Cide Hamete Benengeli

Cide Hamete Benengeli is a fictional Arab Muslim historian created by Miguel de Cervantes in his novel ''Don Quixote'', who Cervantes says is the true author of most of the work. This is a skilful metafictional literary pirouette that seems to give more credibility to the text, making the reader believe that Don Quixote was a real person and the story is decades old. However, it is obvious to the reader that such a thing is impossible, and that the pretense of Cide Hamete's work is meant as a joke.

In the preface of Part One of the novel (published in 1605), Cervantes indicates that he is not the original author, but is simply passing on information that can be found in "the archives of La Mancha". At the end of Chapter VIII, Cervantes states that the information from the archives ends in a particularly exciting cliffhanger, and in Chapter IX, he describes finding an Arabic manuscript called "The History of Don Quixote of La Mancha, written by Cide Hamete Benengeli, an Arab historian."

In Part Two (published in 1615), the young scholar Carrasco informs Don Quixote that the story of his adventures is well-known, thanks to the publication of his history by Cide Hamete.

Cide Hamete is Moorish, although this adjective is not explicitly applied to him. Cervantes says that he is "Arabian and Manchegan": in other words, a Spanish Muslim Arab-speaker, and not a North African or an Ottoman. However, in Part Two, Chapter XLIV, Benengeli writes, "I, though a Moor..."

Scholar Maria Rosa Menocal offers a broader cultural interpretation of Cervantes’ device. In her acclaimed work ''The Ornament of the World'', Menocal argues that presenting Cide Hamete Benengeli as a Moorish historian is more than a humorous ruse—it is a nostalgic invocation of Spain’s lost multicultural era of convivencia. She highlights how the discovery of an Arabic manuscript amid a post‑Reconquista society devoid of Jews and Muslims subtly recalls Toledo’s interfaith memory. Rather than mere parody, Menocal sees Cervantes’ framing as a literary gesture that preserves the intellectual milieu of al‑Andalus within the structure of his novel. Provided by Wikipedia