʾ/), which seems more likely to me. As regards her alleged name “ʾ.l.rīq” (maybe a corrupt form for “ʾ.n.rīq”), it rather seems to reflect the name ‘Enrique’. It is, therefore, possible that either Ibn Ḫaldūn himself or a copyist committed a mistake and that musammāt (‘named’ in feminine) should be emended to musammà (‘named’ in masculine). If this proved to be the case, ʾ.l.rīq (or ʾ.n.rīq) would refer to Enrique of Trastámara. The emended text would, then, read:

As regards the marquis who is said to have joined Enrique, he may have been Fernando, Marquis of Tortosa (d. 1363). He was the half-brother of Pedro IV of Aragon and, after having supported Pedro I in the war against Pedro IV (War of the Two Pedros) for several months, he changed sides and supported his brother. ⁴¹ Ramón Pont, “El infante Don Fernando”. Fernando was the first cousin of Pedro and Enrique by their paternal aunt Leonor of Castile, sister of Alfonso XI.

The general contents of the rest of Pedro I’s biography inserted into the section on the recovery of Algeciras by the Muslims are found in one of the other versions, or in both, but the wording is different. Furthermore, in this section Ibn Ḫaldūn elaborates a little further on the War of the Two Pedros (1356-1369). There are also important differences as regards chronology. In this section, the sequence of the narrated events is more similar to the narrative in the Crónicas de los reyes de CastillaLópez de Ayala, Pedro, Crónicas de los reyes de Castilla Don Pedro, Don Enrique II, Don Juan I, Don Enrique III, por D. Pedro Lopez de Ayala chanciller mayor de Castilla, con las enmiendas del Secretario Geronimo Zurita, y las correcciones y notas añadidas por Don Eugenio de Llaguno Amirola, 2 vols., Madrid, Imprenta de Don Antonio de Sancha, 1779. of the chronicler Pedro López de Ayala (1332-1407), who was a contemporary of the events and witnessed some of them. ⁴² For a criticism of López de Ayala’s account of the reign of Pedro, see Estow, Pedro the Cruel, pp. xvii-xx. According to Estow, López de Ayala “is the best informed and most complete source of contemporary narrative material on the reign of Pedro”, even though his objectivity, reliability and accuracy must be questioned (Estow, Pedro the Cruel, p. xx). Thus, Ibn Ḫaldūn states that Pedro traveled to the Prince of Wales in 767 H, which corresponds to 1365-6 CE. Since Pedro met the Black Prince in Bayonne and Bordeaux in August 1366 (23 ḏū l-qaʿda - 23 ḏū l-ḥiǧǧa 767), the chronology in this version is more accurate than that in the other sections, according to which the meeting between Pedro and the Black Prince would have taken place after Enrique defeated his brother in 768/1366-7. Likewise, in this section, Pedro’s request for help from Muḥammad V, and the latter’s destruction of towns such as Úbeda and Jaén, are recorded after the report on the Prince of Wales (not before, as in the section on the Nasrids), which is also more accurate, as these events took place in 1368.

After the report on Enrique killing Pedro, Ibn Ḫaldūn says that this civil war left the borders unguarded, encouraging the Muslims to take back Algeciras, which they did in 770 H (1369 CE).

In sum, Ibn Ḫaldūn included in his ʿIbar three different, mutually independent, versions of the conflict between Pedro I and his half-brother Enrique, Count of Trastámara, who would reign as Enrique II. For the sake of comparison and clarity, the following table shows the chronological sequence of the events in each version (which, as noted, is more accurate in the third version).

