What is the name of the fictional Moorish historian credited as the original author of Don Quixote?

Cide Hamete Benengeli is the fictional Moorish historian credited as the original author of Don Quixote. Cervantes presents himself not as the true creator of the entire narrative, but as a compiler or translator who discovers and transmits Benengeli’s supposed history.

This fictional authorship begins in Part One when the narrator claims that the surviving account comes from an Arabic manuscript found in Toledo. The device lets Cervantes imitate a convention of chivalric romances, whose authors often pretended to translate ancient or foreign manuscripts.

Cide Hamete also creates a playful distance between Cervantes and the story. Since the narrator is supposedly translating Benengeli, he can comment on the historian’s reliability, wording, omissions and biases. The result is an early example of metafiction: a novel that openly plays with how stories are written and transmitted.

The name is sometimes spelled or translated differently, and Cervantes gives the historian several cultural labels, including Arab and Manchegan. Those variations do not change the canonical English answer: Cide Hamete Benengeli.