The Book of Roads and Kingdoms ( Arabic: كِتَاب ٱلْمَسَالِك وَٱلْمَمَالِك, romanized: Kitāb al-Masālik wa-l-Mamālik) is a 9th-century geography text written by the Persian geographer Ibn Khordadbeh. It maps and describes the major trade routes of the time within the Muslim world, and discusses distant trading regions such as Japan, Korea, and China. [1] It was written around 870 CE, during the reign of Al-Muʿtamid of the Abbasid Caliphate, while its author was Director of Posts and Police for the Abbasid province of Jibal in modern-day Iran.
The work uses much of the Persian administrative terms, gives considerable attention to pre-Islamic Iranian history, and uses the "native Iranian cosmological division system of the world". These all show "the existence of Iranian sources at the core of the work". [2]
Claudius Ptolemy, Greek, and pre-Islamic Iranian history have clear influence on the work. [2]
The book is also referred to in English as The Book of Roads and Provinces.
Notes
- ^ Isabella Bird (9 January 2014). "1". Korea and Her Neighbours.: A Narrative of Travel, with an Account of the Recent Vicissitudes and Present Position of the Country. With a Preface by Sir Walter C. Hillier. Adegi Graphics LLC. ISBN 978-0-543-01434-4.
- ^ a b Meri, Josef W.; Bacharach, Jere (2005). Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-96690-6. pp. 359–60.
External links
- Ibn Khordadbeh (1865). Des routes et des Provinces (in French). Translator: Charles Barbier de Meynard. Paris: Journal Asiatique.
- اﻟﻤﺴﺎﻟﻚ واﻟﻤﻤﺎﻟﻚ
- المسالك والممالك – resource for Arabic books – الوراق
- المسالك والممالك لابن خرداذبة ونبذ من كتاب الخراج وصناعة الكتابة للبغدادي
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