Book Description
The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1905, is an anthology of geographical and historical works on Mesopotamia, Persia, and the surrounding areas of Central Asia by medieval Arab, Persian, and Turkish Muslim geographers. The translated works begin with writings from A.D. 864, and conclude with works from the early seventeenth century. While not an exhaustive geographical history, the description of each province includes information on manufacture and trade, towns, roads, bodies of water, and other topical areas of interest. There are also maps of several provinces as well as an extensive index. The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate is a complementary work to Baghdad under the Abbasid Caliphate, and includes some records from Palestine under the Moslems, making this work ideal for any student of Le Strange's translations. GUY LE STRANGE (1854-1933) was born in Hunstanton, Norfolk, England, as the youngest son of Henry L'Estrange Styleman. He studied Arabic and Persian at the College de France in Paris, after which he spent many years traveling and living abroad in Persia, Florence, and Palestine. He settled in Cambridge in 1907, where he contributed to The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, of which he was a member until his death. Le Strange was the editor and translator of several well-known books on the Middle East and Islam, establishing him as one of the most recognized historical geographers of medieval Islam to write in English.