Despite the extraneous elements in the three ʿIbar accounts of Pedro I’s reign, their relationship to contemporary Spanish sources is evident. After leaving Tunis at the age of 20, Ibn Ḫaldūn spent thirty years in the western Maghreb and al-Andalus, devoting himself to both political and intellectual pursuits. ⁵³ For Ibn Ḫaldūn’s life, and further bibliography, see e.g. Manzano Rodríguez, “Ibn Jaldūn, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān”; Cheddadi, “Ibn Khaldūn, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān”; Ito, “Writing the Biography of Ibn Khaldūn”. He spent three years in Granada - from 1362 to 1365 - where he enjoyed the favour of Muḥammad V. As Ibn Ḫaldūn himself says in his autobiography, he went to Seville in 765/1363-4, in order to ratify the Peace Treaty signed by Pedro I with the Muslim kings of al-ʿudwa (the other shore of the Mediterranean). The Castilian king even offered to restore to Ibn Ḫaldūn the properties of his ancestors in Seville, provided he stay on with him, an offer that Ibn Ḫaldūn refused.⁵⁴ Ibn Ḫaldūn, al-ʿIbar, vol. 14, p. 601. See also Cheddadi, “À propos d’une ambassade d’Ibn Khaldun auprès de Pierre le Cruel”; Molénat, “Ibn Jaldún ante Pedro I de Castilla”. Beyond doubt, there he would have become acquainted with some information on the Christian kings, which he would later use for the fragment devoted to al-Andalus in his ʿIbar. In fact, as discussed below, al-Maqrīzī informs us that Ibn Ḫaldūn heard from Muḥammad V the information on Pedro I that al-Maqrīzī would later receive from Ibn Ḫaldūn.

When Pedro I died, in 1369, Ibn Ḫaldūn was already back in North Africa. He would return to Granada in 1374 for two months. Ibn Ḫaldūn arrived in Cairo in 1382, that is, during the reign of Juan I of Castile (r. 1379-1390), whose son and successor Enrique III (r. 1390-1406) is the last of the Castilian kings mentioned in al-ʿIbar. As noted by Dozy, Ibn Ḫaldūn made two versions of the section on the Christian kingdoms of Iberia: the first one, in Tunis around 1380; the second one, in Cairo around 1392. ⁵⁵ Dozy, Recherches sur l’histoire et la littérature de l’Espagne, vol. 1, p. 97. In this regard Dozy’s version of the fragment and al-Qalqašandī’s Ṣubḥ al-aʿšà contain some fragments that are not found in the editions previous to the Tunisian one. See, for example, the fragment on Juan I (al-ʿIbar, vol. 7, pp. 576-577), which is found in Dozy’s Recherches sur l’histoire et la littérature de l’Espagne (vol. 1, p. xxiv [Arabic text] and vol. 1, p. 121 [trans.]) and al-Qalqašandī’s Ṣubḥ al-aʿšà (vol. 5, p. 269), but not in Šihāda and Zakkār’s edition of al-ʿIbar (cf. vol. 4, p. 234). See also footnote 57 below. As argued in this article, we can now add a “third version”, which is represented by manuscript Add 232,72 of the British Library containing marginal additions in Ibn Ḫaldūn’s handwriting. Al-Qalqašandī would have relied on the second version as his Ṣubḥ al-aʿšà lacks those additions.

To write this section, Ibn Ḫaldūn must therefore have relied partly on memories and/or notes he had written down - ⁵⁶ See Stearns, “Two Passages in Ibn al-Khaṭīb’s Account”, p. 170. some of which he would later transmit orally to his disciple al-Maqrīzī, as we will see - and this fact most likely accounts for (some of) the mistakes in the fragment on the successors of Enrique II, dealt with in the next subsection, which features a greater number of errors than other fragments.

