Al-Masudi

[dahir4]

Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn ibn Ali al-Mas'udi (in Arabic أبو الحسن علي بن الحسين بن علي المسعودي transl: Abu al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī al-Masʿūdī) (born c. 896, Baghdad, died September 956, Cairo, Egypt), was an Arab historian and geographer, known as the "Herodotus of the Arabs."[1] Al-Masudi (in Arabic المسعودي) was one of the first to combine history and scientific geography in a large-scale work, Muruj adh-dhahab wa ma'adin al-jawhar (Arabic: مروج الذهب ومعادن الجواهر‎ translated The Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems), a world history.

Al-Mas'udi tells us that he was born in Baghdad. He was a descendant of Abdullah Ibn Mas'ud, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad. However, we know little else about his early years. He mentions his association with many scholars in the lands through which he travelled. However, most of what we know of him comes from the internal evidence of his own works. Although Shboul questions the furthest extent sometimes asserted for al-Mas'udi's travels, even his more conservative estimation is impressive:


Al-Mas'udi's travels actually occupied most of his life from at least 303/915 to very near the end. His journeys took him to most of the Persian provinces, Armenia, Azerbaijan and other regions of the Caspian Sea; as well as to Arabia, Syria and Egypt. He also travelled to the Indus Valley, and other parts of India, especially the western coast; and he voyaged more than once to East Africa. he also sailed on the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean and the Caspian.[2]

Others include Sri Lanka and China among his travels. Lunde and Stone in the introduction to their English translation state that al-Mas'udi received much information on China from Abu Zaid al-Sirafi whom he met on the coast of the Persian Gulf.[3] In Syria al-Mas'udi met the renowned Leo of Tripoli. Leo was a Byzantine admiral who converted to Islam. From him the historian received much of his information about Byzantium. He spent his last years in Syria and Egypt. In Egypt he found a copy of a Frankish king list from Clovis to Louis IV that had been written by an Andalusian bishop.

We know little for sure about how he supported himself during such extensive travels within and beyond the lands of Islam. Lunde and Stone speculate that like many travellers he may have been involved in trade.

The titles of more than twenty books attributed to him are known, including several about Islamic beliefs and sects but most of his writings have been lost. His major work was Akhbār az-zamān (The History of Time) in 30 volumes.[4] This seems to have been an encyclopaedic world history, taking in not only political history but also many facets of human knowledge and activity. A manuscript of one volume of this work is said to be preserved in Vienna; if this manuscript is genuine, it is all that has remained of the work. Al-Masʿūdī followed it with Kitāb al-awsa (Book of the Middle), variously described as a supplement to or an abridgment of the Akhbār az-zamān. This Kitāb al-awsa is undoubtedly a chronological history. A manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, may possibly be one volume of it.

Neither of these works had much effect on scholars – in the case of Akhbār az-zamān, possibly because of its daunting length. So al-Masʿūdī rewrote the two combined works in less detail in a single book, to which he gave the fanciful title of Murūj adh-dhahab wa maʿādin al-jawāhir (The Meadows of Gold and the Mines of Gems). This book, completed in 947 and revised in 956,[5] quickly became famous and established the author's reputation as a leading historian. Ibn Khaldūn, the great 14th-century Arab philosopher of history, describes al-Mas'ūdī as an imam (“leader,” or “example”) for historians. Though an abridgment, Murūj adh-dhahab is still a substantial work. In his introduction, al-Mas'ūdī lists more than 80 historical works known to him, but he also stresses the importance of his travels to “learn the peculiarities of various nations and parts of the world.” He claims that, in the book, he has dealt with every subject that may be useful or interesting. At the beginning of the book he writes that he had voyaged to distant lands such as Sind, Zanzibar, Indochina, China, India, Java and travelled to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Caucasus, Iraq and Syria. Near the ending, of the The Meadows of Gold the author Al-Masudi wrote:


The information we have gathered here is the fruit of long years of research and painful efforts of our voyages and journeys across the East and the West, and of the various nations that lie beyond the regions of Islam. The author of this work compares himself to a man, who having found pearls of all kinds and colours and gathers them together into a necklace of and makes them into an ornament that its possessor guards with great care. my aim has been to trace the lands and the histories of many peoples, and I have no other.[6]

The work is in 132 chapters.[7] The second half is a straightforward history of Islām, beginning with the Prophet Muhammad, then dealing with the caliphs down to al-Masʿūdī's own time, one by one. While it often makes interesting reading because of its vivid description and entertaining anecdotes, this part of the book is superficial. It is seldom read now, as much better accounts can be found elsewhere, particularly in the writings of al-Tabarī.