al-Mas‛ūdī ~ HISTORIAN OF CIVILISATIONS
Abū l-Ḥasan ‛Alī b. al-Ḥusayn al-Mas‛ūdī (born ca. 896—d. 956 CE) was a descendent of the Prophet‘s Companion ‛Abdallāh ibn Mas‛ūd, who grew up in Baghdad and died in Cairo in 345 H. He worked as a travelling merchant and Muslim missionary roaming the world, whose chief life-time aim was amassing universal historical, geographic and religious knowledge. Only four of his extremely valuable writings survive, displaying a global understanding of human cultural and religious progress. He described ancient civilizations objectively, relating them to Islam‘s pluralist human experience and the unitary mission of its universal world view.
~ from the keyboard of GHURAYB November 2010 Historical writing was a primary Islamic discipline that underwent profound elaboration over centuries, and in its early appearance portrayed a universal vision of humanity from creation until the present. From the eras of Muḥammad Ibn Isḥāq (d. 150 H/767 CE), Ibn Wadīh al-Ya‛qūbī (d. 284/897), and Ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), until the work of the great fourteenth century Andalusian ‛Abd al-Raḥmān Ibn Khaldūn (d. 808/1406), Muslim historians offered a comprehensive account of human earthly existence within the universal perspective taught by the Qur‘ān. Reflecting upon human history with its diverse ethnicities, languages and religions was understood to yield moral lessons and guiding admonitions for attentive thinkers. ‗History‘ became a literary means to both instruct and entertain at once, as well as accurately portray the underlying forces shaping human experience. ‛Alī b. al-Ḥusayn al-Mas‛ūdī perfected this educational function of historical study by combining it with witty urbanity and wide intellectual sophistication that set a standard for future historians. Mas‛ūdī described himself as ―a woodcutter by night‖. His ironic self-designation may refer to the hard lonely work of collecting and packaging historical data about preceding civilizations and religions, in order to bring the fruits of his labor to the profitable attention and enjoyable benefit of his readers who constituted the intelligentsia of the freshly established universal Islamic civilization during the first-half of the 3rd century H /10th century CE. Introduction of paper to the Islamic world from China in the early ‛Abbāsid era facilitated a highly literate and lively intellectual life. Books were readily available and affordable, with large public libraries in major cities and many individuals possessing private libraries of thousands of volumes. 1
Journeys & Method. Travel occupied most of Mas‛ūdī‘s life from at least 303/915 onward, exemplifying the Prophet‘s counsel: ‗Seek knowledge, even unto China‘. His extensive voyages took him to most of the Persian provinces and Central Asia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Caspian Sea regions, as well as Arabia, Syria, Egypt and North Africa, and he voyaged several times to East Africa. He travelled to the Indus Valley and to other parts of India, especially along the western coast. Mas‛ūdī sailed on the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, the Caspian Sea, and the Indian Ocean – reportedly as far as mainland China (the early Muslim merchant and sailor community in Guangzhou). There may be good reasons to support his having visited Sri Lanka, the Malay Peninsula, and islands of Southeast Asia (now Indonesia). In the early 3rd /9th century he would have found Muslim communities in all these places. He knew about Paris and Korea, and discussed the Khazars, the Bulgars, and the Rus (Norsemen of the Volga)— being well informed on Rus trade with the Byzantines and on the competence of the Rus in sailing merchant vessels and warships. In a poem describing his extensive journeys to remote corners of the earth he said about himself: Time did not cease to fling him cross far horizons – beyond the reach of caravans.
An indefatigable traveler and observer of peoples, al-Mas‛ūdī collected first-hand knowledge from ancient records and inscriptions, dynastic and administrative archives, temples and ruins, interviews with local religious communities and their scholar– authorities, throughout his lifetime of continual study, journeying and writing. He utilized information obtained from sources not previously exploited, reporting what he learned from traders, sailors, military men, local historians and religious officials (especially non-Muslim). Mas‛ūdī received important information about China from the historian-traveller Abū Zayd Ḥasan al-Sīrafī whom he met on the coast of the Persian Gulf. In Syria al-Mas‛ūdī met the renowned Leo of Tripoli (known as Ghulām Zurāfah), the early-10th century Byzantine renegade turned Muslim admiral whose fleet threatened Constantinople in 907. From Leo al-Mas‛ūdī received much up-to-date information about Byzantium; A. Shboul observes that ―he was the only known Muslim author to deal systematically with Byzantine history after the rise of Islam up to his own day.‖ He spent his last years in Syria and Egypt. Versed in historical and political studies of the ancient nations and peoples, he was linguistically competent in Himyaritic (S. Arabian), Coptic, Aramaic & Syriac, Greek (both ancient & Byzantine), Latin, old Persian languages (Pahlavi, Soghdian), Sanskrit, and possibly also Malayalam. He was accomplished in all known sciences inherited
2 from the past including astrology, medicine, theurgic magic & alchemy, mathematics, geography, philosophy and cosmology. Mas‛ūdī further possessed a critical expertise in the manifold intellectual and religious disciplines cultivated in Islamic civilization including adab (belles letters), genealogy, Ḥadīth, Prophetic sīrah, Legal theory, Theology, and polemic dogmatics of competing Muslim schools. He manifested a particularly deep interest in comparative religions and intra-Muslim religious and ideological debates.