3.2. Enrique II’s successors in al-ʿIbar

For Enrique II’s son and successor, Juan I of Castile, who is referred to as “Ḏūn Ǧuwān”, ⁵⁷ Rendered as such in the Tunisian edition (vol. 7, p. 576); also in Dozy, Recherches sur l’histoire et la littérature de l’Espagne, vol. 1, p. xxiv, and al-Qalqašandī, Ṣubḥ al-aʿšà, vol. 5, p. 269. Other copies refer to Šānǧuh/Šānǧa (Sancho) as Enrique’s son and successor, and omit a good deal of information on Juan I’s reign, including the mention of his successor. According to Dozy, the mistakes in the first version of al-ʿIbar must have been corrected in the second one. See Dozy, Recherches sur l’histoire et la littérature de l’Espagne, vol. 1, p. xiv, n. 2. some of the reports provided are correct, such as his defeat by the Portuguese in 788 H (1386-7 CE), a clear reference to the victory of the forces commanded by João I of Portugal over those of Juan I of Castile at the Battle of Aljubarrota on 14 August 1385. The date of Juan I’s death is given as 791 H (1389 CE), which is also correct, or almost, as the king died one year later (specif. on 9 October 1390, i.e., 28 šawwāl 792). What is not correct, to my knowledge, is the report according to which another of Enrique II’s sons named “Ġūmis” (Gómez ?) fled to Granada when his brother acceded to the throne and, later, supported the Portuguese king (al-burtuqāl).⁵⁸ Uría Maqua, “El conde don Alfonso”; Morales Muñiz, “Alfonso Enríquez”. It may refer to Alfonso Enríquez, Count of Noreña and Gijón (d. ca. 1400), the eldest natural son of Enrique II, who rebelled against his half-brother Juan I of Castile and entered into negotiations with the Portuguese. Equally untrue is Juan I’s victory over João I and the former’s conquest of Lisbon.

As regards the successor of Juan I of Castile, his name is said to be Pedro (Biṭruh), instead of Enrique (III). Ibn Ḫaldūn says that as a young child, he was tutored by the markīš - “the maternal uncle of his grandfather” Enrique II - who also held the regency. The maternal uncle of Enrique II, the brother of his mother Leonor de Guzmán, was Alonso Meléndez (or Alfonso Méndez) de Guzmán, who was Grand Master of the Order of Santiago. However, he had died of disease in 1342 during the siege of Algeciras, ⁵⁹ López Fernández, “El maestrazgo de Alfonso Méndez de Guzmán en la Orden de Santiago”. that is, 37 years before Enrique III’s birth (1379). Among the tutors of Enrique III, who was 11 years old when his father died, was Alfonso, Marquis of Villena (d. 1412),⁶⁰ The Marquis of Villena was the grandson of James II of Aragon (r. 1291-1327) by the latter’s son Pedro of Aragon, count of Ribagorza (d. 1381). Álvarez Palenzuela, “Alfonso. El Viejo”. For his part, Enrique III of Castile was the grandson of Pedro IV of Aragon by his daughter Leonor (d. 1382), and hence, the great-great-grandson of James II. who was also a member of the council that assumed the regency upon Juan I’s death in 1390.⁶¹ The Council of Regency was made up of members of the nobility, among them López de Ayala himself. See López de Ayala, Crónicas de los reyes de Castilla, vol. 2, pp. 354-356, 421 (ed. Martín, pp. 707-708, 767). It is therefore possible that Ibn Ḫaldūn is referring to the Marquis of Villena.⁶² This is also Dozy’s opinion. See Recherches sur l’histoire et la littérature de l’Espagne, vol. 1, p. 122, n. 3. In 1393, not having yet reached the age of 14, Enrique III assumed power; he died in 1406, the same year as Ibn Ḫaldūn.

4.1. Pedro I in Durar al-ʿuqūd al-farīda

As noted above (sect. 2), al-Qalqašandī took the information on Pedro I and his successors from the section on the Christian kings in Ibn Ḫaldūn’s al-ʿIbar, of which he extracted some relevant information so as to give an abridged but coherent version (Ṣubḥ al-aʿšà, vol. 5, p. 269al-Qalqašandī, Aḥmad b. ʿAlī, Ṣubḥ al-aʿšà, 14 vols., Cairo, al-Maṭbaʿa al-Amīriyya, 1331-1338/1913-1919.).

