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Ibn Hawqal | |
|---|---|
| Born | |
| Died | after 978 |
| Academic background | |
| Influences | Al-Balkhi |
| Academic work | |
| Era | Islamic Golden Age |
| School or tradition | Balkhi school |
| Main interests | Islamic geography |
| Notable works | Ṣūrat al-’Arḍ |
Muḥammad Abū’l-Qāsim Ibn Ḥawqal (محمد أبو القاسم بن حوقل), also known asAbū al-Qāsim b. ʻAlī Ibn Ḥawqal al-Naṣībī, born inNisibis,Upper Mesopotamia;[1] was a 10th-centuryArab[2]Muslim writer, geographer, and chronicler who travelled from AD 943 to 969.[3] His famous work, written in 977, is calledSurat Al-Ard (صورة الارض; "The face of the Earth"). The date of his death, known from his writings, was afterAH 368/AD 978.
Details known of Ibn Hawqal's life are extrapolated from his book. He spent the last 30 years of his life traveling to remote parts ofAsia andAfrica, and writing about different things he saw during his journey. One journey brought him 20° south of the equator along theEast African coast where he discovered large populations in regions theancient Greek writers had deemed uninhabitable.[citation needed]
Ibn Hawqal based his great work of geography on a revision and augmentation of the text calledMasālik ul-Mamālik byIstakhri (AD 951), which itself was a revised edition of theṢuwar al-aqālīm byAhmed ibn Sahl al-Balkhi, (ca. AD 921).[4][5] However Ibn Hawqal was more than an editor, he was a travel writer writing in the style followed later byAbu Ubaydallah al-Bakri in hisKitab al-Masālik wa-al-Mamālik, a literary genre which uses reports of merchants and travellers. Ibn Hawqal introduces 10th century humour into his account ofSicily during theKalbid-Fatimid dynasty. As a primary source his medieval geography tends to exaggeration, depicting the "barbaric and uncivilised" Christians ofPalermo, reflecting the prevailing politics and attitudes of his time. Yet his geographic accounts of his personal travels were relied upon, and found useful, by medieval Arab travellers.
The chapters onal-Andalus, Sicily, and the richly cultivated area ofFraxinet (La Garde-Freinet) describes in detail a number of regional innovations practiced by Muslim farmers and fishermen.
The chapter on theByzantine Empire—known in the Muslim world as, and called by the Byzantines themselves, the "Lands of the Romans"—gives his first-hand observation of the 360 languages spoken in theCaucasus, with theLingua Franca being Arabic andPersian across the region. With the description ofKiev, he may have mentioned theroute of theVolga Bulgars and theKhazars, which was perhaps taken fromSviatoslav I of Kiev.[6] He also published a cartographic map ofSindh together with accounts of the geography and culture of Sindh and theIndus River.
An anonymous epitome of the book was written in AD 1233.[4]
In the 1870s, the famous Dutch orientalistMichael Jan de Goeje edited a selection of manuscript texts by Arab geographers, which was published byBrill,Leiden in the eight-volume seriesBibliotheca geographorum Arabicorum. Ibn Haukal's text was the second volume published in 1873 under the Latin titleViae et Regna, descriptio ditionis Moslemicae auctore Abu'l-Kásim Ibn Haukal - "Routes and Realms, a description of Muslim territories by the author Abu'l-Kásim Ibn Haukal".[citation needed]
