Muhammad ibn Muhammad Shakir Ruzmah-'i Nathani - The Monster of Gog and Magog - Walters W659190B - Full Page

Zakariyya' al-Qazwini ( , ar, أبو يحيى زكرياء بن محمد بن محمود القزويني), also known as Qazvini ( fa, قزوینی), born in

Qazvin Qazvin (; fa, قزوین, , also Romanized as ''Qazvīn'', ''Qazwin'', ''Kazvin'', ''Kasvin'', ''Caspin'', ''Casbin'', ''Casbeen'', or ''Ghazvin'') is the largest city and capital of the Province of Qazvin in Iran. Qazvin was a capital of the ...

(Iran) and died 1283, was a

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

cosmographer The term cosmography has two distinct meanings: traditionally it has been the protoscience of mapping the general features of the cosmos, heaven and Earth; more recently, it has been used to describe the ongoing effort to determine the large-scal ...

and

geographer A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" a ...

Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...

ancestry. He belonged to a family of jurists originally descended from

Anas bin Malik Anas ibn Mālik ibn Naḍr al-Khazrajī al-Anṣārī ( ar, أنس بن مالك الخزرجي الأنصاري (c.612 – c.712 Finding the Truth in Judging the Companions, 1. 84-5; EI2, 1. 482 A. J. Wensinck J. Robson) was a well-known ''saha ...

(a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad) which had been well established in Qazvin long before al-Qazwini was born. His most famous work is the (), a seminal work in cosmography. He is also the author of the geographical dictionary (lit. 'Monuments of the Lands and Historical Traditions about Their Peoples').

Career

Born in

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

, al-Qazwini served as a legal expert and judge in several localities in Iran. He traveled around in

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...

and the

Levant The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is eq ...

, and finally entered the circle patronized by the

Ilkhanid The Ilkhanate, also spelled Il-khanate ( fa, ایل خانان, ''Ilxānān''), known to the Mongols as ''Hülegü Ulus'' (, ''Qulug-un Ulus''), was a khanate established from the southwestern sector of the Mongol Empire. The Ilkhanid realm ...

governor of

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...

Ata-Malik Juvayni Atâ-Malek Juvayni (1226–1283) ( fa, عطاملک جوینی), in full, Ala al-Din Ata-ullah (), was a Persian historian and an official of the Mongol state who wrote an account of the Mongol Empire entitled '' Tarīkh-i Jahān-gushā'' (' ...

(d. 1283 CE). It was to the latter that al-Qazwini dedicated his famous

cosmography The term cosmography has two distinct meanings: traditionally it has been the protoscience of mapping the general features of the cosmos, heaven and Earth; more recently, it has been used to describe the ongoing effort to determine the large-scal ...

titled (). This treatise, frequently illustrated, was immensely popular and is preserved today in many copies. It was translated into his native

Persian language Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, ', ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and ...

, and later also into

Turkish Turkish may refer to: *a Turkic language spoken by the Turks * of or about Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities and mi ...

. Al-Qazwini was also well known for his geographical dictionary (lit. 'Monuments of the Lands and Historical Traditions about Their Peoples'). Both of these treatises reflect extensive reading and learning in a wide range of disciplines..

References

Bibliography

Encyclopedic sources

* * * * * *

Secondary literature

* *

Editions of the Arabic text

* (edition of the ) * (edition of the )

Translations

* (German translation of the ) * (partial German translation of the )

External links

Islamic Medical Manuscripts at the National Library of Medicine.
U.S. National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD.
''Kitāb al-ʻajāʾib wa al-gharāʼib''.
Full online version from the Getty Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Qazwini, Zakariya 1203 births 1283 deaths 13th-century Iranian scientists Iranian people of Arab descent 13th-century Iranian astronomers Medieval Iranian geographers 13th-century Iranian physicians People from Qazvin Zoologists of the medieval Islamic world Scholars of the Ilkhanate