Luis del Mármol Carvajal

Luis del Mármol Carvajal, "Historia del rebelión y castigo de los moriscos del Reino de Granada". Map of Granada, 1795.

Luis del Marmol Carvajal (Granada, Spain, 1520 - Velez Malaga, Spain, 1600) was a Spanish chronicler living many years among the formerly Moorish Granada kingdom morisco's inhabitants and in the North African Berber regions at the end of the 15th, and a good part of the 16th century.

He was proficient in Hassaniya Arabic, Berber Tamazight and/or the Algerian Berber Taqbaylit language. He was the illegitimate son of a High Justice Officer, Pedro del Marmol, who recognized him as his natural son in 1528. Whether his mother was some sort of slave or personal servant of this High Court Office lawyer, his father, "given" or "bought" after the conquest of Granada, 1492, cannot be confirmed.

It is well known that after the dissolution of the Caliph of Córdoba in the 11th century, many of the rulers and people from the kingdom of Granada maintained that their identities were essentially Zenata Berber. This may explain their settlements and affinity with the Merinid and after the Wattasids dynasty, (وطاسيون waṭāsīyūn), ruling Fez, until, after 1554, the Saadi´s rulers, (Arabic: سعديون), from Tagmadert, at the Draa river valley, near Tidzi, near Zagora, conquered the town.

It is said that for eight years Luis del Marmol was imprisoned in Algiers, and that he returned to Spain in his mid-thirties after fighting in Italy, Spain and the North African litoral from the Atlantic shores. He spent time moving and visiting places, including Libyan Berber areas. Dates for these adventures are given just around 1554, curiously enough after the conquest of Fez.

Luis del Mármol y Carvajal's history is a very valuable reference for it covers a period longer by a further 50 years, than that of the other Andalusian chronicler, the diplomat and author of Description of Africa, known as Joannes Leo Africanus, or al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi, (ar: حسن ابن محمد الوزان الفاسي) (c. 1494 – c. 1554?).

References

• http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/extaut?codigo=75827
• http://www.filol.csic.es/departamentos/curricula/cv_garenal.html. A curriculum on the life and work of Spanish Arabis woman Mercedes García-Arenal, born 1950.