Silverstein, Adam

Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad b. ʿUmar Ibn Rusta , a native of Isfahan, is known for his work Kitāb al-a ʿ lāq al-nafīsa (“The book of precious and valuable things”), an encyclopaedia of sorts. Little is known about his life, however, and only the seventh volume of his book is extant. This vol…

Ibn al-Faqīh (fl. 290/903), the name by which Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Hamadhānī is commonly known, was a man of letters (adīb) known for his Kitāb al-buldān (“Book of countries”). This work survives only in two abridged versions and was apparently composed in the early fou…

Geography , broadly understood, is a field to which Muslim scholars writing in Arabic have made important contributions. In some cases new geographical notions or data were discovered. In other cases existing materials that had been previously limited to particular civilisations…

The barīd was the official system of swift overland communication employed by Muslim rulers throughout much of premodern Islamic history. The English term “postal system” refers to the fact that people and riding-mounts were posted at convenient intervals along a route, in order…