Yaqut al-Hamawi

Yaqut al-Hamawi (1178 or 1179 – 1229) was a traveler and scholar of geography and history who lived in the 12th–13th centuries.

"Al-Rumi" ("from Rum") means of Greek (Byzantine) origin; "al-Hamawi" means coming from Hama in Syria; and "ibn Abdullah" means that his father's name was Abdullah. The word "Yaqut" means ruby. He is known in the Islamic world as an encyclopedist.

Life story

Born in 1179 in (Latin: Asia Minor; ancient Greek: Mikra Asia, Μικρά Ἀσία, or anatolē, ἀνατολή; Turkish: Anadolu), Yaqut was sold as a slave to a merchant and brought to the city of Hama in Syria, where he grew up (here he took the name "al-Hamawi," a nisba (نسبة), or nisbe, meaning "place of origin"); he was later sold in Baghdad, freed in 1199, and given an Islamic religious education. When Yaqut al-Hamawi came to Baghdad, the thirty-fourth Abbasid Caliph al-Nasir li-Din Allah (Arabic: الناصر لدين الله, أحمد بن المستضيء) ruled the Islamic world.

As a traveling merchant, librarian, and calligrapher, he traveled to Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Khorasan, and Khwarezm, and fled from Khwarezm to Syria to escape the Tatar-Mongol attacks. This flight, in which he was forced to leave behind all his property and possessions, left a deep mark on Yaqut; an attitude of hatred and rancor toward the Tatars and Turks is seen in him, and because of this misunderstanding he became an instrument of racist distortions, whose echoes and effects still remain among Arab nationalists to this day.

In his book titled Mu'jam al-Buldan (Geographical Dictionary), he likens the Turks to Gog and Magog (Arabic: يأجوج و مأجوج; Ya'juj wa Ma'juj) and disparages the Turks.

In 1220, Yaqut met in Aleppo a young Muslim from Hungary, and together with him he then wrote a document, exceedingly rare in history, on Islam in Hungary.

Yaqut al-Hamawi died in 1229 in the city of Aleppo in Syria.

Works

معجم البلدان; Mu'jam al-Buldan

معجم الادباء; Mu'jam al-Udaba, "Dictionary of Writers," written in 1226.

المشترک وضعا و المفترق صعقا; al-Mushtarak wadh'a wa al-Muftaraq Sa'qa, published by Heinrich Ferdinand Wüstenfeld in 1845.

Sources

Türkçe →