Amin Razi also known as ''Omid'') was a Safavid-era (16th to 17th century)

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 ...

geographer, author of a geographical and biographical encyclopedia (''

tadhkirah Tadhkirah (), Arabic for "memorandum" or "admonition", is frequently used as part of the title of literary works of the nature of authoritative collections or summaries. It may refer to the following works: *''al-Tadhkira al-Harawiya fi al-hiyal ...

'') called ''Haft iqlīm'' ( "seven climes") based on the system of

seven climes The climes (singular ''clime''; also ''clima'', plural ''climata'', from Greek κλίμα ''klima'', plural κλίματα ''klimata'', meaning "inclination" or "slope") in classical Greco-Roman geography and astronomy were the divisions of ...

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importanc ...

's ''

Almagest The ''Almagest'' is a 2nd-century Greek-language mathematical and astronomical treatise on the apparent motions of the stars and planetary paths, written by Claudius Ptolemy ( ). One of the most influential scientific texts in history, it canoni ...

''. Al-Razi was born in Ray, Persia into a prestigious family; his father was Kvajeh Mirza Ahmad, the mayor of Ray by appointment of

Tahmasp I Tahmasp I ( fa, طهماسب, translit=Ṭahmāsb or ; 22 February 1514 – 14 May 1576) was the second shah of Safavid Iran from 1524 to 1576. He was the eldest son of Ismail I and his principal consort, Tajlu Khanum. Ascending the throne after t ...

(r. 1524–1576). His paternal uncle was

Khvajeh Mohammad-Sharif Khvajeh Mohammad-Sharif ( fa, خواجه محمد شریف) was a Persian statesman, who occupied the post of vizier of several Safavid provinces. He was also a poet, who wrote under the pen name Hejri (). Biography Mohammad-Sharif was a native o ...

, a poet and minister to the governor of

Khorasan Khorasan may refer to: * Greater Khorasan, a historical region which lies mostly in modern-day northern/northwestern Afghanistan, northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan * Khorasan Province, a pre-2004 province of Ira ...

and later to the Shah. Al-Razi states that he completed his encyclopedia in AH 1002 (1593/4) after six years of work, although the work as extant includes additions of younger date. His dates of birth and death are unknown. He may have visited

Mughal India The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...

during the reign of

Akbar Abu'l-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar (25 October 1542 – 27 October 1605), popularly known as Akbar the Great ( fa, ), and also as Akbar I (), was the third Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1556 to 1605. Akbar succeeded his father, Hum ...

. ''Haft iqlīm'' (also ''Haft eqlīm'') provides extensive historical, biographical and topographical information, arranged by "clime", i.e. the major division of the known world by geographic latitude according to Ptolemy. The total number of biographies in the work is 1,560, in many cases giving more detail than those found in medieval works such as

Lubab ul-Albab ''Lubab ul-Albab'' (لباب الالباب) is a famous anthology written by Zahiriddin Nasr Muhammad Aufi in the early 13th century in eastern Persia. It is considered as the oldest extant biographical work in Persian literature and the most imp ...

Tazkirat al-Awliya ''Tazkirat al-Awliyā'' ( fa, تذکرةالاولیا or , lit. "Biographies of the Saints")variant transliterations: Tazkirat al-Awliyā`, Tadhkirat al-Awliya, Tazkerat-ol-Owliya , Tezkereh-i-Evliā etc., is a Hagiography, hagiographic List of b ...

. The work also cited samples of poetry which is not recorded elsewhere, and some prose passages, e.g. by

Ubayd Zakani Khwajeh Nizam al-Din Ubayd Allah al-Zakani ( fa, خواجه نظام الدین عبید الله الزاکانی, Ḵwājeh Niẓām al-Dīn ʿUbayd Allāh al-Zākānī; d. 1370), better known as Ubayd Zakani () was a Persian poet of the Mongol ...

. Al-Razi's sources have been researched by Naqawī, who identified thirty-nine. Ethé provides a table of the contents of the work. The work survives in numerous manuscripts. The only complete edition is by Jawād Fāżel (1961). The Calcutta edition by Ross et al. is superior to Fāżel's but is incomplete, omitting the fourth clime (which encompasses more than half of the work).M. U. Memon (1984)

References

* * E. D. Ross et al. (eds.), ''Haft eqlīm'', Calcutta, 1918–72. *

Jan Rypka Jan Rypka, PhDr., Dr.Sc. (28 May 1886 in Kroměříž – 29 December 1968 in Prague) was a prominent Czech orientalist, translator, professor of Iranology and Turkology at Charles University, Prague. Jan Rypka was a participant in Ferdowsi ...

, ''Hist. Iran. Lit.'', pp. 452, 495. *Storey, I., pp. 1169-71. {{DEFAULTSORT:Razi, Amin 16th-century births 17th-century deaths 16th-century geographers People from Ray, Iran 16th-century Iranian writers 16th-century writers of Safavid Iran 17th-century writers of Safavid Iran 17th-century Iranian writers