Zakariyya' al-Qazwini ( , ), also known as Qazvini (), (born in

Qazvin Qazvin (; ; ) is a city in the Central District (Qazvin County), Central District of Qazvin County, Qazvin province, Qazvin province, Iran, serving as capital of the province, the county, and the district. It is the largest city in the provi ...

, Iran, and died 1283), was a

cosmographer The term cosmography has two distinct meanings: traditionally it has been the protoscience of mapping the general features of the cosmos, heaven and Earth; more recently, it has been used to describe the ongoing effort to determine the large-sca ...

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 ...

. He belonged to a family of jurists originally descended from

Anas bin Malik Anas ibn Mālik ibn Naḍr al-Khazrajī al-Anṣārī (; 612 712) was a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Finding the Truth in Judging the Companions, 1. 84-5; EI2, 1. 482 A. J. Wensinck J. Robson He was nicknamed Khadim al-Nabi for ...

(a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad) which had been well established in Qazvin long before al-Qazwini was born. His most famous work is the (), a seminal work in cosmography. He is also the author of the geographical dictionary ().

Career

Born in

to a Persianized family of Arab ancestry, al-Qazwini served as a legal expert and judge in several localities in Iran. He traveled around in

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...

and the

Levant The Levant ( ) is the subregion that borders the Eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Mediterranean sea to the west, and forms the core of West Asia and the political term, Middle East, ''Middle East''. In its narrowest sense, which is in use toda ...

, and finally entered the circle patronized by the

Ilkhanid The Ilkhanate or Il-khanate was a Mongol khanate founded in the southwestern territories of the Mongol Empire. It was ruled by the Il-Khans or Ilkhanids (), and known to the Mongols as ''Hülegü Ulus'' (). The Ilkhanid realm was officially known ...

governor of

Baghdad Baghdad ( or ; , ) is the capital and List of largest cities of Iraq, largest city of Iraq, located along the Tigris in the central part of the country. With a population exceeding 7 million, it ranks among the List of largest cities in the A ...

Ata-Malik Juvayni Ata-Malik Juvayni ; 1226 – 5 March 1283) was a bureaucrat and historian from the Juvayni family who served under the Mongol Empire. He is known for composing the ''Tarikh-i Jahangushay'' ("History of the World Conqueror"), an important account ...

(d. 1283 CE). It was to the latter that al-Qazwini dedicated his famous

cosmography The term cosmography has two distinct meanings: traditionally it has been the protoscience of mapping the general features of the cosmos, heaven and Earth; more recently, it has been used to describe the ongoing effort to determine the large-sca ...

titled (). This treatise, frequently illustrated, was immensely popular and is preserved today in many copies. It was translated into his native

Persian language Persian ( ), also known by its endonym and exonym, endonym Farsi (, Fārsī ), is a Western Iranian languages, Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian languages, Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, Indo-Iranian subdivision ...

, and later also into Turkish. Al-Qazwini was also well known for his geographical dictionary (). Both of these treatises reflect extensive reading and learning in a wide range of disciplines..

References

Bibliography

Encyclopedic sources

* * * * * *

Secondary literature

* * *

Editions of the Arabic text

* (edition of the ) * (edition of the )

Translations

* (German translation of the ) * (partial German translation of the )

External links

U.S. National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD.
''Kitāb al-ʻajāʾib wa al-gharāʼib''.
Full online version from the Getty Library.
Digital version of ''Kitāb ʿajā'ib al-makhlūqāt va gharā'ib al-mawjūdāt'' Or. 8907

Leiden University Libraries Leiden University Libraries is the set of libraries of Leiden University, founded in 1575 in Leiden, Netherlands. A later edition entitled ''The bastion of liberty : a history of Leiden University'', was published in 2018. Full-text at archive ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Qazwini, Zakariya 1200s births 1283 deaths 13th-century Iranian scientists 13th-century geographers Iranian people of Arab descent 13th-century Iranian astronomers Medieval Iranian geographers 13th-century Iranian physicians People from Qazvin Zoologists of the medieval Islamic world Scholars from the Ilkhanate