Rāyāt al-mubarrizīn wa-ghāyāt al-mumayyazīn

Rāyāt al-mubarrizīn wa-ghāyāt al-mumayyazīn (Banners of the Champions and the Standards of the Distinguished, also translated as Pennants of the Champions) is a thirteenth-century anthology of Arabic Andalucian poetry by Ibn Said al-Maghribi. It is, in the words of Louis Crompton, 'perhaps the most important' of the various medieval Andalucian poetry anthologies. 'His aim in compiling the collection seems to have been to show that poetry produced in the West was as good as anything the East had to offer (and that stuff by Ibn Sa'id and his family was especially good)'. It survives today in only one manuscript.

The Rāyāt al-mubarrizīn wa-ghāyāt al-mumayyazīn is part of the fifteen-volume al-Mughrib fī ḥulā l-Maghrib ('The Extraordinary Book on the Adornments of the West'), whose compilation Ibn Said completed. But the Rāyāt al-mubarrizīn wa-ghāyāt al-mumayyazīn also circulated separately. Ibn Said compiled Rāyāt al-mubarrizīn wa-ghāyāt al-mumayyazīn in Cairo, completing it on 21 June 1243 (641 by Islamic dating). Its patron and dedicatee was Musā ibn Yaghmūr (1203-65).

Ibn Said wrote that he wished to include only those few fragments "whose idea is more subtle than the West Wind, and whose language is more beautiful than a pretty face." The poetry chosen all in the classical style, following 'all the traditional conventions of ryme, meter, and lexicon' and excluding colloquial verse.

The anthology is arranged according to home and occupation of the writer, proceeding through western, central, and eastern Spain, to Ibiza, North Africa, and then Sicily. It thus covers the whole of the Andalusian world, including Alcalá, Córdoba, Granada, Lisbon, Murcia, Zaragoza, Seville, Toledo, and Valencia. Within each region, the poems are ordered by city, and then by the poet's occupation, from the highest social rank to the lowest. Authors include bureaucrats, gentlemen, kings, ministers, and scholars; the book is evidence of how important love poetry was to the educated of al-Andalus. In all, the anthology contains 314 poetic fragments by 145 identifiable poets; Ibn Said also included a prologue and a short epilogue, along with occasional comments on the texts and brief notes on the poets.

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