Ibn Hawqal

Abu al-Qasim Ibn Hawqal al-Nasibi, a geographer and travelling merchant of the fourth Islamic (tenth Christian) century, author of Surat al-Ard. He set out from Baghdad on Thursday 7 Ramadan 331 AH while still young, travelled the lands of Islam from the east to the Maghrib, al-Andalus and Sicily, and described them province by province, with an image of each ^{1 2 3}.

In the introduction to Surat al-Ard, Ibn Hawqal says he loved reading books of routes from boyhood. Continuous travel helped him write, and so did his uprooting from his homeland in search of a living, "through the injustice of rulers and the fury of the times, and the unending hardships upon the people of the east". ⁴ He left Baghdad in Ramadan 331 AH "in the full vigour of youth", "with ample goods and evident means". He adds that he describes at the end of his book how journeys passed him from one to the next "until I had travelled the whole face of the earth". ⁵

The Dar Maktabat al-Hayat preface calls him Abu al-Qasim Muhammad ibn 'Ali al-Mawsili al-Hawqali al-Baghdadi, who lived in the tenth century CE. It says he was one of the "cultivated travelling merchants" who used trade as a means of understanding the character of regions and peoples. ²