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The Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam (Arabic: حدود العالم, lit. "Boundaries of the World," "Limits of the World," or in also in English "The Regions of the World"[1]) is a 10th-century geography book written in Persian by an anonymous author from Guzgan (present day northern Afghanistan),[2] possibly Šaʿyā bin Farīghūn.[1] The title in full is حدود العالم من المشرق الی المغرب (Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam min al-Mashriq ilá l-Maghrib, lit. "The Boundaries of The World from The East to the West").
The sections of its geographical treatise which describes the margins of Islamic world, are of great historical importance, including early descriptions of the Turkic peoples in Central Asia.[3] Also noteworthy is the archaic language and style of the Ḥudud, which makes it a valuable Persian linguistic document as well.[1]
In regards to the title, Vladimir Minorsky commented on it in his 1937 translation as follows: "The word ḥudūd (properly 'boundaries') in our case evidently refers to the 'regions within definite boundaries' into which the world is divided in the Ḥ.-'Ā., the author indicating with special care the frontiers of each one of these areas, v.i., p. 30."
Finished in 982 CE, it was dedicated to Abu'l Haret Muhammad, the ruler of the Farighunids. Its author is unknown, but Vladimir Minorsky surmised that it might have been written by the enigmatic Šaʿyā bin Farīghūn.[1] The available text of Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam is part of a larger manuscript which contains other works:
- A copy of the Jahān-Nāma ("Book of The World") by Muḥammad ibn Najīb Bakrān;
- A short passage about music;
- The Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam;
- The Jāmiʿ al-ʿUlūm ("Collection of Knowledge") by Fakhr al-Din al-Razi;
The Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam contains information about the known world at the time. 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. the Maghreb). The author counts 45 countries north of the equator.[citation needed] Among other things, Hudud al-Alam appears to mention a Rus' Khaganate; it refers to the Rus' king as "Khāqān-i Rus".[4]
The author never visited those countries personally, but rather compiled the book from earlier works and tales.[5] He did not indicate his sources, but researchers deduced several 9th-century sources.[5] Minorsky (1937) reconstructed them as follows:
- Non-literary sources, including yādhkird-i haklmān ("memories of the sages"), akhbār ("information [heard]"; more fully ha-akhbār-hā ba-shanidim, "the information that we have heard"), and dhikr ("mention").[6] It is unclear whether or not these non-literary sources included the author's personal experiences, which were probably limited to his home region of Guzganan, and maybe Gilan.[7]
- Books, called kitāb-hā-yipīshīnagān ("books of the predecessors").[5]
- (a) Ibn Khordadbeh (I.Kh.), Book of Roads and Kingdoms (Arabic: كِتَاب ٱلْمَسَالِك وَٱلْمَمَالِك, romanized: Kitāb al-Masālik wa-l-Mamālik).[6] This work shows overlap with the similarly titled now-lost book Kitāb al-Masālik wal-Mamālik written by Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Jayhani, and therefore these books were sometimes confused with each other.[8]
- (b) An unknown source also used by Ahmad ibn Rustah, Al-Bakri, Gardizi, Muhammad Aufi, and others.[9] This unknown source is usually identified as the lost book Kitāb al-Masālik wal-Mamālik written by Jayhani.[9]
- (c) Istakhri (Ist.), Masālik al-Mamālik (مسالك الممالك, "Routes of the Realms") or kitab al-masalik wa-l-mamalik (Arabic: كتاب المسالك والممالك "Book of Roads and Kingdoms", or "Book of the Paths and Provinces"[10]).[11] As his source, Istakhri used the work of Abu Zayd al-Balkhi, the Figures of the Regions (Suwar al-aqalim), and thus he belonged to the Balkhī school.[12] The Balkhī school also included Ibn Hawqal and Al-Maqdisi, whose works show significant overlap with the Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam, but they appear to have directly copied their content from Istakhri rather than via Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam.[13]
- (d) Al-Masudi, The Meadows of Gold. According to Minorsky (1937), as Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam contains more details about the same topics, the author probably did not directly copy from Masudi's work, but they both drew from a common source 'of which Mas'udī possessed only an abstract. Possibly the same source is responsible for the interesting details on Gīlān.'[14]
- (e) Some contents about Arabia appear to derive from Hamdani's Geography of the Arabian Peninsula (Arabic: صفة جزيرة العرب, romanized: Sifat Jazirat ul-Arab), perhaps a more complete version of Ibn Khordadbeh's work, or a yet unknown source.[14]
The Orientalist scholar Alexander Tumansky found a manuscript with a copy of this text in 1892 in Bukhara. The copy from the original was made by the Persian chronographer Abu l-Mu'ayyad ʿAbd al-Qayyūm ibn al-Ḥusain ibn 'Alī al-Farīsī in 1258.[2] The facsimile edition with introduction and index was published by Vasily Bartold in 1930; a thoroughly commented English translation was made by Vladmir Minorsky in 1937, and a printed Persian text by Manouchehr Sotudeh in 1962.[15]
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