An alphabetical gazetteer of every place Yaqut had read of or seen: he travelled as a bookseller's agent through Syria, Iraq, Persia, Khurasan and Khwarazm (about 1213 to 1220) and settled in Aleppo. For 1200 it gives, town by town, the rulers, fortresses, taxes, products and recent history of the Jazira, Iraq, Fars, Khurasan and Transoxania shortly before the Mongols, often with the name of the lord in the 1210s and notes on what had happened in the 1190s. The entries are uneven and the geography bookish, but nothing else describes so many of the Atlas's Islamic places at once.
About this source
- Title
- Mu'jam al-buldan
- Author
- Yaqut al-Hamawi
- Author's dates
- 1179 to 1229
- Written
- 1224 to 1228, at Aleppo
- Language
- Arabic
- Covers
- the Islamic world as known about 1210 to 1228, with historical notes
- Kind
- Geography
Wustenfeld's six volumes (1866 to 1873) are public domain; volumes 1 and 5 were verified at the Internet Archive and the whole set is on the Halle university digital library. Barbier de Meynard's French (Dictionnaire geographique, historique et litteraire de la Perse, 1861) translates the Persian entries. No English translation.
Where to read it
Editions
- F. Wustenfeld (ed.), Jacut's geographisches Worterbuch, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1866), Arabic
- F. Wustenfeld (ed.), Jacut's geographisches Worterbuch, vol. 5 (Leipzig, 1873), Arabic; Digital Library of India scan
- Mu'jam al-buldan, 5 vols (Beirut, Dar Sadir, 1955 to 1957), Arabic (not freely online)
About the source
Realms this source covers in 1200
- The Abbasid caliphate: al-Nasir's Iraq and Khuzistan
- The Khwarazmshah's realm
- The Ghurid sultanate
- Fars: the Salghurid atabegs
- Greater Lur: the Hazaraspid atabegs
- Lesser Lur: the Khurshidid atabegs
- The Kurds of the Zagros
- Yazd: the atabegs
- The Qufs of the Kerman hills
- Tabaristan: the Bavandid kings
- Gilan and Daylam
- Samarkand: the Western Qarakhanids
- Bukhara: the sadrs of the house of Burhan
- Ferghana: the khans of Uzgend
- The Ayyubid Jazira (al-Adil's, under al-Kamil)
- Mosul (Nur al-Din Arslan Shah)
- Mardin (the Artuqids of Mardin)
- Aleppo (al-Zahir Ghazi)
- Al-Adil's lands: Damascus, Kerak and the south
- Ayyubid Egypt under the boy sultan al-Mansur
- Ayyubid Yemen under al-Mu'izz Isma'il
- The emirate of Mecca under Mukthir ibn Isa
- Oman
- Kish: the island lords of the Gulf
- The kings of Old Hormuz
- The Uyunids of al-Hasa, Qatif and Bahrain
- Shirvan
- Derbent
- The Eldiguzid atabegs of Azerbaijan
- Ahlat: the Begtimurids, heirs of the Shah-Armens
- The Seljuk sultanate of Rum