Khalili Collection Islamic Art mss 0972 fol 40b

Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Farisi al-Istakhri () (also ''Estakhri'', fa, استخری, i.e. from the Iranian city of

Istakhr Istakhr (Middle Persian romanized: ''Stakhr'', fa, اصطخر, translit=Istakhr also spelt استخر in modern literature) was an ancient city in Fars province, north of Persepolis in southwestern Iran. It flourished as the capital of the Per ...

, b. - d. 346 AH/AD 957) was a 10th-century travel-author and

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 ...

who wrote valuable accounts in

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

of the many Muslim territories he visited during the Abbasid era of the

Islamic Golden Age The Islamic Golden Age was a period of cultural, economic, and scientific flourishing in the history of Islam, traditionally dated from the 8th century to the 14th century. This period is traditionally understood to have begun during the reign ...

. There is no consensus regarding his origin. Some sources describe him as

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

, while others state he was

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, ...

. IV:222b-223b. The ''

Encyclopedia Iranica An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...

'' states: "Biographical data are very meager. From his ''nesbas'' (attributive names) he appears to have been a native of Eṣṭaḵr in Fārs, but it is not known whether he was Persian". VIII(6):646-647 (I have used the updated online version). Istakhri's account of

windmill A windmill is a structure that converts wind power into rotational energy using vanes called sails or blades, specifically to mill grain (gristmills), but the term is also extended to windpumps, wind turbines, and other applications, in some ...

s is the earliest known. Istakhri met the celebrated traveller-geographer

Ibn Hawqal Muḥammad Abū’l-Qāsim Ibn Ḥawqal (), also known as Abū al-Qāsim b. ʻAlī Ibn Ḥawqal al-Naṣībī, born in Nisibis, Upper Mesopotamia; was a 10th-century Arab Muslim writer, geographer, and chronicler who travelled during the ye ...

, while travelling, and

incorporated the work of Istakhri in his book ''Kitab al-Surat al-Ard''.

Works

Istakhri's two surviving works are: *''Masālik al-Mamālik'' (, "Routes of the Realms") or ''kitab al-masalik wa-l-mamalik'' (كتاب المسالك والممالك "Book of roads and kingdoms") This combines maps with descriptive text to describe the geography of Iran and surrounding kingdoms. It is based mainly on lists of stations of postal routes, and seems intended to help commit those lists to memory rather than to guide travellers through the territory. There is no consistency between the

map projection In cartography, map projection is the term used to describe a broad set of transformations employed to represent the two-dimensional curved surface of a globe on a plane. In a map projection, coordinates, often expressed as latitude and longit ...

s. An illuminated manuscript dated 706 AH (1306-07 AD) now resides in the

Khalili Collection of Islamic Art The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art includes 28,000 objects documenting Islamic art over a period of almost 1400 years, from 700 AD to the end of the twentieth century. It is the largest of the Khalili Collections: eight collections ...

. It contains many maps, though some mentioned in the text are missing. *''Ṣuwar al-ʿAqālīm'' ( , "Pictures of the Regions")

Published Editions

An 8-volume edition of works by medieval Arab geographers, edited by the Dutch orientalist

Michael Jan de Goeje Michael Jan de Goeje (August 13, 1836 – May 17, 1909) was a Dutch orientalist focusing on Arabia and Islam. Early life Michael Jan de Goeje was born in Dronrijp, Friesland. He devoted himself at an early age to the study of oriental lan ...

in a series titled ''Bibliotheca geographorum Arabicorum'' was published by Brill, Lugduni-Batavora (Leiden) in the 1870s. An edition of Istakhri's MS text was produced for the first volume under the Latin title ''Viae Regnorum descriptio ditionis Moslemicae'' - "Description of Roads of the Kingdoms in Muslim territories". In 1927 the editor

Theodore Noldeke Theodore may refer to: Places * Theodore, Alabama, United States * Theodore, Australian Capital Territory * Theodore, Queensland, a town in the Shire of Banana, Australia * Theodore, Saskatchewan, Canada * Theodore Reservoir, a lake in Saskatche ...

produced a second edition. In 1845 the German orientalist A. D. Mordtmann published a translation in Hamburg with the title ''Das Buch der Länder von Schech Ebu Ishak el Farsi el Isztachri'', with a foreword by C. Ritter. (Schriften der Akademie von Ham Bd. 1, Abth. 2).

References

Sources

* * * * - * * * *

External links

*
World Map of al-Istakhri
{{Authority control 950s deaths Year of birth unknown Year of death uncertain 10th-century Iranian writers Balkhi school Istakhr 10th-century Iranian geographers People associated with wind power Scholars under the Buyid dynasty Travel writers of the medieval Islamic world

Works

Published Editions

See also

References

Sources

External links