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The lands of the Eastern Caliphate


Auteur :
Éditeur : Cambridge University Press Date & Lieu : 1905-01-01, Cambridge
Préface : Pages : 536
Traduction : ISBN :
Langue : AnglaisFormat : 125x185 mm
Code FIKP : Lp. Ang. 886Thème : Général

Présentation
Table des Matières Introduction Identité PDF
The lands of the Eastern Caliphate

The lands of the Eastern Caliphate

G. Le Strange

Cambridge University Press

Mesopotamia and Persia, their provinces under the Abbasid Caliphs. The outlying provinces to the north-west and the north-east. The high roads from Baghdâd to the Moslem frontier. The Moslem geographers, and their works. Other authorities. Place-names in the Arabic, Turkish, and Persian provinces.

Mesopotamia and Persia had formed the kingdom of the Sassanian Chosroes, which the Arabs utterly overthrew when, after the death of Muhammad, they set forth to convert the world to Islam. Against the Byzantines, the other great power which the Moslems attacked, they achieved only a partial victory, taking possession, here and there, of rich provinces, notably of the coast lands to the south and east of the Mediterranean; but elsewhere the Emperors successfully withstood the Caliphs, and for many centuries continued to do so, the Roman empire in the end surviving the Caliphate by over two hundred years.
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PREFACE

In the following pages an attempt is made to gather within a convenient compass the information scattered through the works of the medieval Arab, Persian, and Turkish geographers, who have described Mesopotamia and Persia, with the nearer parts of Central Asia. The authorities quoted begin with the earlier Moslem writers, and conclude with those who described the settlement of these lands which followed after the death of Timûr,—the last great Central Asian wars of conquest,—for with the fifteenth century the medieval period in Asia may be said to come to an end.

The present work is also the complement of Baghdâd under the Abbasid Caliphate published in 1900, and carries forward the geographical record which I began in Palestine under the Moslems, a work that appeared in 189o.

To keep the volume within moderate compass, the geography of Arabia, with the description of the two Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, though these for the most part were under the dominion of the Abbasids, has been omitted. Perhaps some other scholar may take up the subject, with fuller knowledge than I have, and write the historical geography of Arabia with Egypt across the Red Sea under the Fatimid Caliphs ; completing the circuit of Moslem lands by describing the various provinces of North Africa, with the outlying and shortlived, though most splendid, western Caliphate of Spain.

If Moslem history is ever to be made interesting, and indeed to be rightly understood, the historical geography of the nearer East during the middle-ages must be thoroughly worked out. I have made a first attempt, but how much more needs to be done, and better done than in the present volume, I am the first to recognise. The ground, however, for future work is now cleared; the authorities for each statement are given in the footnotes; some mistakes are corrected of previous writers, and a. beginning made of a complete survey for this period of the provinces of the Abbasid Caliphate. But my book is only a summary, and does not pretend to be exhaustive; also to keep down the size, I have been obliged to omit translating in full the Itineraries, which our Moslem authorities give us. In this matter a new edition, duly corrected from recently published texts, is indeed much needed of Sprenger's Post and Reise Routen des Orients, though the translation of the Itineraries which Professor De Goeje has appended to his edition of Ibn Khurdâdbih and Kudâmah, goes far to supply the lack.

With each province I have given such information as our authorities afford of the trade and manufactures ; the record, however, is very fragmentary, and for a general survey of the products of the Moslem east, during the middle-ages, the chapter on the subject (Handel and Gewerbe) in A. von Kremer's Culturgeschichte des Orients is still the best that I know.

A chronological list of the Moslem geographers referred to in the notes by initial letters is given at the end of the Table of Contents. The fuller titles of other works quoted in the notes are given on the first reference to each author, and the names of their works will easily be recovered, for subsequent references, by consulting the index for the first mention made of the book.

In the introductory chapter a summary description will be found of the works of the Arab geographers; but this matter has already been more fully discussed in Palestine under the Moslems.

The dates are given according to the years of the Hijrah, with the corresponding year A.D. (in brackets). The method of transcription adopted needs no comment, being that commonly in use; it may be noted that the Arab w is usually pronounced v in Persian ; and that besides the emphatic z the Arab dh and d are both indifferently pronounced z in modern Persian, while the th has the sound of s.
In a work like the present, almost entirely composed from eastern sources, many errors will doubtless be found; also, with the great number of references, mistakes are unavoidable, and I shall feel most grateful for any corrections, or notice of omissions.

My hope is that others may be induced to set to work in this field of historical geography, and if this essay be soon superseded by a more complete survey of the ground, it will have served its purpose in having prepared the way for better things.

G. Le Strange



Chapter I

Introductory

Mesopotamia and Persia, their provinces under the Abbasid Caliphs. The outlying provinces to the north-west and the north-east. The high roads from Baghdâd to the Moslem frontier. The Moslem geographers, and their works. Other authorities. Place-names in the Arabic, Turkish, and Persian provinces.

Mesopotamia and Persia had formed the kingdom of the Sassanian Chosroes, which the Arabs utterly overthrew when, after the death of Muhammad, they set forth to convert the world to Islam. Against the Byzantines, the other great power which the Moslems attacked, they achieved only a partial victory, taking possession, here and there, of rich provinces, notably of the coast lands to the south and east of the Mediterranean; but elsewhere the Emperors successfully withstood the Caliphs, and for many centuries continued to do so, the Roman empire in the end surviving the Caliphate by over two hundred years.

The kingdom of the Sassanians, on the other hand, the Arabs completely overran and conquered; Yazdajird, the last of the Chosroes, was hunted down and slain, and the whole land of Iran passed under the rule of Islam. Then further, and to no inconsiderable extent, the empire of the Caliphs, which had taken over bodily the administration of the older Persian kingdom, came itself to be modelled on the pattern in government which the Chosroes had established; this more especially under the Abbasids, who, rather more than a century after the death of the Prophet, overthrew their rivals the Omayyads, and changing the seat of the Caliphate from Syria to Mesopotamia, founded Baghdad on the Tigris, a few miles above Ctesiphon, the older winter capital of the Sassanians.

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