The Mugharrarun

Hamidullah translates Idrisi:

The Commander of the Muslims Ali ibn Yusuf ibn Tashfin sent his admiral Ahmad ibn Umar, better known under the name of Raqsh al-Auzz to attack a certain island in the Atlantic, but he died before doing that. [...] Beyond this ocean of fogs it is not known what exists there. Nobody has the sure knowledge of it, because it is very difficult to traverse it. Its atmosphere is foggy, its waves are very strong, its dangers are perilous, its beasts are terrible, and its winds are full of tempests. There are many islands, some of which are inhabited, others are submerged. No navigator traverses them but bypasses them remaining near their coast. [...]

I find nothing controversial here - so far. This description of an inhospitable [Atlantic] "Ocean" is not so different from what Mas'udi had summarised of his Zaman in the Prairies d'Or. That we have the name of an explorer is unusual. Although, we must temper our enthusiasm by noting this man was more of a Von Ulm than a Colombo.

Later on, I found the Arabic on Islamport. Here's Hamidullah:

And it was from the town of Lishbûna [=Lisbon] that the adventurers set out known under the name of Mugharrarun [H. "Mughamarin", Adventurers], penetrated the ocean of fogs and wanted to know what it contained and where it ended.

Still fair enough, best I can tell. "Buccaneers" might do for an alternate translation. It's a similar setup to the Khashkhash story but probably different. And we know the whole western coast of Iberia was AND IS more Moorish even than al-Andalus itself. What Hamidullah doesn't tell us, is that here the explorers... don't get past the main obstacle. Here is the Google-assisted translation:

And they have in the city of Lisbon near the hot baths [=the Alfama], a path attributed to them as the Road Of The Mugharrarun, running to the edge of town. Once upon a time here gathered eight men, all first-cousins. They built a galleon and filled it with water and provisions fit to suffice them for months. Then they entered the sea at the beginning of the eastern wind, so they sailed about eleven days. They arrived at a sea of thick waves, stinking darkness, much haze and little light. They ascertained danger, so they trimmed their sails in the other direction and ran with the sea southward.
So they went out to the island of sheep. There the sheep could not be counted; and they were molting, with neither a shepherd nor a watcher. They traveled to the island, and they descended on it, and they found a spring of running water and a wild fig tree on it. So they took one of these sheep and slaughtered it, but they found the meat inedible. So they flayed the [sheeps'] hides and went south for twelve [more] days...

Or maybe they just sheared the survivors; I don't care, here. Anyway Hamidullah picks up afterward:

After sailing for twelve more days they perceived an island that seemed to be inhabited, and there were cultivated fields. They sailed that way to see what it contained. But soon barques encircled them and made them prisoners, and transported them to a miserable hamlet situated on the coast. There they landed. The navigators saw there people with red skin; there was not much hair on their body, the hair of their head was straight, and they were of high stature. Their women were of an extraordinary beauty.

"Red", to an Arab historian, means redneck. It means "white". Everyone who's read Sulayman Bashear knows that.

To sum up, Hamidullah wanted you to think that they'd met the Red Skins. But the intermediating text is clearly talking about islands of sheep; there were no sheep in the Caribbean. Hamidullah also stops before the eight men meet people speaking intelligible "Berber" and, also, Arabic. These islands are the Canaries - and Hamidullah knew it. Before they got to the Îles des Rednecques, we might suspect the men reached the Azores and/or Madeira: assuming some earlier explorer had dropped sheep off there, as Western explorers later did with goats and/or pigs, and as Polynesians did with chickens. Idrisi didn't imply anything else.

Before that, inasmuch as this ship ran into polluted water, that could well be the Sargasso. That is an achievement in itself. But Hamidullah deliberately withheld that information. Because he's a kâdhib.