Battle of Guadalete - Sources

Sources

The primary source for the battle is the Mozarabic Chronicle, which was written shortly after 754 probably in the vicinity of Toledo. The Latin Chronicle was written by a Mozarab Christian. The only other Latin Christian source written within a century of the battle is the Historia Langobardorum of Paul the Deacon. Paul was neither Visigothic nor Hispanic, but was writing probably in Montecassino between 787 and 796, where many Visigothic monks had taken refuge. The Chronicle of 741 is a near-contemporary Hispanic source, but it contains no original material pertaining to the battle. Several later Latin Christian sources contain descriptive accounts of the battle that have sometimes been trusted by historians, most notably the Chronicle of Alfonso III, written by Alfonso III of Asturias in the late ninth century. The high medieval accounts, such as that of Lucas de Tuy, are generally untrustworthy, containing much legend and invention.

Besides the Latin Christian sources there are several Arabic language sources widely used by historians, but increasingly coming under heavy criticism. None of them predates the mid-ninth century, the date of the earliest, the Futūh Miṣr of Ibn ʻAbd al-Ḥakam (c.803–71), which was composed in Egypt. This account, more rich in detail than the Mozarabic Chronicle, is at odds with not only the later Latin histories, but also the later Arabic ones: the anonymous compilation called the Akhbar Majmu'ah, the late tenth-century work of Ibn al-Qūṭiyya ("the son of the Goth "), the eleventh-century historian Ibn Hayyān, the thirteenth-century Complete History of Ibn al-Athir, the fourteenth-century history of Ibn Khaldūn, or the early modern work of al-Maqqarī. The Akhbar Majmu'ah in particular was upheld by Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz as a genuine eighth-century work surviving only in later copies, but this view has since been refuted. The French Orientalist Évariste Lévi-Provençal on the other hand advocated Ibn Hayyān as the supreme Muslim historian of the era (and the battle).

Among modern Anglo-American historians, Roger Collins, R. A. Fletcher, E. A. Thompson, and Kenneth Baxter Wolf are sceptical of the Arabic sources and rely more on the Mozarabic Chronicle. Historians Thomas F. Glick and Bernard S. Bachrach are less sceptical. Collins in particular rejects a syncretistic approach incorporating information from all the available sources.