Writings. Mas‛ūdī‘s major opus Akhbār al-Zamān…/The Annals of Time and former nations, bygone generations and extinct kingdoms whom adversities annihilated (reportedly thirty volumes or sections in length) embraced an encyclopedic vision of human civilisational endeavor stretching from the moments of creation through the ancient antediluvian past to encompass Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, African, Biblical, pre- Islamic Arabian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Slavic, Frankish, and Byzantine civilisations. Naturally, he would have treated the history of the Prophet Muhammad and of the successor Islamic polities in great detail; this work is said to have concluded with an account of the Shī‛ite rebellions against the ‛Abbāsid caliphs.
He summarized Annals into half its length in his al-Awsaṭ,1 and then halved that summary to produce his marvelous historical work Murūj al-Dhahab…/Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems (five volumes in the critical edition by C. Pellat) which secured his reputation. In his Introduction to Murūj he lists more than eighty historical works he exploited, while stressing the importance of his travels to “learn the peculiarities of various nations and parts of the world.” Continuing to refine his materials with an eye to educational utility and moral edification for the learned tastes of his cultured peers, al-Mas‛ūdī again halved Murūj al-Dhahab to produce his al-Istidhkār. Finally in the last years of his life he boiled down this lifelong historical project into an extremely concise one volume ‗notification‘ on world history, The Overview /al-Tanbīh wa l- Ishrāf (348 pages in ‛A. Sāwī‘s critical edition), a kind of executive summary of his original Annals of Time. Mas‛ūdī‘s approach to his task was original for he gave as much weight to social, economic, religious, and cultural matters as to chronological history and politics. His detailed geographic expertise and historical grasp of dynasties and politics, coupled with awareness of ethnology and environmental factors, led him to make quite
1 The claim that a manuscript volume from al-Awsaṭ exists in Oxford University‘s Bodleian Library has not yet been confirmed. 3 insightful observations. He attributed the linguistic diversity and political fragmentation of the Caucasus to its mountainous terrain; and related the political power of Byzantium to the strategic location of its capital Constantinople. Mas‛ūdī offered details about Khālid b. al-Walīd‘s campaigns into southern Iraq in the early 1st/7th century as evidence of the recession of the Gulf of Basrah; and employed facts about the Russian attack in 907 on Muslim settlements by the Caspian Sea in order to discredit the idea that the Black Sea and the Caspian were a single body of water. Later thinkers including the scientist al-Birūnī (d. 1048) and Ibn Khaldūn clearly took lessons from al-Mas‛ūdī on a number of points. Mas‛ūdī was most notable by the precision and detail of his citations and references, often providing the full name of an author and titles of his sources, discussing variants and alternative interpretations of terms and concepts, and always recording dates and chronology with great accuracy. He was very careful to indicate his own corpus of writings, and the historical works listed above are riddled with cross-references to his other books where specific events and issues were given more comprehensive detailed treatment (thirty-four titles are mentioned in his Murūj and Tanbīh). The loss of these other works has been lamented for well over a century both in Europe and Asia; several researchers devoted years to investigating the possible existence of a copy of his most celebrated work Annals of Time. Religion & Civilisation. Mas‛ūdī‘s highly inquisitive scholarship displays a fascination with religious doctrines and observances. In many passages from his Murūj and Tanbīh he treated a fascinating variety of topics related to philosophic or religious teachings and inter-religious controversies, exhibiting marked objectivity and dispassionate fair-mindedness. Clearly he debated with every Muslim doctrinal group and with adherents from rival faiths, eagerly probing into their beliefs. Zoroastrians, Manichaeans, Mazdakites, Sabians, Qarmaṭis, Samaritans, variety of Christians, Karaite Jews & Rabbinic Jews, as well as Hindu Brahmins were among his partners in debate. While it is known that al-Mas‛ūdī studied jurisprudence with Shāfi‛ite masters like Ibn Surayj, and that he learnt from leading Mu‛tazilite masters such as al-Jubbā‘ī, al- Nawbakhtī and Abū l-Qāsim al-Balkhī al-Ka‛bī, yet the titles of a number of his writings point to his adherence to imāmī Shī‛ism. Contacts with multiple traditions of other nations prepared al-Mas‛ūdī to view orthodox chronologies and genealogies with some skepticism. He was ready to set aside what religious dogma taught, in the light of what reason and experience had shown him.
