Masudi, Abd al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn

Masudi, Abd al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn mäso͞o´dē [key], d. 956, Arab historian, geographer, and philosopher, b. Baghdad. He traveled in Spain, Russia, India, Sri Lanka, and China and spent his last years in Syria and Egypt. His Muruj adh-Dhahab [meadows of gold], an epitome of a longer history of the world from creation to AD 947, is a compilation of his travel observations and studies. It embraces social and literary history, discussions of religions, and geographic descriptions. A French version of this work was published between 1861 and 1878. The first volume has been translated into English.

See R. A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (2d ed. 1930).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

See more Encyclopedia articles on: Historians, Miscellaneous: Biographies