The Meadows of Gold

“Masudi doesn’t – unlike most of the historians who follow him, who write strictly Islamic history that perhaps give some nod to pre Islamic Arabia, but for whom history really only gets exciting at the coming of the prophet – provide a history of the Islamic world and think ‘job done’, perhaps finishing off with what’s known about how the world’s going to end. On the contrary, Masudi travelled widely, well beyond the frontiers of Islam, and was particularly interested in all the non-Islamic cultures he visited” Read more...

Classics of Arabic Literature

Robert Irwin