Istakhri

 ( 950s Deaths ) 

Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Farisi al-Istakhri (آبو إسحاق إبراهيم بن محمد الفارسي الإصطخري) (also Estakhri, , i.e. from the Iranian city of Istakhr, b. – d. 346 AH/AD 957)Mojtahed-Zadeh, Pirous. "The Persian Gulf in the Geographical Views of the Ancient World" In Cartographie Historique du Golfe Persique. Edited by M. Taleghani, D. Silva Couto, & J.-L. Bacque-Grammont. Louvain, Belgium: Diffusion, 2006. 17. was a 10th-century travel author and Islamic geographer who wrote valuable accounts in Arabic of the many Muslim territories he visited during the Abbasid era of the Islamic Golden Age. There is no consensus regarding his origin. Some sources describe him as Persian people, while others state he was Arabs.

IV:222b-223b. The Encyclopedia Iranica 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 is the earliest known. Istakhri met the celebrated traveller-geographer Ibn Hawqal, while travelling, and Ibn Hawqal incorporated the work of Istakhri in his book Kitab al-Surat al-Ard.

---

Works Istakhri's two surviving works are:

• Masālik al-Mamālik (مسالك الممالك, Routes of the Realms), or Kitab al-masalik wa-l-mamalik (كتاب المسالك والممالك Book of Roads and Kingdoms), a contribution to the "Book of Roads and Kingdoms" tradition. This combines maps with descriptive text to describe the geography of Iran and surrounding kingdoms. It is based mainly on itinerarium 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 . An illuminated manuscript (MS Or. 3101) dated Hijri year 589 (AD 1193) is held by Leiden University Libraries and is digitally available. Another illuminated manuscript dated Hijri year 706 (AD 1306–07) now resides in the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art. It contains many maps, though some mentioned in the text are missing.
• Ṣuwar al-ʿAqālīm ( صور الاقاليم, 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 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 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).

---

See also

• Ibn Hawqal
• Al-Maqdisi
• Ibn al-Faqih
• Qudama ibn Ja'far
• Ibn Khordadbeh
• Ibn Rustah
• Al-Ya'qubi
• Al-Masudi
• List of Iranian scientists
• Surat Al-Ard

---

Sources

• –

---

External links

• World Map of al-Istakhri

Post Comment