id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
alusur-6853	Toral-Niehoff, Isabel 	Writing for the Caliphate: The Unique Necklace by Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih*	2018	16	.pdf	application/pdf	8075	437	60	There I have shown that Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih organized his history as biographies of an uninterrupted chain of legitimate rulers (khulafāʾ) that linked the Prophet, via the eastern Umayyads, with the Umayyads in al-Andalus, ending with ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Nāṣir. Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih belonged to a class of citizens on the inferior rung of the social ladder who sought the patronage of those above them: this is suggested by the fact that he addressed several of his panegyrics to two prestigious members of the elite buyutāt (large aristocratic houses), namely to the commander Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Abī ʿAbdāʾ19 and the minister ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad al-Zajjālī,20 which indicates that the precariously employed court poet was seeking to gain access to the inner circles.21 We do not know if he ever held an official position in the court administration as a kātib or some other capacity.22 After a period spent outside Cordoba during the fitna at the end of the 3rd/9th century, he returned to the Umayyad court of Cordoba around 300/912, where he spent the last decades of his life as court poet of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Nāṣir, whom he praised in numerous poems, the most famous being a long urjūza celebrating military campaigns undertaken at the beginning of his rule.23 It is likely that the cumbersome collection and composition of the ʿIqd took place during this tranquil period in his life, under the tutelage of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Nāṣir.	cache/alusur-6853.pdf	txt/alusur-6853.txt