154 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINremained a feature of the accounts of ,the conquests that first started
to be written in the ninth century.
Arab historiography grew directly out of the tradition of biograph-
ical writing about the life of the Prophet, which originated in the
eighth century. By the beginning of the ninth century attention had
turned to the period of the first conquests, One of the most signifi-
cant figures responsible for this development was Abu 'Abd Allah
Mul;tammad ibn 'Umar ibn Waqid al-Waqidi (747-823), who wrote
an account of Mul).ammad's campaigns, and whose materials relating
to the conquest of Spain were subsequently quoted by al-Baladhuri
(d.892) and Ibn Idhari amongst others. A number of other 'Con-
quest' books by Waqidi are still extant, but serious doubts have been
expressed about their authenticity, and only a small number of early
elements may be retained in them.^21 In general the early study of the
period of the conquests was far more influenced by the character of
its religious-biographical origins than by any borrowings from the
secular narrative traditions of Byzantine or western historiography.22
In consequence, it tended to be apparently more interested in re-
cording the acts and sayings of individuals, and at the same time to
use these as the means of validating or exemplifying juridical and
doctrinal points. History thus provides examples for the present rather
than serving as a record of the past. Although, with the growth of
large-scale narrative historical writing, first exemplified in Spain by
the fragmentary Muqtabis of Ibn J:layyan, more interest seems to
have developed in reporting events for their own sake, the moralising
tendency remained a powerful element underlying the selection and
presentation of events. Also, the earlier and briefer works remained
the bed-rock on which later writers drew for their own presentation
of the period of the conquests. All of these features, and the prob-
lems that result from them, can be seen in the Arab historiography
of the conquest of Al-Andalus.
The narrative of the events of the conquest as pieced together
from the Arab sources, could be said to run as follows.^23 Having
completed the conquest of the Byzantine province of Mrica with the
capture of Carthage in 698, Arab rule was extended gradually over
the course of the succeeding decade along the whole of the North
Mrican littoral as far as Ceuta and Tangier. This process was initiated
by the governor Hasan al-Nu'man and completed by his successor
Musa ibn Nu~ayr. Although some of the Hispano-Arab texts have
Musa appointed in 697/8, the later date of 705 given in Egyptian and