Much more interesting is al-Maqrīzī’s account of Pedro I’s reign, which is also based on Ibn Ḫaldūn’s work, but it offers an ostensibly more expanded version. The entry devoted to this king in al-Maqrīzī’s Durar al-ʿuqūd (vol. 1, pp. 482-486, no. 367al-Maqrīzī, Aḥmad b. ʿAlī, Durar al-ʿuqūd al-farīda fī tarāǧim al-aʿyān al-mufīda, Maḥmūd al-Ǧalīlī (ed.), 4 vols., Beirut, Dār al-Ġarb al-Islāmī, 1423/2002.) begins with his nasab. The king is introduced as “Biṭruh b. Alhanšuh b. Biṭruh b. Hirrānduh b. Šānǧuh b. Hirrānduh b. Hirrānduh al-Aḥwal b. Alfunš, descendant of Uḏfūnš b. Bīṭrī”, that is, ‘Pedro son of Alfonso son of Pedro son of Fernando son of Sancho son of Fernando son of Fernando the Squint-Eyed son of Alfonso, descendant of Alfonso son of Pedro’. Al-Maqrīzī built this nasab by tracing Pedro’s predecessors back to Alfonso VIII of Castile as listed in Ibn Ḫaldūn’s work. The nasab is not completely accurate; it would rather be: Pedro son of Alfonso [XI] son of Fernando [IV] son of Sancho [IV] son of Alfonso [X] son of Fernando [III] the Squint-Eyed son of Alfonso [IX of León], descendant of Alfonso [I] son of Pedro [of Cantabria].

Then, almost two pages of al-Ǧalīlī’s edition of Durar al-ʿuqūd deal with the territory of each of the four Christian kingdoms of al-Andalus - Castile, Portugal, Navarre and Barcelona - and the history of Castile prior to Pedro I, from Alfonso VIII (r. 1158-1214) to Alfonso XI (r. 1312-1350). As regards the real biography of Pedro I of Castile, al-Maqrīzī constructed it by combining the accounts provided in the ʿIbar sections on the Nasrids and the Christian kings of Iberia, which is already evident from the fact that Enrique, Count of Trastámara, is referred to as “al-qumṭ, who is [also] named al-qund”. The beginning of the passage is closer to the account included in the section on the Christian kings of Iberia, with some details from the section on the Nasrids; from there on, most of the information is drawn from the section on the Nasrids. Al-Maqrīzī will return to the other section for the last part of the passage, but, before this, he introduces a fragment that is found nowhere in al-ʿIbar. As Takao Ito has demonstrated, al-Maqrīzī also received this fragment from his master, in this case orally. ⁶³ Ito, “Writing the Biography of Ibn Khaldūn”, p. 520. The biography that al-Maqrīzī devotes to his teacher Ibn Ḫaldūn in Durar al-ʿuqūd also contains this part not included in al-ʿIbar,⁶⁴ al-Maqrīzī, Durar al-ʿuqūd, vol. 2, pp. 383-410 (no. 720), at pp. 404-405. and there al-Maqrīzī says that Abū Zayd (the kunya of Ibn Ḫaldūn) related to him (ḥaddaṯanā) what he (Ibn Ḫaldūn) had heard from Muḥammad V, who, in turn, had received it from “the ṭāġiya⁶⁵ This term, which literally means ‘tyrant’, was used as an appellation of the Byzantine emperor and, by extension, of the king of the infidels. See Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon, p. 1857a (part 5). king of Castile Pedro” himself (obviously the Castilian king could not possibly have informed the Nasrid sultan about the whole fragment, which includes the account of the former’s own death).

Returning now to the entry on Pedro I in al-Maqrīzī’s Durar al-ʿuqūd al-farīda, after mentioning the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Pedro’s daughter - as reported in the ʿIbar section on the Nasrids - and informing us that the Castilians and the Franks took possession of Castile and the Frontera - as reported in the ʿIbar section on the Christian kings - al-Maqrīzī mentions the disease that affected the troops of the Prince of Wales and made them return to their country, but he offers a rather detailed description of the symptoms of the disease. According to al-Maqrīzī, after a few nights with Pedro, one morning the Prince’s troops woke up covered from head to feet by vermin (qaml), which rotted their bodies and caused high fever. Most of them died after three nights. It seems evident that al-Maqrīzī is here describing the symptomatology of the bubonic plague.

The account of Pedro I’s reign inserted into the biography devoted to Ibn Ḫaldūn in al-Maqrīzī’s Durar al-ʿuqūd is very similar up to this point (though more abridged), with the exception that it contains no reference to the Prince of Wales’s marriage to Pedro’s daughter. From this point onward, the contents of both versions are essentially the same, but the wording is somewhat different, the version included in the biography of Ibn Ḫaldūn being slightly longer than the one in the biography of Pedro.

