al-Buldan li-Ibn al-Faqih
- Author died
- 340 AH
- Editions
- Alam al-Kutub
Kitab al-Buldan (The Book of Lands) is an early 10th-century Arabic geographical treatise composed by the historian and geographer Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadhani (d. ca. 340 AH / 951 CE). It provides comprehensive descriptions of various provinces, cities, routes, and seas across the Islamic world and neighboring lands, blending geographical facts with historical and literary traditions.
Composition and Scope
The book is dated to around 290 AH (ca. 903 CE), having been compiled after the reign of the Abbasid caliph al-Mu'tadid. Although often referred to as Kitab al-Buldan, it is also titled Akhbar al-Buldan in some manuscript copies. According to the bibliographer Ibn al-Nadim, the original unabridged work was an extensive text comprising approximately one thousand folios.
Kitab al-Buldan covers the regions of the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq—with extensive treatments of Basra and Kufa—Syria, Egypt, North Africa, Persia, Transoxiana, Khurasan, India, China, and the lands inhabited by Turkic tribes. The work integrates administrative data, accounts of city foundations, conquest narratives, folklore, and poetry.
Sources and Method
Ibn al-Faqih compiled material both from written sources and from oral informants. He drew lengthy passages from al-Jahiz's Kitab al-Hayawan, al-Baladhuri's Futuh al-Buldan, and works by Ibn Qutayba. For Central Asia and northern territories, he cited travelers and contemporaries, including Tamim ibn Bahr al-Muttawwi'i, Said ibn al-Hasan al-Samarqandi, and Abu al-Abbas al-Marwazi.
Later scholars noted the literary character of the text; Katip Celebi (Hajji Khalifa) remarked in Kashf al-Zunun that Ibn al-Faqih focused primarily on major cities, lacked strict systematic organization, and freely combined solemn ascetic reflections with entertaining anecdotes.
Plagiarism Controversy
Ibn al-Nadim criticized the work, alleging that Ibn al-Faqih merely gathered material from other books and copied (salakha) the geographical work of the Samanid vizier Abu Abd Allah al-Jayhani. This claim was repeated by later authors such as Yaqut al-Hamawi, as well as modern scholars including J. T. Reinaud and Mustafa Jawad.
However, orientalist Ignaty Krachkovsky challenged this accusation on chronological grounds, pointing out that Ibn al-Faqih composed his book around 290 AH, well before al-Jayhani served as vizier (from 301 AH) and authored his al-Masalik wa-al-mamalik (around 310 AH).
Transmission and Modern Editions
The complete original text was lost from general circulation, surviving largely through an abridgment (Mukhtasar Kitab al-Buldan) made in 413 AH (1022 CE) by Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Ja'far al-Shayzari. In this abridgment, several significant passages, including the accounts of travelers to Central Asia and chapters detailing Turkic towns and customs, were omitted.
In the spring of 1923, a manuscript containing the second half of the unabridged original text was discovered in the Astan-i Quds Razavi Library in Mashhad, Iran, opening with the remainder of the description of Iraq and Basra.
The abridged version was edited by Michael Jan de Goeje and published in Leiden in 1885 as part of the Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum series. In 1996, Yusuf al-Hadi published an edition in Beirut that combined the abridged first half with the newly available full text of the second half from the Mashhad manuscript.
Answer updated