Editing Guanches (section)

=== Pre-conquest exploration ===
{{Main|Canary Islands in pre-colonial times}}
[[File:AlonsoFernandezdeLugo3.JPG|thumb|upright=1.2|Guanche kings of Tenerife surrendering to [[Alonso Fernández de Lugo]]]]
The geographic accounts of [[Pliny the Elder]] and of [[Strabo]] mention the [[Fortunate Isles]] but do not report anything about their populations.

An account of the Guanche population may have been made around AD 1150 by the Arab geographer [[Muhammad al-Idrisi]] in the ''Nuzhatul Mushtaq'', a book he wrote for [[Roger II|King Roger II of Sicily]]. Al-Idrisi reports a journey in the Atlantic Ocean made by the Mugharrarin ("the adventurers"), a family of [[Al-Andalus|Andalusian]] seafarers from [[Lisbon]]. The only surviving version of this book, kept at the [[Bibliothèque Nationale de France]], and first translated by [[Pierre Amédée Jaubert]], reports that, after having reached an area of "sticky and stinking waters," the Mugharrarin moved back and first reached an uninhabited Island ([[Madeira]] or [[Hierro]]), where they found "a huge quantity of sheep, which its meat was bitter and inedible". They "continued southward" and reached another island where they were soon surrounded by barks and brought to "a village whose inhabitants were often fair haired with long and flaxen hair and the women of a rare beauty." Among the villagers, one spoke Arabic and asked them where they came from. Then the king of the village ordered them to bring villagers back to the continent. There they were surprised to be welcomed by Berbers.<ref>{{cite book |last=Idrisi |title=La première géographie de l'Occident |language=fr |trans-title=The first geography of the West |publisher=NEF |location=Paris |date=1999}}</ref>

Apart from the marvelous and fanciful content of this history, this account suggests that the Guanche had sporadic contacts with populations from the mainland. Al-Idrisi described the Guanche men as tall and of a reddish-brown complexion.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hodgkin |first1=Thomas |title=On the Ancient Inhabitants of the Canary Islands |date=1848 |publisher=[[Journal of the Ethnological Society]] |page=173 |url=https://archive.org/download/jstor-3014084/3014084.pdf |access-date=16 May 2016}}</ref>

During the 14th century, the Guanche are presumed to have had other contacts with [[Balearic Islands|Balearic]] seafarers from Spain. This is based on the Balearic [[Artifact (archaeology)|artifacts]] found on several of the Canary Islands.{{Citation needed|date=April 2009}}