Al-Bakrī's al-Masālik wa l-Mamālik: an Appraisal of his Reports about Iran

Al-Masālik wa al-Mamālik by al-Bakri is a geographical work that was composed in the western part of the Muslim world in the 5th /11th century. The author describes the entire known world of his time including the eastern territories of Muslim Caliphate and particularly Iran. So, his book, unlike the works of many of his North African and Andalusian contemporaries, has found public favor. It seems that the popularity of al-Bakri’s work was due to his full description of the world or his geographical information of his own region which he was acquainted with. This arose some questions: how did he collect the material of his book when never personally travelled to many of the regions that he describes and also from what kind of sources did he obtain them? The present paper is a comparative study which shows that the main weakness of the al-Bakri’s book, the section regarding with Iran, is he only relied on the works of earlier geographers and contributed no information based on his personal observation.