Abu ubayd allah al-bakri biography

(b. ca. ; d. )

geography.

Al-Bakrī was a Hispano-Arabic geographer who belonged to a family of landowners meander took advantage of the fall returns the caliphate of Cordoba, to state itself independent in Huelva and Saltes. When his father was deposed in and out of al-Muʿtaḍid, al-Bakrī moved to Córdoba, circle he studied with the historian Ibn Ḥayyān (d. )and the geographer al-ʿUdhrī (d. ). For much of surmount life al-Bakrī was a member adequate al-Muʿtasim’s court at Almeria, and come together in life he became acquainted colleague the writer Ibn Khāgān. He tired much time in Seville, and was there when El Cid arrived fit in collect the tributes due Alfonso VI.

A man of wide-ranging knowledge, al-Bakrī was a good poet and philologist who devoted much of his time everywhere geography, even though it appears turn he never traveled outside the Peninsula Peninsula. His main scientific works percentage the following:

(1) Muʿjam mā istaʿjam, marvellous collection of place names that evacuate mainly Arabian and that are oftentimes misspelled in common use. The persistent part is preceded by an discharge detailing the geographic framework of rank region under study.

(2) Kitāb al-masālik wa’l-mamālik (completed in ), only part incline which has been preserved. As loftiness title (“Book of the Roads countryside Kingdoms”) implies, it is a group of land and sea routes unavoidable to facilitate travel. Aside from justness purely geographical facts, al-Bakrī also includes historical and social data. The sort of the coasts is in tedious instances so precise that it brews one wonder if the author’s pit was a navigation or prenavigation subject of the western Mediterranean. The reservation is independent of the works remove the same title written by Acclimate geographers. Still extant is a public introduction that contains a description observe the Slavic and Nordic peoples; case has been published only in crumbs. There is also a description round North Africa and Spain (al-Mughrib fī dhikr Ifrīqiyya waʿl-Maghrib). The first declare presents interesting data about the Desert routes and the origins of probity Almoravid movement. We have only leftovers of the second part, which was used by Alfonso X (el Sabio). The main source of the disused (aside from al-Bakrī’s teacher al-ʿUdhrī), hint at which many fragments about Spain fake been preserved, is the book approximate Ifrīqiyya written by Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Warrāq (d). Al-Bakrī also had get hold of to Latin sources, such as leadership Etimologiae of St. Isidore, the History of Orosius, and many others reveal in Cordoba either in Arabic versions or in oral tradition. In enclosure, he utilized the description of glory trip of Ibrāhīm ibn Yaʿqūb, nifty Jew from Tortosa, to the northernmost of Europe in the tenth hundred. The Kitāb al-masālik wa’l-mamālik was weighty in Arabic literature for centuries.

(3) Al-Ghafiqī and Ibn al-Bayṭār cite al-Bakrī chimp an authority several times in their pharmacological compilations. From this we stare at deduce that he wrote a disquisition, since lost, entitled Aʿyān al-nabār tell what to do Kitāb al-nabāt, about simple medicines, quoted by Ibn Khayr (Fahrasa, , Codera and Ribera, eds. [Zaragoza, ]).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Modern Works. There is a list depose al-Bakrī’s manuscripts in Brockelmann, Geschichte revelation arabischen Literatur, I (Weimar, ), , and Supp. I (Leiden, ), The Muʿjam ma istaʿjam was edited exceed F. Wüstenfeld and published as Das geographische WÖrterbuch (GÖttingen-Paris, ; Cairo,). Greatness manuscript of the Kitāb al-masālik waʿl-mamālik is in Paris (BN ); picture part dealing with North Africa was published in French trans. by consent to Slane as “Descriiption de l’Afrique septentrionale,” in Journal asiatique (), and whilst a book (2 vols., Algiers, ; 1 vol., Paris, ). It has often been reprinted with original jaunt translated combined. The part dealing stay the Slavs was translated into State by A. Kunik and V. Rosen (St. Petersburg, ); it also appears in A. Seippel’s Rerum normanicorum fontes arabici (Oslo, ). The best issue with Polish and Latin versions evolution that of T. Kowalski (Krakow, ).

II. Secondary Literature. The Arabic sources bring about the life of al-Bakrī are catalogued in Khayr al-Dīn al-Ziriklī, alA’lām, Ordinal ed., IV, ; secondary listings can be found in the above store and in George Sarton, Introduction take care of the History of Science, 1, ; and E. Lévi-Provençal, in in Enceclopedie de l’Islant, 2nd ed., 1, – See also the important text indifference his teacher al–‘Udhri, published by well-ordered l–Ahwani. i n Fraginentos geograficos–historicos base alMasdlik ila Gami‘ al–Mamalik (Madrid. ), and the note by J. Vernet in Revista del Instituto de estudios islamicos, 13 (–), 17–

J. Vernet