Abulfeda, the Kurdish ruler, from the perspective of an Ottoman

 

The 17th-century Katip Celebi acknowledges a debt to a Kurdish scholar-ruler in his comments on geographical texts. Abulfeda's work is recognized as the best book of geography written in Islamicate history:

al-Malik al-Mu'ayyad 'Imad al-Din Ismail b. al-Malik al-Afdal 'Alī (better known as Abū'l-Fidā, d. 732/1331). He was a scion of the Ayyubid Kurds, the most distinguished ruler of Hamā, nay, the greatest scholar among caliphs and kings after al-Ma'mūn (Abbasid caliph, r. 813-833). In the introduction he states that he has not seen any book that treats this subject adequately. Ibn Hawqal, in his book, does not have detailed descriptions of the coun-tries and fails to determine place names or give longi-tude and latitude. Sharīf al-Idrīsī in the Nuzhat al-mushtaq and Ibn Khurdād (i.e. Ibn Khurradādhbih) and others followed the same path as Ibn Hawqal. Astronomical tables and books of longitudes and latitudes do not deter-mine place names or give descriptions of the regions and their conditions. Those books that are careful to deter-mine place names such as the Ansab of al-Samānī, the Mushtarik of Yaqut al-Hamawī, and the Faysal and Muzīl al-irtiyāb of Abü'l-Majd al-Mawşilī, etc. do not give longitudes and latitudes. Thus, when it was clear that none of these books alone would be able to explain this subject satisfactorily, he compiled this book around 730 (1330), giving the longitude and latitude of 623 cities according to conventional climes in tabulated form in the manner of Ibn Jazla's Taqwīm al-abdān. In his apology for restricting his book to that number, he states:

"I do not claim to discuss all the cities comprehen-sively. In fact, it is impossible even to mention most of them, because very little information has come to us on the regions of the clime of China, which in area is almost a quarter of the inhabited world, and much of what has come to us is clearly erroneous. The same is true of the countries of India, which covers a vast area but is mostly unknown. We hardly know one percent of what there is to know about the lands in the north, of the Turks, Tatars, Russians, Bulgars, Franks, Walachians, Poles and Kazaks (or Cossacks); or the area extending from Constantino-ple to the Western (Atlantic) Ocean; or the lands in the south-Nubia, Takrur (Sudan), Ethiopia and Zanzibar-which include the blacks and many other nations and tribes. For most of the books on "Routes of Countries" (masālik al-mamālik) only include the lands of Islam, and even these are not fully described. However, it is bet-ter to know these few than to be left completely igno-rant."

The poor one (Katib Çelebi) says: That book (Taqwim al-buldan) is the best of the Islamic books on this science. Since it is as we have described, one can judge the state of the other works by analogy to it and one can realize the superior quality of this Cihānnümā and of the translation of Atlas Minor.