This is a reprint of Kitab Futuh al-buldan by Ahmad b. Yahya al-Baladhuri (d. c. 892 CE), edited by M.J. de Goeje and originally titled Liber expugnationis regionum (Leiden,1866). The work offers an account of the early conquests of the Islamic polity. It has the form of a geographical survey of the Caliphate's territories, describing how each location came under Muslim rule.

Ibn al-Faqih was the Iranian author of a Geography in Arabic entitled Kitab al-buldan written around the year 903. The original work is lost, but the abridged version, possibly composed around 1022, has survived in a handful of manuscripts. Only three manuscripts were known during De Goeje's life and he used them all for his edition, which was originally published in 1885. Its introduction includes a summary of Ibn Faqih's life on the basis of the classical sources by De Goeje. Ibn al-Faqih's Kitab al-buldan offers geographical and historical details not found in other sources, and it was in...

Abu 'l-Qasim 'Ubayd Allah b. 'Abd Allah Ibn Khurradadhbih (d. c. 911 CE) is one of the earliest geographical writers in Arabic whose writings have survived more or less in their original form. The Kitab al-Masalik wa l-mamalik ('The book of itineraries and kingdoms') made his reputation. In this edition, Ibn Khurradadhbih's geographical text is published alongside an excerpt from Qudama Ibn Ja'far's Kitab al-Kharaj, which relied on the same sources as Ibn Khurradadhbih. Qudama b. Ja'far was a prominent philologist and historian who died between 940 and 948 CE.

Abu 'Ali Ahmad b. 'Umar Ibn Rusta was born in Isfahan at an unknown date and he flourished in the first decade of the 10th century CE. Only the seventh volume of his Kitab al-A'laq al-nafisa has survived. The work deals with mathematical, descriptive and human geography and a variety of historical and other subjects. One of his sources seems to have been a more complete version of Ibn Khurradadhbih, which has not survived. The Kitab al-A'laq al-nafisa, which has been characterized as an encyclopedia of geographical knowledge, is a rich source on the kinds of subjects that interested the...

Al-Mas'udi composed his Kitab al-Tanbih wal-ishraf in the years 955 and 956, finishing it not long before his death. Based in part on earlier historical-geographical works, it offers a description of astronomical and meteorological phenomena; the divisions of the earth; the seas; ancient nations; universal chronology, and then the history of Islam until the caliphate of al-Muti' (r. 946-74).

Little is known about the life of Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad al-Iṣṭakhrī, the author of Kitāb al-Masālik wa l-mamālik, which was written towards the end of the first half of the 10th century CE. The work built on the earlier concept of the “atlas of Islam”, which it developed further. The climates (iqlīm) it describes are no longer those of Ptolemean geography, but, reflecting the Iranian tradition, refer to geographical entities or “countries”. Also reflecting the author’s background—whose most common nisba is al-Fārisī—Iran holds a favoured position...

The journeys of Abū l-Qāsim Ibn Ḥawqal, who might have been a merchant, took him to North Africa, Spain and the southern edge of the Sahara (947-51), Egypt, Armenia and Azerbaijan (c. 955), the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, Khuzistan, and Iran (961-69), Khwarazm and Transoxania (c. 969), and Sicily (973). By about 988 CE the final version of Ibn Ḥawqal's Kitāb Ṣūrat al-arḍ was ready. It is effectively both a continuation and an update of al-Iṣṭakhrī's Kitāb al-Masālik wa-l-mamālik and is also...

This volume, which was originally published in 1879, contains the indices compiled by M.J. de Goeje to his critical text editions of al-Iṣṭakhrī's Kitāb al-Masālik wa-l-mamālik (BGA I:1), Ibn Ḥawqal's Kitāb Ṣūrat al-arḍ (BGA I:2) and al-Muqaddasī's Aḥsan al-taqāsīm fī maʿrifat al-aqālīm (BGA I:3). It also includes his Arabic-Latin glossary to these works, and additions and corrections.

This is the second edition by M.J. de Goeje of the Arabic text of al-Muqaddasī’s Aḥsan al-taqāsīm fī maʿrifat al-aqālīm, the first BGA edition of which was published in 1877 by the same editor. Shams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Abī Bakr al-Bannāʾ al-Shāmī al-Muqaddasī is one of the most prominent representatives of Arabic geography in the second half of the 10th century CE. Building on the tradition of the “atlas of Islam” of which al-Iṣṭakhrī and Ibn Ḥawqal were also representatives, al-Muqaddasī was the first to systematize the subject...

Shams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Abī Bakr al-Bannāʾ al-Shāmī al-Muqaddasī is one of the most prominent representatives of Arabic geography in the second half of the 10th century CE. Building on the tradition of the “atlas of Islam” of which al-Iṣṭakhrī and Ibn Ḥawqal were also representatives, al-Muqaddasī was the first to systematize the subject into a proper science of geography of Islam for the benefit of both merchants and the cultivated man. Al-Muqaddasī’s Aḥsan al-taqāsīm fī maʿrifat al-aqālīm (“the best division for the knowledge of...