Iranian Explorers - Persian Explorers, Ahmad Ibn Rustah, Ali Ibn ABI Bakr Al-Harawi, Ibn Al-Faqih (Paperback)

Chapters: Persian Explorers, Ahmad Ibn Rustah, Ali Ibn Abi Bakr Al-Harawi, Ibn Al-Faqih. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 17. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Ibn Rustah (in Persian: - Amad ebn Roste Efahn) was a 10th century Persian explorer and geographer born in Rosta district, Isfahan, Persia He wrote a geographical compendium. The information on his home town of Isfahan is especially extensive and valuable. Ibn Rustah states that, while for other lands he had to depend on second-hand reports, often acquired with great difficulty and with no means of checking their veracity, for Isfahan he could use his own experience and observations or statements from others known to be reliable. Thus we have a description of the twenty districts (rostaqs) of Isfahan containing details not found in other geographers' works. Concerning the town itself, we learn that it was perfectly circular in shape, with a circumference of half a farsang, walls defended by a hundred towers, and four gates. His information on the non-Islamic peoples of Europe and Inner Asia makes him a useful source for these obscure regions (he was even aware of the existence of the British Isles and of the Heptarchy of Anglo-Saxon England) and for the prehistory of the Turks and other steppe peoples. He travelled to Novgorod with the Rus', and compiled books relating his own travels, as well as second-hand knowledge of the Khazars, Magyars, Slavs, Bulgars, and other peoples. He wrote of tenth-century city of the Rus': "As for the Rus, they live on an island (Scandinavia) that takes three days to walk round and is covered with thick undergrowth and forests; They harry the Slavs, using ships to reach them; they carry them off as slaves and sell them. They have no fields but simply live on what they get from the Slav's lands W...More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=45712