Al-Maqrīzī goes on to recount that, once the Prince and his troops had returned to England, the Count marched towards his brother, and laid siege to him in a fortress of Ǧillīqiya. Here al-Maqrīzī’s account is similar to that in the ʿIbar section on the Nasrids, but then provides a much more detailed version of Enrique killing Pedro. For the sake of comparison, I offer below a translation of this episode as it appears in the biographies devoted to Pedro I and Ibn Ḫaldūn in al-Maqrīzī’s Durar al-ʿuqūd.

The information on Pedro I of Castile inserted into the biography devoted to Ibn Ḫaldūn ends at this point.

Al-Maqrīzī’s account of Pedro’s death contains historical elements - or rather, elements that are found in literature - but some of them are original - or, at least, I have not found them anywhere else. In his Crónicas de los reyes de CastillaLópez de Ayala, Pedro, Crónicas de los reyes de Castilla Don Pedro, Don Enrique II, Don Juan I, Don Enrique III, por D. Pedro Lopez de Ayala chanciller mayor de Castilla, con las enmiendas del Secretario Geronimo Zurita, y las correcciones y notas añadidas por Don Eugenio de Llaguno Amirola, 2 vols., Madrid, Imprenta de Don Antonio de Sancha, 1779., López de Ayala ⁶⁷ López de Ayala, Crónicas de los reyes de Castilla, vol. 1, pp. 551-556 (ed. Martín, pp. 430-433). recounts that Men Rodríguez de Sanabria, a nobleman loyal to Pedro, met secretly with the Breton military commander Bertrand Du Guesclin (d. 1380), who supported Enrique, and on behalf of Pedro offered him some towns and money in exchange for Pedro’s freedom. Du Guesclin accepted, but then informed Enrique. On the night of 23 March 1369 Pedro left the fortress and entered the tent of Du Guesclin. The supporters of Enrique would not let him go until Enrique entered the tent. López de Ayala’s account of the encounter between the brothers reads as follows:

Al-Maqrīzī adds another version of Pedro’s death, introduced by “wa-qad qīla” (‘And it is sometimes said’), which is more in line with López de Ayala’s account. This second version is an almost verbatim reproduction of that included in the section on the Christian kings of Ibn Ḫaldūn’s al-ʿIbar. ⁶⁹ See above, p. 5, col. b (from “When it was evident” to “and killed him”).

Other historians added details to López de Ayala’s account, some of which remind us of al-Maqrīzī’s first, more expanded, version of the episode, the one that he apparently received from Ibn Ḫaldūn orally and also included in his biography of his teacher in Durar al-ʿuqūd. In his Bienandanzas e fortunas (book xvii) Lope García de Salazar (d. 1476) offers an account based on López de Ayala’s, but with important differences. In general, García de Salazar offers an abridged version, but it contains some details missing from López de Ayala’s CrónicasLópez de Ayala, Pedro, Crónicas, José-Luis Martín (ed.), Barcelona, Planeta, 1991. that were widespread in literature: ⁷⁰ For a comparison between López de Ayala’s and García de Salazar’s accounts, see Valdaliso Casanova, “Fuentes para el estudio del reinado de Pedro I de Castilla”.

As we can observe, both García de Salazar and al-Maqrīzī state that someone helped Enrique to kill his brother, by seizing Pedro by the legs and turning him over so that Enrique could get on top, according to García de Salazar; by handing Enrique a knife since both rivals were unarmed, according to al-Maqrīzī.

