Reworking the Almohad Model of Victory Letters: Ibn ʿAṭiyya’s Letter on Abū Ḥafṣ al-Hintī’s Victory over the Rebel ʿUmar al-Massī (541/1148) La réélaboration du modèle almohade des lettres de victoire: la lettre d’Ibn ʿAṭiyya sur la victoire d’Abū Ḥ afṣ al-Hintī contre le rebelle ʿUmar al-Massī (541/1148) En Fr

Résumé En

The chancellery letters reported by later sources were often altered. Theseletters have been preserved and transmitted to us following a threefold process of selection,fragmentation and modification. Among the victory letters produced by the Almohadchancellery is the one written by Ibn ʿAṭiyya (516/1123-553/1158) informing the ruler Abdal-Mumin of Abū Ḥafṣ al-Hintī’s victory over the rebel ʿUmar al-Massī (541/1148). Presentedin the sources as a model, this letter was nevertheless taken up by chroniclers, geographersor anthologists subsequent to the Almohad dynasty, it was reworked, rewritten by deletingwords and phrases or adding to them. But beyond the errors of copying, the fact of includingor not including certain words in the manuscript is a choice made by the author, which makessense. These changes are not numerous, but they open the way to other interpretations ofthe event history and ideology of the Almohad movement and bear witness to the desire ofthese authors to add their own touch to the history and literature of the Ancients, so much sothat the transformations reflect their respective literary, dogmatic or psychological concerns.Thus, the anthology of the Iḥāṭa tackles the dogmatic substance of the letter, while the Rawḍembellishes its literary character and the most recent chronicle, the Istiqṣā, reacts to the“Shiite” tendencies of the document.