Istakhri

Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Farisi al-Istakhri (آبو إسحاق إبراهيم بن محمد الفارسي الإصطخري) (also Estakhri, Persian: استخری, i.e. from the Iranian city of Istakhr, b. – d. 346 AH/AD 957) was a 10th-century travel author and Islamic geographer who wrote valuable accounts in Arabic of the many Muslim territories he visited during the Abbasid era of the Islamic Golden Age. There is no consensus regarding his origin. Some sources describe him as Persian, while others state he was Arab. The Encyclopedia Iranica states: "Biographical data are very meager. From his nesbas (attributive names) he appears to have been a native of Eṣṭaḵr in Fārs, but it is not known whether he was Persian".

Istakhri's account of windmills is the earliest known. Istakhri met the celebrated traveller-geographer Ibn Hawqal, while travelling, and Ibn Hawqal incorporated the work of Istakhri in his book Kitab al-Surat al-Ard.

Works

Istakhri's two surviving works are:

Masālik al-Mamālik (مسالك الممالك, Routes of the Realms), or Kitab al-masalik wa-l-mamalik (كتاب المسالك والممالك Book of Roads and Kingdoms), a contribution to the "Book of Roads and Kingdoms" tradition. This combines maps with descriptive text to describe the geography of Iran and surrounding kingdoms. It is based mainly on lists of stations of postal routes, and seems intended to help commit those lists to memory rather than to guide travellers through the territory. There is no consistency between the map projections. An illuminated manuscript (MS Or. 3101) dated AH 589 (AD 1193) is held by Leiden University Libraries and is digitally available. Another illuminated manuscript dated AH 706 (AD 1306–07) now resides in the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art. It contains many maps, though some mentioned in the text are missing.
Ṣuwar al-ʿAqālīm ( صور الاقاليم, Pictures of the Regions).

Published editions

An 8-volume edition of works by medieval Arab geographers, edited by the Dutch orientalist Michael Jan de Goeje in a series titled Bibliotheca geographorum Arabicorum was published by Brill, Lugduni-Batavora (Leiden) in the 1870s. An edition of Istakhri's MS text was produced for the first volume under the Latin title Viae Regnorum descriptio ditionis Moslemicae – "Description of Roads of the Kingdoms in Muslim territories". In 1927, the editor Theodore Noldeke produced a second edition.

In 1845, the German orientalist A. D. Mordtmann published a translation in Hamburg with the title Das Buch der Länder von Schech Ebu Ishak el Farsi el Isztachri, with a foreword by C. Ritter. (Schriften der Akademie von Ham Bd. 1, Abth. 2).

References

Sources

Bolshakov, O. G. (1998). "EṢṬAḴRĪ, ABŪ ESḤĀQ EBRĀHĪM". Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. VIII, Fasc. 6. pp. 646–647.
Bosworth, Clifford Edmund (1989). "al-Masālik wa'l-Mamālik". The Encyclopedia of Islam, Volume 6. Leiden: E. J. Brill. pp. 639-640.
de Goeje, M.J., ed. (1927). Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum (1927), vol 1: Viae Regnorum descriptio ditionis Moslemicae auctore Abu Ishák al-Fárisí al-Istakhrí (in Arabic). Leden: E. J. Brill.
Ouseley, William, ed. (1800). The oriental geography of Ebn Haukal, an Arabian traveller of the tenth century. London. – Note: in fact, it is a work by Istakhri
Al-Istakhri, Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Muhammad (1927), Goeje, M. J. de; Noldeke, Theodore (eds.), "Viae Regnorum descriptio ditionis Moslemicae auctore Abū Ishāk al-Fārisi al-Istakhri", Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum (in Arabic and Latin), 1 (2 ed.), Lugdunum Batavorum (Leiden): Brill publishers
Ibn Haukal (1873), Goeje, M. J. de (ed.), "Viae et regna, descriptio ditionis moslemicae auctore Abu'l-Kasim Ibn Haukal", Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum (in Arabic and Latin), 2, Lugdunum Batavorum (Leiden): Brill publishers
Goeje, M. J. de, ed. (1870), "Indices, glossarium et addenda et emendanda ad Part I-III", Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum (in Arabic and Latin), 4, Lugdunum Batavorum (Leiden): Brill
Das Buch der Länder von Schech Ebu Ishak el Farsi el Isztachri, translated by Mordtmann, Andreas David, Frankfurt/M.: Rauhen Hauses in Horn, 1995 [1845]