al-Ghazāl

Yahyā ibn Hakam al-Bakrī al-Ghazāl ( Arabic يحيى بن حكم البكري الغزال, DMG Yaḥyā ibn Ḥakam al-Bakrī al-Ġazāl ; * around 790 in Jaén ) was a Moorish poet and diplomat. It owes its name (in German : "The Gazelle") to its slim figure.

Life

Under Abd ar-Rahman II , he was sent to Constantinople in 840 as an ambassador to Emperor Theophilus , who offered the Emir of Cordoba an alliance against the Abbasids and their vassals, the Aghlabids . At the Byzantine court he impressed the emperor and his wife with his poetry , so that they gave him rich presents.

After the Vikings attacked the coasts of al-Andalus in 844, he was sent on a diplomatic mission to the king of al-Majus . The exact purpose of his trip is unclear, but as he tells of an island world, it seems the court of the Danish king Erik I. to have been. Another possibility would be Ireland , with its Norwegian high king Turgesius . The aim of the mission is said to have been to dissuade the Madjus from another attack on al-Andalus.

literature

• Douglas M. Dunlop: The British Isles According To Medieval Arabic Authors . In: The Islamic Quarterly , 1957, salaam.co.uk
• Georg Jacob: Arab reports from ambassadors to Germanic royal courts from the 9th and 10th centuries . Berlin [u. a.] 1927.
• F. Donald Logan: The Vikings in history . 2nd Edition. London / New York 1991, ISBN 0-415-08396-6 .