There are different versions concerning the identity of the person who helped Enrique II to kill his brother. Tradition has it that it was the abovementioned Bertrand Du Guesclin who helped Enrique, and who said, “I neither remove nor make a king, I merely help my master”, which is a common saying in Spanish: Ni quito ni pongo rey, pero ayudo a mi señor. This is, for example, the version of the nineteenth-century writers Duque de Rivas (d. 1865) in El fratricidio (ballad IV) and José Zorrilla (d. 1893) in El Zapatero y el rey (act IV, scene IV). ⁷² Duque de Rivas, El fratricidio (ballad IV), in Romances históricos, p. 65, [online], available in: https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/romances-historicos--0/html/fedd0eaa-82b1-11df-acc7-002185ce6064_5.html [accessed 16/03/2022]; Zorrilla, El zapatero y el rey, (segunda parte), p. 83, [online], available in: http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/el-zapatero-y-el-rey-segunda-parte--0/html/ff902008-82b1-11df-acc7-002185ce6064_6.html [accessed 16/03/2022]. Far from having Du Guesclin put to death, Enrique granted him titles on top of those he already held, including that of Duke of Molina and Soria.⁷³ Salazar y Acha, “La nobleza titulada medieval en la Corona de Castilla”, esp. pp. 17 and 39.

However, documents chronologically much closer to the facts do not attribute the deed to the Breton commander, at least not to his direct action. ⁷⁴ According to La Chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin, written by the fourteenth-century troubadour Johannes Cuvelier (fl. 1380), Du Guesclin told someone else (the “bastart d’Anières”) to do it. See Cuvelier, Chronique de Bertrand du Guesclin, vol. 2, p. 119. The Portuguese chronicler Fernão Lopes (d. after 1459) attributes the deed to Fernán Sánchez de Tovar (d. 1384) in his Crónica do rei D. Fernando (ch. 23). See Fernão Lopes, Chronica de el-rei D. Fernando, vol. 1, p. 81. The account by the fourteenth-century French historian Jean Froissart (d. ca. 1405) is particularly relevant. He states in his Chroniques that it was the Viscount of Rocaberti who seized Pedro by the legs.⁷⁵ Froissart, Chroniques, vol. 7, pp. 81-82; Chronicles, pp. 173-174. This version was echoed by the sixteenth-century chronicler of the Aragonese Crown Jerónimo Zurita (d. 1580) in his Anales de la Corona de Aragón. Zurita, Anales de la Corona de Aragón, book 10, ch. 5. According to Froissart, as soon as Enrique entered the room, he said to his brother, “Where is that Jewish son of a whore who calls himself king of Castile?”, to which Pedro replied, “You are the son of a whore. I am the son of good king Alfonso”.⁷⁶ Froissart, Chroniques, vol. 7, p. 81; Chronicles, p. 173. This exchange of insults between Pedro and his brother Enrique - who, as noted, was an illegitimate son of Alfonso XI by Leonor de Guzmán - is reminiscent of the passage in al-Maqrīzī’s Durar al-ʿuqūd al-farīda where the Prince of Wales is reported to have called Enrique a “son of adultery” (ibn zinya) in order to substantiate his claim to the throne of Castile by right of his son by Pedro’s daughter. Al-Maqrīzī’s account is undoubtedly based on the version included in the section on the Christian kings in Ibn Ḫaldūn’s al-ʿIbar, but again it offers a slightly expanded version that includes the insulting words addressed by the Prince of Wales to Enrique.

In the entries on Muḥammad V and Yūsuf II in Durar al-ʿuqūd al-farīda, al-Maqrīzī also records the information on Pedro’s plea for aid from the Nasrid ruler, which serves him to present two additional accounts of the Castilian Civil War. The passage included in the entry on Yūsuf II (Durar al-ʿuqūd, vol. 3, p. 554al-Maqrīzī, Aḥmad b. ʿAlī, Durar al-ʿuqūd al-farīda fī tarāǧim al-aʿyān al-mufīda, Maḥmūd al-Ǧalīlī (ed.), 4 vols., Beirut, Dār al-Ġarb al-Islāmī, 1423/2002.) is a very abridged version of the ʿIbar account in the section on the Nasrids. More interesting is the account offered in the entry on Muḥammad V (Durar al-ʿuqūd, vol. 3, p. 261al-Maqrīzī, Aḥmad b. ʿAlī, Durar al-ʿuqūd al-farīda fī tarāǧim al-aʿyān al-mufīda, Maḥmūd al-Ǧalīlī (ed.), 4 vols., Beirut, Dār al-Ġarb al-Islāmī, 1423/2002.). This version is also similar (though more abridged) to that included in the section on the Nasrids in Ibn Ḫaldūn’s al-ʿIbar, but with a substantial difference: according to this version, it was Pedro who married the daughter of the Prince of Wales, and had a male son by her, whereby the Prince of Wales fought against the Count in behalf of his grandson (ra ʾà anna ibn ibnatihi huwa al-malik, lit. ‘he considered that the son of his daughter was the king’), and not his own son. Pedro, when he was still infante of Castile, was betrothed to Joan, daughter of Edward III of England, and hence sister of Edward of Woodstock, Prince of Wales, but she died of the Black Death in 1348 on her journey to Castile before the marriage could take place. ⁷⁷ Russell, “Una alianza frustrada. Las bodas de Pedro I de Castilla y Juana Plantagenet”. As noted above, it was John of Gaunt who claimed the throne in the name of his wife Constanza, who was Pedro’s daughter.

