''Fārsnāma'' (, "The Book of
Fars") is a local
Persian-language history and geography of Fars province,
Persia
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...
, written between 1105 and 1116 during the
Seljuk period
The Seljuk Empire, or the Great Seljuk Empire, was a high medieval, culturally Turco-Persian, Sunni Muslim empire, established and ruled by the Qïnïq branch of Oghuz Turks. The empire spanned a total area of from Anatolia and the Levant in t ...
. It is attributed to the otherwise unknown Ibn al-Balkhi (), a native of Fars who
flourished
''Floruit'' ( ; usually abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for 'flourished') denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indic ...
in the 12th century. His ancestors were from
Balkh
Balkh is a town in the Balkh Province of Afghanistan. It is located approximately to the northwest of the provincial capital city Mazar-i-Sharif and approximately to the south of the Amu Darya and the Afghanistan–Uzbekistan border. In 2021 ...
in
Khorasan
KhorasanDabeersiaghi, Commentary on Safarnâma-e Nâsir Khusraw, 6th Ed. Tehran, Zavvâr: 1375 (Solar Hijri Calendar) 235–236 (; , ) is a historical eastern region in the Iranian Plateau in West and Central Asia that encompasses western and no ...
, as his ''nisba'' suggests. The work was commissioned by Seljuk ruler
Muhammad I Tapar
Muhammad I Tapar (, ; 20 January 1082 – 18 April 1118), was the sultan of the Seljuk Empire from 1105 to 1118. He was a son of Malik-Shah I () and Taj al-Din Khatun Safariya.
Reign
Muhammad was born in 20 January 1082. He succeeded his nephew, ...
(1105–1118).
Roughly speaking, the first two-thirds of the book consists of information about the pre-Islamic
Iranian
Iranian () may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Iran
** Iranian diaspora, Iranians living outside Iran
** Iranian architecture, architecture of Iran and parts of the rest of West Asia
** Iranian cuisine, cooking traditions and practic ...
rulers of Fars, as well as the
Arab conquest of the province. The final third of the work consists of information on the province's geography.
The critical edition published by
Reynold A. Nicholson and
Guy Le Strange
Guy Le Strange (24 July 1854 – 24 December 1933) was a British Orientalist noted especially for his work in the field of the historical geography of the pre-modern Middle Eastern and Eastern Islamic lands, and his editing of Persian geographic ...
in 1921 is the standard edition of the ''Farsnama'' up to this day.
References
12th-century history books
12th-century Persian books
History of Fars province
Geography of Fars province
History books about Iran
Geography books
Culture of the Seljuk Empire
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