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When he struggles to fit the nations he knows into the biblicist genealogy of the ‗seven nations‘ issuing from Noah, he recognized that the Persian, Indian and Chinese traditions do not support the assumed universality of the Flood, and thus he questioned traditional biblical cosmology. Mas‛ūdī‘s questioning of conventional wisdom was prompted by his adherence to scientific cosmology wedded to empirical geography, and supported by his experiential anthropology and ethnography nurtured by his wide acquaintance with the tremendous variety of human languages and cultures. He displays a deep understanding of historical change, tracing current conditions to the unfolding of events over generations and centuries. His method of imparting moral wisdom operates by means of instructive anecdotes and citing striking incidents capturing the spirit of an age, a dynasty, or of a people. Mas‛ūdī attempted to sum up the contributions of the great civilizations in terms of a particular ‗national genius‘: Indians possess wisdom and virtue; Greeks (he includes here Romans, Byzantines, Slavs and Franks) have wisdom and philosophy; the Persians and Chinese have statecraft idealized in their administrative order and commercial astuteness; the natural genius of the Turks is warfare; while the Chaldaeans (i.e. old Syriac speakers of Syria & Iraq) possess agricultural expertise and refined urban development. For al- Mas‛ūdī, the Chaldaean race (Aramaeans or ‗Nabataeans‘, Assyrians, Babylonians) harbored the ancient cradle of civilization in the mid-most climatic region on earth— right where Baghdad was situated. He valued technical modes of verifiying and corroborating testimony, and favoured empirical inquiry (baḥth) over appeals to the ‗obvious‘ or agreed upon. He preferred induction and reasoning when checking reports, and was guided by the natural sciences and his own experience to confirm, discredit or suspend judgment about received accounts – or to understand and rationalize unusual or mythic phenomena. Mas‛ūdī‘s critical rational spirit existed in tension with his love for telling a good story, and his facility in repeating fabulous legends. While not unique for his era by any means, his impressive scope and depth of cultural interests and inter-civilisational vision stands out prominently. Mas‛ūdī consistently advanced a global perspective at the heart of his cosmopolitan historical project—striving toward his higher aim of preserving the memory of human culture. He maintained the conviction that humanity continues to achieve moral and spiritual progress ~ through linkage to the spiritual realm prolonged by prophetic guides.
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The civilisational environment this observer of humanity inhabited, with its rich blend of Islamic revealed disciplines, Persian literature, Hellenic sciences & philosophy, and Indian mathematics – along with the rich heritage of ancient cultures fertilising the vigorous mindset of that age – helps explain al-Mas‛ūdī‘s achievement. This environment enabled the Islamic society of his day to manifest a knowledge–seeking perceptive and analytical attitude, in marked contrast to Muslim societies of our time. Until Muslims learn the art of re-energizing their civilisational legacy, thinkers like al- Mas‛ūdī will remain remote and incomprehensible to them today. He would not have been surprised at this situation, for as he wrote in his introduction to Meadows of Gold [translated A. Sprenger, p. 4–5] :
…Then we had intercourse with kings of different usages and politics, and by comparing them we have come to the result that illustrious actions have faded in this world, and its luminaries are extinguished. There is a great deal of wealth but little intellect. You will find the self-sufficient and ignorant, the illiterate and defective, contented with opinions and blind to what is near them.
Further Reading. A. Published Works by al-Mas‛ūdī The Meadows of Gold…/Murūj al-Dhahab. A complete edition of the Arabic text, with French translation, was published by Barbier de Meynard & Pavet de Courteille in nine volumes (Paris: 1861– 1877). Professor Charles Pellat revised this Arabic text for a more accurate textual edition in five volumes (Beirut: Université Libanaise, 1966–1974). / English translations: Three English partial translations exist: Aloys Sprenger translated the first volume (London: Oriental Translation Fund, 1841)2; several long passages appeared in Charles F. Horne, ed., The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East (New York: Parke, Austin & Lipscomb, 1917) vol. VI Medieval Arabia pp. 35–89; and Paul Lunde & Caroline Stone translated over two hundred passages on the ‛Abbasid caliphs – The Meadows of Gold, The Abbasids (London and New York: Kegan Paul, 1989). Brief-Notification & Overview /al-Tanbīh wa l-Ishrāf. Text first edited by De Goeje (Leiden: 1894); a more accurate edition by ‛Abdallāh I. al-Sāwī (Cairo: 1938; rpr. Baghdad: al-Muthannā, n.d.). The Annals of Time…/Akhbār al-Zamān wa man Abādahu l-Ḥidthān. ‛Abdallāh al-Sāwī published the Arabic text of the only known section from this lost work (4th pr. Beirut: Dār al-Andalus, 1980), covering the dynastic history of the ancient pharaohs of Egypt. [Persistent rumors of a complete copy held by a Berber family in Shanqīṭ have never been substantiated.] Confirmation of The Legacy…/Ithbāt al-Waṣiyyah li-l-imām ‛Alī b. Abī Ṭālib. 4th pr. Najaf: Ḥaydariyyah, 1955 [the attribution to al-Mas‛ūdī has often been doubted – but without any convincing reasons]. B. Studies Ahmad A. M. Shboul, Al-Mas‛udi and His World. London: Ithaca Press, 1979 [fundamental]. / Tarif Khalidi, Islamic Historiography: The Histories of Mas‛udi. Albany NY: SUNY Press, 1975. / ―Mas‛ūdī, Abū ul-Ḥasan…‖ in Dictionary of Scientific Biography. New York: Charles Scribner‘s Sons, 1970–80 [available at: Gale Virtual Reference Library].
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