Ibn Hawqal

Ibn Hawqal, or by his full name Ebû'l-Kâsım Muhammed bin Ali en-Nasibi el-Bağdadi, was a famous 10th-century Muslim writer and geographer of Arab origin, a Nusayri of the Aridoğulları State. In 977 he wrote his work in the Arabic language titled Sûret al-Arz (صورة الارض; "the image of the earth"). Very little information about his life is given from the translation of the book; although his teacher İbrahim bin Muhammed el-İstahrî mentions his life in his Arabic-language book Al-Masâlik Al-Mamâlik (المسالك الممالك), it does not contain sufficient information about his life.

Ibn Hawqal was, more than a writer, someone who traveled a great deal and who was also interested in and researched the things and areas he saw during his travels. He spent the last thirty years of his life traveling through distant Asia and a part of Africa. One of his journeys continued along the coasts of East Africa, 20 degrees south of the Equator, where he noticed something unusual: that the numerous people living in the region (colonies) of Rûm worked by logic rather than by experience. His descriptions were important and very helpful for those traveling at that time. In his book titled Surat al-Ardh, he described in detail the Muslim Andalusians of the Iberian Peninsula, Italy—especially Sicily—and the "Land of the Romans."

Ibn Hawqal, setting out from Baghdad on 7 Ramadan 331 AH (15 May 943 CE), traveled first through the various regions of the Arabian Peninsula; from 947 to 951 (336-340) through North Africa and Spain and the southern parts of the Great Sahara; in 955 (344) through Egypt, Eastern Anatolia, and Azerbaijan; between 961 and 969 (350-358) through Iran, Khorasan, and Western Turkestan; and in 973 (362) through Sicily. Around the year 951 (340) he met the Persian geographer İbrahim bin Muhammed el-İstahrî, one of the students of Ebû Zeyd el-Belhî. At İstahrî's request, he corrected the maps and information in his book Şûretü'l-arz, which he had written on the basis of his teacher Ebû Zeyd el-Belhî's work Şuverü'l-ekülîm. Seeing İstahrî's work had an influence on the geography book he was thinking of writing. Although the source of his work was this book, he also made use of the books of İbn Hurdâzbih, Ceyhânî, and Kudâme bin Cafer.

The work was first published by Michael Jan de Goeje as volume II of the Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum series (Leiden 1873). Later Johannes Heindrik Kramers made a critical edition of it by comparing de Goeje's edition—principally the [399] copy in the Topkapı Palace Museum Library—and the quotations made from the work by later authors, with various manuscripts. In 1233 an anonymous example of it was written down as a book.

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