From where did al-Maqrīzī take the information on Pedro of Castile that is not found in Ibn Ḫaldūn’s al-ʿIbar? As said above, Ito has demonstrated that al-Maqrīzī heard from his teacher Ibn Ḫaldūn the longer version of Pedro I’s death, i.e., the one included in the Durar biographies devoted to Pedro I and Ibn Ḫaldūn, which contain the description of the disease that killed most of the Prince of Wales’s troops and a detailed account of Pedro’s death at his brother’s hands. ⁷⁸ Ito, “Writing the Biography of Ibn Khaldūn”, p. 520.

But what about the version included in the biography of Muḥammad V? It is possible that the authority of al-Maqrīzī for this version was also Ibn Ḫaldūn, and that al-Maqrīzī accidentally mixed up the information on who married whose daughter. Bearing in mind that the rest of the biography is based beyond doubt on the section on the Nasrids in Ibn Ḫaldūn’s al-ʿIbar, this is indeed the most plausible explanation. That said, we know that al-Maqrīzī relied on at least one other textual or oral source for the history of the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula, in order to continue the narrative of the Crown of Aragon until Alfonso V (r. 1416-1458). ⁷⁹ The last Aragonese king mentioned in the ʿIbar passage on the kingdom of Barcelona is Martín I (r. 1396-1410). Furthermore, the biography dealing with Pedro IV of Aragon in al-Maqrīzī’s Durar al-ʿuqūd also contains information on Martín I’s predecessors that is not found in Ibn Ḫaldūn’s al-ʿIbar. Al-Maqrīzī may have received it orally from his teacher, but there is no doubt that he had to rely on, at least, another source for the information on kings Fernando I (r. 1412-1416) and Alfonso V (r. 1416-1458), whose accession to the throne took place after Ibn Ḫaldūn’s death. Therefore, we cannot completely rule out the possibility that al-Maqrīzī also relied on this unidentified source to embellish Ibn Ḫaldūn’s account of the history of the Castilian kings until Enrique III (r. 1390-1406). ⁸⁰ Pedro IV of Aragon was born in 1319, started to reign in 1336, and died in 1387 at the age of 67.

Be that as it may, the fact is that al-Maqrīzī even mentions Enrique III’s successor, Juan II of Castile (r. 1406-1454), as well as other Castilian kings, but he does so not in the biography of Pedro I of Castile, but in that of Pedro IV of Aragon.

4.2. Pedro IV of Aragon and his successors in Durar al-ʿuqūd al-farīda

Pedro IV of Aragon’s biography in al-Maqrīzī’s Durar al-ʿuqūd contains, as shown below, a great deal of information that is not found in al-ʿIbar (words in boldface are found only in al-Maqrīzī’s book):

In addition to containing some simple mistakes, such as attributing Pedro IV of Aragon around 70 years of rule instead of age at death (the ʿIbar text is ambiguous in this regard), the Durar passage on this king and his successors is rather confusing. First, it conflates information on the Crown of Aragon with information regarding the Crown of Castile. Thus, Pedro IV is said to have been killed by his brother “Indrīk” (from the Spanish ‘Enrique’) in Seville in 787/1385-6. Pedro IV died in 1387, but the rest of the report is obviously inspired by Pedro I’s biography. The son and successor of Pedro IV is referred to as al-dukk, ‘the Duke’, in reference to king Juan I (r. 1387-1396), first Duke of Girona - title of the heir apparent to the Crown of Aragon. Al-Maqrīzī adds the duke’s name, which he gives as “F.r.d.rīk”. ⁸¹ This may be a confusion with Fadrique, Duke of Benavente. He was the natural son of Enrique II.

