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Ibn Hawqal | |
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Born | |
Died | after 978 |
Academic background | |
Influences | Al-Balkhi |
Academic work | |
Era | Islamic Golden Age |
School or tradition | Balkhi school |
Main interests | Islamic geography |
Notable works | Ṣūrat al-’Arḍ |
Muḥammad Abū’l-Qāsim Ibn Ḥawqal (محمدأبوالقاسمبنحوقل),also known as Abūal-Qāsim b. ʻAlīIbn Ḥawqal al-Naṣībī,born in Nisibis,Upper Mesopotamia; [1] was a 10th-century Arab [2] Muslim writer,geographer,and chronicler who travelled from AD 943 to 969. [3] His famous work,written in 977,is called Surat Al-Ard (صورةالارض;"The face of the Earth"). The date of his death,known from his writings,was after AH 368/AD 978.
Details known of Ibn Hawqal's life are extrapolated from his book. He spent the last 30 years of his life traveling to remote parts of Asia and Africa,and writing about different things he saw during his journey. One journey brought him 20°south of the equator along the East African coast where he discovered large populations in regions the ancient Greek writers had deemed uninhabitable.[ citation needed ]
Ibn Hawqal based his great work of geography on a revision and augmentation of the text called Masālik ul-Mamālik by Istakhri (AD 951),which itself was a revised edition of the Ṣuwar al-aqālīm by Ahmed ibn Sahl al-Balkhi,(ca. AD 921). [4] [5] However Ibn Hawqal was more than an editor,he was a travel writer writing in the style followed later by Abu Ubaydallah al-Bakri in his Kitab al-Masālik wa-al-Mamālik,a literary genre which uses reports of merchants and travellers. Ibn Hawqal introduces 10th century humour into his account of Sicily during the Kalbid-Fatimid dynasty. As a primary source his medieval geography tends to exaggeration,depicting the "barbaric and uncivilised" Christians of Palermo,reflecting the prevailing politics and attitudes of his time. Yet his geographic accounts of his personal travels were relied upon,and found useful,by medieval Arab travellers.
The chapters on al-Andalus,Sicily,and the richly cultivated area of Fraxinet (La Garde-Freinet) describes in detail a number of regional innovations practiced by Muslim farmers and fishermen.
The chapter on the Byzantine Empire—known in the Muslim world as,and called by the Byzantines themselves,the "Lands of the Romans"—gives his first-hand observation of the 360 languages spoken in the Caucasus,with the Lingua Franca being Arabic and Persian across the region. With the description of Kiev,he may have mentioned the route of the Volga Bulgars and the Khazars,which was perhaps taken from Sviatoslav I of Kiev. [6] He also published a cartographic map of Sindh together with accounts of the geography and culture of Sindh and the Indus River.
An anonymous epitome of the book was written in AD 1233. [4]
In the 1870s,the famous Dutch orientalist Michael Jan de Goeje edited a selection of manuscript texts by Arab geographers,which was published by Brill,Leiden in the eight-volume series Bibliotheca geographorum Arabicorum. Ibn Haukal's text was the second volume published in 1873 under the Latin title Viae et Regna,descriptio ditionis Moslemicae auctore Abu'l-Kásim Ibn Haukal - "Routes and Realms,a description of Muslim territories by the author Abu'l-Kásim Ibn Haukal".[ citation needed ]
Michael Jan de Goeje was a Dutch orientalist focusing on Arabia and Islam.
Ahmad ibn Rusta Isfahani,more commonly known as ibn Rusta,was a tenth-century Muslim Persian explorer and geographer born in Rosta,Isfahan in the Abbasid Caliphate. He wrote a geographical compendium known as the Kitāb al-A‘lāq al-Nafīsa.
AbūʿUbayd ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad ibn Ayyūb ibn ʿAmr al-Bakrī,or simply al-Bakrī was an Arab Andalusian historian and a geographer of the Muslim West.
The Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam is a 10th-century geography book written in Persian by an anonymous author from Guzgan,possibly Šaʿyābin Farīghūn. The title in full is حدودالعالممنالمشرقالیالمغرب.
Abu'l-Qasim Ubaydallah ibn Abdallah ibn Khordadbeh,commonly known as Ibn Khordadbeh,was a high-ranking bureaucrat and geographer of Persian descent in the Abbasid Caliphate. He is the author of the earliest surviving Arabic book of administrative geography.
ʾAbūal-ʿAbbās ʾAḥmad bin ʾAbīYaʿqūb bin Ǧaʿfar bin Wahb bin Waḍīḥal-Yaʿqūbī,commonly referred to simply by his nisba al-Yaʿqūbī,was an Arab Muslim geographer.
Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadani was a 10th-century Persian historian and geographer,famous for his Mukhtasar Kitab al-Buldan written in Arabic.
The Book of Roads and Kingdoms is a group of Islamic manuscripts composed from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. They emerged from the administrative tradition of listing pilgrim and post stages. Their text covers the cities,roads,topography,and peoples of the Muslim world,interspersed with personal anecdotes. A theoretical explanation of the "Inhabited Quarter" of the world,comparable to the ecumene,frames the world with classical concepts like the seven climes.
Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Farisi al-Istakhri was a 10th-century travel author and Islamic geographer who wrote valuable accounts in Arabic of the many Muslim territories he visited during the Abbasid era of the Islamic Golden Age. There is no consensus regarding his origin. Some sources describe him as Persian,while others state he was Arab. The Encyclopedia Iranica states:"Biographical data are very meager. From his nesbas he appears to have been a native of Eṣṭaḵr in Fārs,but it is not known whether he was Persian".
Medieval Islamic geography and cartography refer to the study of geography and cartography in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age. Muslim scholars made advances to the map-making traditions of earlier cultures,explorers and merchants learned in their travels across the Old World (Afro-Eurasia). Islamic geography had three major fields:exploration and navigation,physical geography,and cartography and mathematical geography. Islamic geography reached its apex with Muhammad al-Idrisi in the 12th century.
Rabinjan or Arbinjan was a medieval town in the region of Transoxiana,between the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara. It was located in the vicinity of the present-day Katta-Kurgan.
Abu'l-Qasim al-Husayn ibn Ali al-Maghribi,also called al-wazir al-Maghribi and by the surname al-Kamil Dhu'l-Wizaratayn,was the last member of the Banu'l-Maghribi,a family of statesmen who served in several Muslim courts of the Middle East in the 10th and early 11th centuries. Abu'l-Qasim himself was born in Hamdanid Aleppo before fleeing with his father to Fatimid Egypt,where he entered the bureaucracy. After his father's execution,he fled to Palestine,where he raised the local Bedouin leader Mufarrij ibn Daghfal to rebellion against the Fatimids (1011–13). As the rebellion began to falter,he fled to Iraq,where he entered the service of the Buyid emirs of Baghdad. Soon after he moved to the Jazira,where he entered the service of the Uqaylids of Mosul and finally the Marwanids of Mayyafariqin. He was also a poet and author of a number of treatises,including a "mirror for princes".
The barīd was the state-run courier service of the Umayyad and later Abbasid Caliphates. A major institution in the early Islamic states,the barid was not only responsible for the overland delivery of official correspondence throughout the empire,but it additionally functioned as a domestic intelligence agency,which informed the caliphs on events in the provinces and the activities of government officials.
Ishaq ibn Yahya ibn Mu'adh was a ninth-century provincial governor for the Abbasid Caliphate,serving as governor of Damascus and Egypt.
AbūIsḥāqIbrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Mudabbir commonly simply known as Ibrahim ibn al-Mudabbir,was a senior courtier and fiscal administrator for the Abbasid Caliphate.
AbūʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Jayhānī,or Abu Abdallah Jayhani,was the Persian vizier of the Samanid Empire from 914 to 922. His lost geographical work is an important source of 9th-century history of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. His son and grandson also served as viziers.
The Midrarid dynasty was a Berber dynasty that ruled the Sijilmasa region in Morocco from their capital of Sijilmasa,starting in the late 8th or early 9th century to 976/7.
Abu ʾl-FatḥNaṣr Allāh ibn ʿAbd Allāh,known as Ibn Qalāqis and also al-Qāḍīal-aʿazz,was an Egyptian Arab poet and author. He spent his last few years travelling widely through Sicily and Yemen. The collections of poems and letters he left behind contain much valuable information for historians.
Kushaniya or al-Kushaniya was a medieval town in the region of Transoxiana,located close to Samarkand,on the northern road between the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara. It was located in the vicinity of the present-day Rabinjan. According to Al-Istakhri,it was two farsakhs from Rabinjan.
Surat Al-Ard,also known as Al-Masalek wa Al-Mamalek,is a book on geography and travel written by the merchant traveler Abul Qasim Muhammad Ibn Hawqal following his travels,which commenced in 331 AH. The work was influenced by Istakhri,who requested that he complete Maslek and Mamalek. Nevertheless,he ultimately elected to compose a revised volume,drawing upon Istakhri's treatise and a compendium of other geographical works,in addition to his own empirical data and insights gleaned from his peregrinations. Consequently,the content of the book is meticulously presented. In addition to geographical information,the book contains a range of scientific and historical content,including biographical information. Some chapters are presented in the form of a tourist guide. Each region is discussed in detail,with a special map provided for each area.
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