Abu Hamid al-Gharnati
Abu Hamid al-Gharnati ( Arabic أبو حامد الغرناطي, DMG Abū Ḥāmid al-Ġarnaṭī , with the other namesمحمد بن عبد الرحمن بن سليمان المازري القيسي, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān b. Sulaimān al-Māzirī al-Qaisī ; born around 1080 near Granada in al-Andalus ; died 1170 in Damascus , Syria ) was an Arab traveler, geographer and writer of numerous reports on Eastern and Central Europe.
From the Iberian Peninsula he traveled to Egypt and Syria in 1106 , and from Syria to Baghdad in 1123 , where he was promoted by Ibn Hubaira, a vizier of the Abbasid caliph al-Muqtafi . In 1130 he moved on to Persia , the Caucasus and Khorezmia . From 1131 to 1150 he lived with Muslim Turkic peoples on the Volga in the vicinity of the Volga Bulgarians , before he traveled from there through southern Russia to Hungary . Until 1153 he lived as an advisor at the court of the Hungarian King Géza II and took care of the Muslims in Hungary as Sheikh al-Islam . He had a son with a Hungarian Muslim woman whom he left behind on his mission to recruit Turkish soldiers from the Cumans of southern Russia for the Hungarian king . Via Kiev he reached Baghdad again in 1154, from there to Mosul in 1161 , where he wrote his travelogue Tuhfat al-albab ("Gift of Hearts"). He settled in Aleppo in 1165 before moving to Damascus in 1169, where he died in 1170.
literature
- Carl Brockelmann : History of Arabic Literature . First supplement volume. Pp. 877-878. Brill. Leiden 1937
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Abu Hamid al-Gharnati |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Māzirī al-Qaisī, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān b. Sulaimān al- |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Arab traveler, geographer and writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1080 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | al-Andalus |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1170 |
| Place of death | Damascus |