Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan ibn Aḥmad ibn Yaʿqūb al-Hamdānī (279/280-333/334 A.H. / c. 893-945 A.D; ar, أبو محمد الحسن بن أحمد بن يعقوب الهمداني) was an

Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

geographer A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" a ...

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe th ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or w ...

grammarian Grammarian may refer to: * Alexandrine grammarians, philologists and textual scholars in Hellenistic Alexandria in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE * Biblical grammarians, scholars who study the Bible and the Hebrew language * Grammarian (Greco-Roman ...

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

, and

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...

, from the tribe of

Banu Hamdan Banu Hamdan ( ar, بَنُو هَمْدَان; Musnad: 𐩠𐩣𐩵𐩬) is an ancient, large, and prominent Arab tribe in northern Yemen. Origins and location The Hamdan stemmed from the eponymous progenitor Awsala (nickname Hamdan) whose desc ...

, western 'Amran,

Yemen Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the north and Oman to the northeast and ...

. He was one of the best representatives of Islamic culture during the last period of the

Abbasid Caliphate The Abbasid Caliphate ( or ; ar, الْخِلَافَةُ الْعَبَّاسِيَّة, ') was the third caliphate to succeed the Islamic prophet Muhammad. It was founded by a dynasty descended from Muhammad's uncle, Abbas ibn Abdul-Muttal ...

. His work was the subject of extensive 19th-century Austrian scholarship.

Biography

The biographical details of al-Hamdani's life are scant, despite his extensive

scientific Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

work. He was held in high repute as a grammarian, wrote much poetry, compiled astronomical tables and is said to have devoted most of his life to the study of the ancient history and geography of Arabia. Before he was born his family had lived in al-Marashi (المراشي). Then they moved to

Sana'a Sanaa ( ar, صَنْعَاء, ' , Yemeni Arabic: ; Old South Arabian: 𐩮𐩬𐩲𐩥 ''Ṣnʿw''), also spelled Sana'a or Sana, is the capital and largest city in Yemen and the centre of Sanaa Governorate. The city is not part of the Gover ...

(صنعاء), where al-Hamdani was born in the year 893. His father had been a traveller and had visited

Kufa Kufa ( ar, الْكُوفَة ), also spelled Kufah, is a city in Iraq, about south of Baghdad, and northeast of Najaf. It is located on the banks of the Euphrates River. The estimated population in 2003 was 110,000. Currently, Kufa and Najaf a ...

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...

Basra Basra ( ar, ٱلْبَصْرَة, al-Baṣrah) is an Iraqi city located on the Shatt al-Arab. It had an estimated population of 1.4 million in 2018. Basra is also Iraq's main port, although it does not have deep water access, which is han ...

Oman Oman ( ; ar, عُمَان ' ), officially the Sultanate of Oman ( ar, سلْطنةُ عُمان ), is an Arabian country located in southwestern Asia. It is situated on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and spans the mouth of ...

and

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...

. At around the age of seven, al-Marashi started to talk about his desire to travel. Somewhat later he left for

Mecca Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow v ...

, where he remained and studied for more than six years, after which he departed for Sa'dah (صعدة). There he gathered information on Khawlaan (خولان). Later, he went back to Sanaa and became interested in the land that was Himyar (حمْير), but was imprisoned for two years due to his political views. After his release from prison, he went to Raydah (ريدة) to live under the protection of his own tribe. He compiled most of his books while there and stayed on until his death in 945.

Writings

His ''Geography of the Arabian Peninsula'' (''Sifat Jazirat ul-Arab'') is by far the most important work on the subject. The manuscript was used by Austrian orientalist, Aloys Sprenger in his ''Post- und Reiserouten des Orients'' (Leipzig, 1864) and further in his ''Alte Geographie Arabiens'' (Bern, 1875), and was edited by D.H. Müller (Leiden, 1884; cf. Sprenger's criticism in ''Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft'', vol. 45, pp. 361–394). His work has been the subject of extensive research and publications by the Austrian Arabist,

Eduard Glaser Eduard Glaser (15 March 1855 – 7 May 1908) was an Austrian Arabist and archaeologist. He was one of the first Europeans to explore South Arabia. He collected thousands of inscriptions in Yemen that are today held by the Kunsthistorisches Muse ...

