Istakhri

Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Farisi al-Istakhri () (also "Estakhri", , i.e. from the Iranian city of Istakhr, b. - d. 957 AD [346AH]) was a 10th-century travel-author and geographer who wrote valuable accounts in Arabic of the many Muslim territories he visited during the Abbasid era of the Islamic Golden Age. There is no consensus regarding his origin. Some sources describe him as Persian, while others state he was Arab. The "Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition" states that his "biography is unknown, or almost so". The "Encyclopedia Iranica" states: "Biographical data are very meager. From his "nesbas" (attributive names) he appears to have been a native of Eṣṭaḵr in Fārs, but it is not known whether he was Persian".
Istakhri's account of windmills is the earliest known. Istakhri met the celebrated traveller-geographer Ibn Haukul, while travelling in the Indus Valley. and Haukul's magnum opus, "Kitab al-Surat al-Ard", incorporated the work of Istakhri.
Works.
Istakhri's two surviving works are:
Published Editions.
An 8-volume edition of works by medieval Arab geographers, edited by the Dutch orientalist Michael Jan de Goeje in a series titled "Bibliotheca geographorum Arabicorum" was published by Brill, Lugduni-Batavora (Leiden) in the 1870s. An edition of Istakhri's MS text was produced for the first volume under the Latin title "Viae Regnorum descriptio ditionis Moslemicae" - "Description of Roads of the Kingdoms in Muslim territories". In 1927 the editor Theodore Noldeke produced a second edition.
In 1845 the German orientalist A. D. Mordtmann published a translation in Hamburg with the title "Das Buch der Länder von Schech Ebu Ishak el Farsi el Isztachri", with a foreword by C. Ritter. (Schriften der Akademie von Ham Bd. 1, Abth. 2).