Hudud ul-'alam min al-mashriq ila al-maghrib
Encyclopedia
Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam meaning The Limits of The World, is a tenth century geography book written in Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

 by an unknown author from Jōzjān
Jowzjan Province
Jowzjān or Jōzjān or Jawzjan is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. It is in the north of the country. Its capital is Sheberghan.- Demographics :...

.

Contents

Finished in 982 CE, it was dedicated to Abu l-Ḥārith Muḥammad bin ʿAbd-Allāh, a ruler of the local Farīghūnid dynasty
Farighunid
The Farighunids were an Iranian dynasty of Guzgan in the late 9th, 10th and early 11th centuries.-Political and Military History:...

. Its author is unknown, but Vladimir Minorsky has surmised that it might have been written by the enigmatic Šaʿyā bin Farīghūn, author of a pioneer encyclopedia of the sciences, the Jawāmeʿ al-ʿUlum, for an amir
Emir
Emir , meaning "commander", "general", or "prince"; also transliterated as Amir, Aamir or Ameer) is a title of high office, used throughout the Muslim world...

 of Čaghāniān on the upper Oxus in the mid-10th century. The Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam is part of a larger work, consisting of:
  1. A copy of the Jahān-Nāma ("Book of The World") by Muḥammad ibn Najīb Bakrān;
  2. A short passage about music;
  3. The Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam;
  4. The Jāmiʿ al-ʿUlūm ("Collection of Knowledge") by Faḫr ad-Din ar-Razi
    Al-Razi
    Muhammad ibn Zakariyā Rāzī , known as Rhazes or Rasis after medieval Latinists, was a Persian polymath,a prominent figure in Islamic Golden Age, physician, alchemist and chemist, philosopher, and scholar....

    ;


The Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam contains information about the known world. The anonymous author reports about different countries (nāḥiyat), people, languages, clothing, food, religion, local products, towns and cities, rivers, seas, lakes, islands, the steppe, deserts, topography, politics and dynasties, as well as trade. The inhabited world is divided in Asia, Europe and "Libya" (i.e. Africa). The author counts a total of 45 different countries north of the equator.

The author never visited those countries personally, but was inspired and guided by earlier works, for example by al-Istakhri's
Estakhri
Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Farisi al Istakhri was a medieval Persian geographer in the 10th century.-Career:...

 Book of The Paths And Provinces ( - kitāb al-masālik wa l-mamālik), or by the works of al-Jayhānī and Ibn Ḫurradādhbih.

Rediscovery and translation

The Russian orientalist A.G. Tumanskiy found the manuscript with the unique copy of this text in 1892 in Bukhara. It was written by the Persian chronographer Abu l-Mu'ayyad ʿAbd al-Qayyūm ibn al-Ḥusain ibn 'Alī al-Farīsī in 1258. The facsimile edition with introduction and index was published by W. Barthold in 1930; the thoroughly commented English translation was made by V. Minorsky in 1937, and a printed Persian text by M. Sotude in 1961.

Importance

The sections of its geographical treatise which describes the margins of Islamic oecumene, are of the greatest historical importance. The work also includes important early descriptions of the Turkic tribes in Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

. Also noteworthy is the archaic language and style of the Ḥudud which makes it a valuable linguistic document as well.

Literature

  • V. Minorsky (Hrsg.): Hudud al-Alam. The regions of the world: a Persian geography, 372 A.H. - 982 A.D., translated and explained by V. Minorsky ; with the preface by V. V. Barthold, London 1937
  • C. E. Bosworth in: Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition, s.v. ḤUDŪD AL-ʿĀLAM
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK