Map · Persian

Suwar al-buldan (Pictures of the Lands): Persian Istakhri with Balkhi-school maps, Bodleian MS. Ouseley 373, dated June 1272

صور البلدان

al-Istakhri (d. c.957), Persian redaction attributed to Muhammad ibn As'ad ibn Abd Allah

Map: Suwar al-buldan, Istakhri, c. 950 — Picture: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford (CC BY-NC). See it at full size at the library

How we know

compilation Assembled from earlier sources. The author did not observe it directly.

compilation: Istakhri reworked al-Balkhi's map set (c.920-950) with his own travel and informant material; the Persian redaction is a later translation, and the 1272 scribe redrew the maps

Research notes

Persian redaction with an editor name in the Bodleian record; date 1272 is the manuscript, not the text. The regional maps (Khazar Sea, Ma wara al-nahr) were not located by thumbnail sampling in fol.100-139; they must lie elsewhere in the volume. Fihrist record unreachable from this environment.
Labels read on the south-up world map: بحيرة خوارزم (Aral), خراسان, بلاد الروم, مصر, النيل, الاندلس, and at lower left a label read as الكيماكية (Kimak country); المشرق at left edge, المغرب at right. Ouseley acquired it in Shiraz in 1811.

Why it matters

Earliest dated open copy of the Balkhi-school map set in Persian: the world map places the Turks, Kimak and Khazar lands on the northern rim beyond Khwarazm and Khurasan, and the regional maps of the Khazar Sea and Transoxiana (not located in this sampling) are the tenth-century Muslim frame for the steppe peoples.