Born at Al‐Bayt al‐Muqaddas (Jerusalem) in AD 946, al‐Muqaddasī (Shams ad‐Dīn Abū ˓Abdallāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Abī Bakr al‐Bannā˒), also called al‐Maqdisī, made important contributions in regional geography. In his early days he studied Muslim history, especially its political and cultural aspects, civilization, religion, and jurisprudence. To seek knowledge he visited distinguished scholars, met the men of science, and studied in royal libraries at a fairly young age.
Among other Arab geographers of the time, al‐Muqaddasī's definition of a region was probably the most original and produced one of the most valuable treatises in Arabic literature, Kitāb aḥsan‐al taqāsim fī ma˓rifat al‐aqālim(The Best Divisions for the Classification of Regions). Though al‐Muqaddasī belonged to the Balkhī school, he was critical of it and felt that they disregarded real geography. He argued that scientific geography must be based on observation. He critically examined the information presented by...
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Beasley, G. Raymond. The Dawn of Modern Geography. Vol. 1. London: John Murray, 1987.
Le Strange, G. The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905.
Ranking, G. S. A. and R. F. Arzoo, trans. Aḥsan‐al taqāsim fī ma˓rifat al‐aqālim. Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica, 1897–1910.
Siddiqi, Akhtar Hussain. Al‐Muqaddasī's Treatment of Regional Geography. International Journal of Islamic and Arabic Studies 4.2 (1987): 1–13.
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Rahman, M. (2008). Al‐Muqaddasī. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_8963
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