, a specialist on ancient Arabia. The other great work of al-Hamdānī is his ten volume, ''Iklil'' (the

Diadem A diadem is a type of crown, specifically an ornamental headband worn by monarchs and others as a badge of royalty. Overview The word derives from the Greek διάδημα ''diádēma'', "band" or "fillet", from διαδέω ''diadéō'', " ...

), concerning the genealogies of the Himyarites and the wars waged by their kings. Volume 8, on the citadels and castles of southern Arabia, has been translated into German, edited and annotated by David Heinrich Müller as ''Die Burgen und Schlösser Sudarabiens'' (Vienna, 1881). Other works said to have been written by al-Hamdani are listed in G. L. Flügel's ''Die grammatischen Schulen der Araber'' (Leipzig, 1862), pp. 220–221.

List of works

al-Jawharatayn al-ʻatīqatayn
- A book describing

metal A metal (from ancient Greek, Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electrical resistivity and conductivity, e ...

s known at that time, including their physical and chemical properties as well as treatment and processing (such as

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile ...

silver Silver is a chemical element with the symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical ...

, and

steel Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistan ...

). He is also considered one of the earliest Arabs who explained

gravity of Earth The gravity of Earth, denoted by , is the net acceleration that is imparted to objects due to the combined effect of gravitation (from mass distribution within Earth) and the centrifugal force (from the Earth's rotation). It is a vector quant ...

in a way similar to

magnetic field A magnetic field is a vector field that describes the magnetic influence on moving electric charges, electric currents, and magnetic materials. A moving charge in a magnetic field experiences a force perpendicular to its own velocity and to ...

behavior. *''Sifat Jazirat ul-Arab'' (), 'Geography/Character of the Arabian Peninsula'
archive (in Arabic)worldcat ṣifat ǧazīrat al-ʿarab, vol. 12, Leiden, p. 107, 13‒14; 149, 17; 154, 3
*''Kitāb al-Iklīl min akhbār al-Yaman wa-ansāb Ḥimyar'' (); ''Crowns from the Accounts of al-Yemen and the genealogies of Ḥimyar''. ''al-Iklīl'' consists of ten volumes. However, only four volumes have been found (Vol.1, Vol.2, Vol.8 and Vol.10); the other volumes are missing.http://www.arabacademy.gov.sy/uploads/magazine/mag72/mag72-3-1.pdf (pt.1, in Arabic)
*History of Saba *Language of Himyar and Najran

Notes and references

Bibliography

* *
Britannica
* Nabih Amin Faris: ''The Antiquities of South Arabia being a Translation from the Arabic with Linguistic, Geographic and Historic Notes of the Eight Book of al-Hamdānī's al-Iklīl'', Princeton, 1938 * Yūsuf Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh (Hrsg.): ''Al-Hamdani. A great Yemeni Scholar. Studies on the Occasion of his Millenial Anniversary.'' Sanaa, 1986 * Yūsuf Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh: ''al-Ḥasan b. Aḥmad al-Hamdānī'', In: Al-Mausūʿa al-Yamanīya, Sanaa, 2003, vol. 4, S. 3097ff. * Yūsuf Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh: ''Die Personennamen in al-Hamdānī's al-Iklīl und ihre Parallel in den altsüdarabischen Inschriften'', Dissertation, Universität Tübingen, 1975. * Jörn Heise: ''Die Gründung Sana'as – Ein orientalisch-islamischer Mythos?'' Berlin, Klaus Schwarz Verlag, May 2010, (the fifth chapter is devoted to al-Hamdani's Biography ) * O. Löfgren: Art. "al-Hamdānī" in ''The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition'' vol. III, S. 124a-125a.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hamdani, Abu Muhammad Hasan 890s births 945 deaths Year of birth uncertain 10th-century Arabs 10th-century astronomers 10th-century geographers 10th-century historians from the Abbasid Caliphate Arab grammarians Arab Muslim historians of Islam Medieval grammarians of Arabic Astronomers of the medieval Islamic world Yemeni astronomers Geographers of the medieval Islamic world Yemeni geographers People from Sanaa Yemeni Muslims Yemeni historians Yemeni people who died in prison custody Yemeni writers Banu Hamdan