Abd al-Aziz al-Fishtali () (15491621), fully Abu Faris 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Sanhaji al-Fishtali was a Moroccan writer, head of the chancery (wazīr al-ḳalam al-aʿlā), official historiographer and official poet of the Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur.

Biography

Abd al-Aziz was a member of the Fishtala tribe, a Berber Sanhaja tribe situated north of the city of Fez. He studied under teachers such as Abu al-Abbas al-Manjur, al-Humaydi and al-Zammuri. He composed most of the pieces of verse which were engraved, on marble or wood, on the façades and inside the pavilions of the El Badii Palace in Marrakech. His friend and biographer, the historian al-Maqqari, recognized in him the greatest poet of his time and reported that the Moroccan sultan, Ahmad al-Mansur, said: "al-Fishtali made us more illustrious than all the other princes of the earth. We can compare him to Lisan ed-Din Ibn al-Khatib."

Abd al-Aziz al-Fishtali

Works

al-Fishtali wrote 69 poems, numbering 1016 verses.

Abd al-Aziz al-Fishtali

Some of his works are:

Abd al-Aziz al-Fishtali

Manahil al-safa fi ma'athir mawalina al-shurafa (), the one surviving work of al-Fishtali, as the chief scribe of al-Mansur's state. It is considered to be the main source of information for the dynasty of Ahmad al-Mansur. Tartīb Dīwān al-Mutanabbī Madad al-Jaysh, a postscript for Ibn al-Khatib's Jaysh al-tawshīḥ

References

1549 births

1621 deaths

16th-century Berber people

17th-century Berber people

16th-century Moroccan poets

16th-century Arabic-language poets

17th-century Moroccan poets

16th-century Moroccan historians

17th-century Moroccan historians

Berber historians

Berber poets

People from Marrakesh

Saadi dynasty

Sanhaja