Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam (Persian: حدود العالم), meaning The Limits of The World, is a tenth century geography book written in Persian by an unknown author from Jōzjān.[1]
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Finished in 982 CE, it was dedicated to Abu l-Ḥārith Muḥammad bin ʿAbd-Allāh, a ruler of the local Farīghūnid dynasty. Its author is unknown, but Vladimir Minorsky has surmised that it might have been written by the enigmatic Šaʿyā bin Farīghūn, author of a pioneer encyclopedia of the sciences, the Jawāmeʿ al-ʿUlum, for an amir of Čaghāniān on the upper Oxus in the mid-10th century.[2] The Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam is part of a larger work, consisting of:
The Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam contains information about the known world. The anonymous author reports about different countries (nāḥiyat), people, languages, clothing, food, religion, local products, towns and cities, rivers, seas, lakes, islands, the steppe, deserts, topography, politics and dynasties, as well as trade. The inhabited world is divided in Asia, Europe and "Libya" (i.e. Africa). The author counts a total of 45 different countries north of the equator.
The author never visited those countries personally, but was inspired and guided by earlier works, for example by al-Istakhri's Book of The Paths And Provinces (Arabic: كتاب المسالك والممالك - kitāb al-masālik wa l-mamālik),[3] or by the works of al-Jayhānī and Ibn Ḫurradādhbih.
The Russian orientalist A.G. Tumanskiy found the manuscript with the unique copy of this text in 1892 in Bukhara. It was written by the Persian chronographer Abu l-Mu'ayyad ʿAbd al-Qayyūm ibn al-Ḥusain ibn 'Alī al-Farīsī in 1258.[1] The facsimile edition with introduction and index was published by W. Barthold in 1930; the thoroughly commented English translation was made by V. Minorsky in 1937, and a printed Persian text by M. Sotude in 1961.
The sections of its geographical treatise which describes the margins of Islamic oecumene, are of the greatest historical importance. The work also includes important early descriptions of the Turkic tribes in Central Asia.[4] Also noteworthy is the archaic language and style of the Ḥudud which makes it a valuable linguistic document as well.[2]