Juan I of Aragon was succeeded by his brother Martín I (r. 1396-1410). After the latter, al-Maqrīzī reports the death of “Indrīk” (previously mentioned as the killer of his brother Pedro), who must obviously be identified with Enrique II of Castile; ⁸² Interestingly enough, in the Durar entry on Pedro I of Castile, Enrique II is always referred to as al-qund/al-qumṭ and his name is never given. then, the accession to the throne of his son “Ǧuwān son of F.d.rīk”,⁸³ This mistake must be due to a paleographical confusion between إندريك and فدريك. that is, Juan I of Castile; then, the latter’s death while riding a horse, and the subsequent accession to the throne of his son “Indrīk”, that is, Enrique III of Castile; and, finally, the accession to the throne of Enrique III’s son “Dūn Ǧuwān”,⁸⁴ “Dūn” or “Ḏūn” stands for Spanish ‘Don’. that is, Juan II of Castile. So far, nothing in the Durar passage lets the reader know that part of the narrative corresponds to the history of the Crown of Castile. Only at this point does al-Maqrīzī return to the kings of Aragon, and he does so explicitly, by mentioning that “F.r.nādū b. Indrīk” (Fernando son of Enrique) set out from Seville - in “the lands of the fūnš”, i.e., Castile - and that he conquered Barcelona upon the death of king “Martīn”. This makes reference to the accession to the Aragonese throne of Fernando of Antequera, son of Juan I of Castile, who was proclaimed king of Aragon in the Compromise of Caspe after his maternal uncle Martín I died in May 1410 without a legitimate heir. After a two-year interregnum, Fernando of Antequera ruled the Crown of Aragon as Fernando I from 1412 to 1416.

The mistakes in Durar al-ʿuqūd seem to be due to misunderstandings and conflation between the history of the Castilian and Aragonese crowns, which al-Maqrīzī had received (in writing or orally) both from his teacher and from other sources for the information on kings that ruled after Ibn Ḫaldūn’s death, namely, Juan II of Castile (r. 1406-1454), Fernando I of Aragon (r. 1412 to 1416), and his son and successor Alfonso V of Aragon (r. 1416-1458), referred to as “Alfunsū b. Dūn F.r.nādū”. The fact that both Juan I of Castile and Juan I of Aragon - apart from bearing the same name - died by falling from their horses ⁸⁵ Notwithstanding, there is no doubt that the person referred to is Juan I of Castile, who died in Alcalá de Henares, about 20 km from Guadalajara, whilst Juan I of Aragon died in the Baix Empordà. may possibly have added to the confusion.

In sum, we do not know what source Ibn Ḫaldūn used for the information on the Christian kingdoms of Iberia after his departure from Granada. Neither do we know what source al-Maqrīzī used after his teacher’s death, in order to continue the narrative up to his own times. It is possible that they received this information orally from a traveler or an Andalusi migrant, which could account for the numerous mistakes and inconsistencies in this fragment. It should also be borne in mind that al-Maqrīzī worked for the Mamluk administration, and hence had access to official documentation, in which he may have found some pieces of information on Christian Iberia relevant to his book. ⁸⁶ See the collective volume on diplomatic relations of the Mamluk sultanate edited by Bauden and Dekkiche, Mamluk Cairo, a Crossroads for Embassies; particularly relevant for the present article is chapter 14, “Diplomatic Correspondence between Nasrid Granada and Mamluk Cairo”, written by Boloix Gallardo. For the reuse al-Maqrīzī made of documents issued by the Mamluk chancery as writing material for his own works, see, e.g., Bauden, “Du destin des archives en Islam”; Hirschler, “From Archive to Archival Practices”, esp. pp. 8-12, where further references can be found.