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Ḥudūd al-'Ālam: The Regions of the World: A Persian Geography, 372 A.H.-982 A.D.
The Hudud al-'Alam, written in AD 982 for a Prince of Guzganan (located in the North West of modern Afghanistan), is a geography covering the whole known world and one of the earliest works of Persian prose. It was designed to accompany a map and, though the product of cabinet scholarship rather than original observation, it preserves much material from earlier compositions which are lost and shows originality in its organization. A facsimile edition of the unique MS, which came to light in Bukhara in the late 19th century, was published in Russia in 1930 by Barthold but it was left to Minorsky to make the data widely accessible by his English translation and his extensive commentary, which analyses the work's position in the early Islamic geographical tradition and identifies and discusses the places mentioned in the light of a wealth of other information. V. Minorsky was a former Professor of Persian in the University of London and his other translations include Tadhkirat al-Muluk, A Manual of Safavid Administration in this series.
- GenresHistory
586 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1982
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March 14, 2016
I have not read the whole of this book, but just a few parts I needed for research.
Despite its lengthy extension (over 500 pages), the medieval treatise itself is not that long (some 120 pages). The rest is prefaces, a long commentary serving as notes, and indexes. I'm just interested in the original work.
Some passages are boring, full of enumeration of place names, but there's some funny interest to other parts.
The book was written in 982 A.D. for the use of a ruler in what today is NW Afghanistan. I found funny that it states the world has a spherical shape, where the line of the equator can be traced equidistant to the North and South Poles. Although that idea had already been put by Aristotle -and maybe earlier-, in Medieval times there was an idea that the world was flat. The book states the sphericity of the Earth 500 years before Columbus retook it.
The Northern hemisphere is considered to grow in cold until, to the North of 63º from the Equator, it is uninhabitable due to the extreme conditions. This is quite acceptable for the time - the author was just slightly short. But, since the Southern hemisphere was mostly unknown at the time, the author thinks that the heat of the Equator keeps growing until it reaches boiling temperatures in the Southern Pole.
To put it in a nutshell, the book is a mixture of scientific pretension with astonishing myths. I found funny that the book places two islands in the Atlantic (barely explored at the time) - The Island of Men and the Island of Women, close to one another. On the one would live only men and on the other women, and the populations of the two would meet four days a year for the purpose of procreation.
The mixture of fact and imaginary data reminds me of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.
Despite its lengthy extension (over 500 pages), the medieval treatise itself is not that long (some 120 pages). The rest is prefaces, a long commentary serving as notes, and indexes. I'm just interested in the original work.
Some passages are boring, full of enumeration of place names, but there's some funny interest to other parts.
The book was written in 982 A.D. for the use of a ruler in what today is NW Afghanistan. I found funny that it states the world has a spherical shape, where the line of the equator can be traced equidistant to the North and South Poles. Although that idea had already been put by Aristotle -and maybe earlier-, in Medieval times there was an idea that the world was flat. The book states the sphericity of the Earth 500 years before Columbus retook it.
The Northern hemisphere is considered to grow in cold until, to the North of 63º from the Equator, it is uninhabitable due to the extreme conditions. This is quite acceptable for the time - the author was just slightly short. But, since the Southern hemisphere was mostly unknown at the time, the author thinks that the heat of the Equator keeps growing until it reaches boiling temperatures in the Southern Pole.
To put it in a nutshell, the book is a mixture of scientific pretension with astonishing myths. I found funny that the book places two islands in the Atlantic (barely explored at the time) - The Island of Men and the Island of Women, close to one another. On the one would live only men and on the other women, and the populations of the two would meet four days a year for the purpose of procreation.
The mixture of fact and imaginary data reminds me of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.
Displaying 1 of 1 review