

The Chambers Biographical Dictionary records that they arrived in Spain in the 8th century but the name is familiar from the romance by Ginés Pérez de Hita, Guerras civiles de Granada, which celebrates the feuds of the Abencerrages and the rival family of the Benedin ( Arabic banu Edin), and the cruel treatment to which the former were subjected. Little is known of the family with certainty.

The name appears to have been derived from Yussuf ben-Serragh, the head of the tribe in the time of Muhammed VII, Sultan of Granada (1370–1408), who did that sovereign good service in his struggles to retain the crown of which he was three times deprived. The Abencerrages or Abencerrajes (from the Arabic for "Saddler's Son") were a family or faction that is said to have held a prominent position in the Kingdom of Granada in the 15th century.
