The Book of Examination of the Wonders of the Cities

The nearest geographical survey to 1200: a description of the Almohad lands written nine years earlier, town by town, from Alexandria and Barqa through Tripoli, Gabès, Mahdia, Tunis, Bougie, Tlemcen, Fez, Marrakesh and Sijilmasa, with a section on the Sahara routes and the Sudan (Ghana, Zafun, Kawkaw). Much is copied from al-Bakri (1068), but the author adds Almohad-period notes on fortifications, revenues, governors' residences and the state of towns after the Banu Hilal, so it shows what an Almohad administrator thought his empire looked like just before the Banu Ghaniya war. For West Africa it adds little to al-Bakri and should be read with him.

About this source

Title: Kitab al-istibsar fi aja'ib al-amsar
Author: Anonymous
Author's dates: an Almohad official of Marrakesh, writing in 1191
Written: 1191
Language: Arabic
Covers: Egypt, Ifriqiya, the Maghreb, the Sahara and the Sudan as of the late twelfth century
Kind: Geography

No free copy of Fagnan's translation or of Zaghlul's edition was found online in this search; the Internet Archive upload linked above carries no edition details and should be checked against Zaghlul's text before use. Levtzion and Hopkins translate the Sudan section into English. The Istibsar was once wrongly treated as a mere abridgement of al-Bakri.

Where to read it

Editions

A. von Kremer (ed.), Description de l'Afrique par un géographe arabe anonyme du sixième siècle de l'hégire (Vienna, 1852), partial Arabic text (not freely online)
Sa'd Zaghlul Abd al-Hamid (ed.), Kitab al-istibsar fi aja'ib al-amsar (Alexandria, 1958; Casablanca, 1985), Arabic (not freely online)

Translations

E. Fagnan (tr.), L'Afrique septentrionale au XIIe siècle de notre ère: description extraite du Kitab el-Istibçar (Constantine, 1900; first in the Recueil des notices et mémoires de la Société archéologique de Constantine 33, 1899), French (not freely online)

Read it online

Arabic text uploaded to the Internet Archive under the title Kitab Al Istibsar (edition and editor not stated on the item; identity not confirmed in this search)