Circa 945 - Circa 990
Traveler-Geographer

Describing Islamic Lands. The geography of Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad al-Muqaddasi is considered the finest achievement in this field of medieval Islamic literature. Born in Palestine and bearing a family name derived from a name for city of Jerusalem (then called al-Bait al-Muqaddas, "the sacred house"), al-Muqaddasi later said that he decided to write his book during a sojourn in Shiraz in southwestern Iran in 985, by which time he had passed the age of forty and had made two pilgrimages to Makkah along with other journeys. Like some previous geographers, he included a wealth of lore about individual cities and regions: climate, products, resources, sacred sites, customs, political and religious factions, and trade routes. His most distinctive contribution, however, is a broad conception of the land of Islam as an integral geographical zone. He thus named his...