Amīn Rāzī

Amin Razi (Amīn Ahmad Rāzī امین احمد رازی; also known as Al-Razi) was a Safavid-era (16th to 17th century) Persian geographer, author of a geographical and biographical encyclopedia (tadhkirah) called Haft iqlīm (هفت اقلیم "seven climes") based on the system of seven climes of Ptolemy's Almagest.

Al-Razi was born in Ray, Persia into a presigious family; his father was Ḵāǰa Mīrzā Aḥmad, the mayor of Ray by appointment of Tahmasp I (r. 1524–1576). His paternal uncle was Ḵāǰa Moḥammad Šarīf, a poet and minister to the governor of Khorasan and later to the Shah.

Al-Razi states that he completed his encyclopedia in AH 1002 (1593/4) after six years of work, although the work as extant includes additions of younger date. His dates of birth and death are unknown. He may have visited Mughal India during the reign of Akbar.^[1]

Haft iqlīm (also Haft eqlīm) provides extensive historical, biographical and topographical information, arranged by "clime", i.e. the major division of the known world by geographic latitude according to Ptolemy. The total number of biographies in the work is 1,560, in many cases giving more detail than those found in medieval works such as Lubab ul-Albab or Tazkirat al-Awliya. The work also cited samples of poetry which is not recorded elsewhere, and some prose passages, e.g. by Ubayd Zakani.

Al-Razi's sources have been researched by Naqawī,^[2] who identified thirty-nine. Ethé provides a table of the contents of the work.^[3] The work survives in numerous manuscripts. The only complete edition is by Jawād Fāżel (1961). The Calcutta edition by Ross et al. is superior to Fāżel's but is incomplete, omitting the fourth clime (which encompasses more than half of the work).^[4]

References

↑ Storey, p. 1169.
↑ Taḏkera-nevīsī, pp. 118-19
↑ Cat. Ind. Off. I, pp. 380-499, no. 724.
↑ M. U. Memon (1984)

M. U. Memon (1984-12-15). "AMĪN AḤMAD RĀZĪ". Encyclopædia Iranica. Archived from the original on 2010-12-08. Retrieved 2011-06-21.
E. D. Ross et al. (eds.), Haft eqlīm, Calcutta, 1918-72.
Rypka, Hist. Iran. Lit., pp. 452, 495.
Storey, I., pp. 1169-71.

Geography and cartography in medieval Islam

Geographers

9th century	Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī Abū Ḥanīfa Dīnawarī Ya'qubi Sulaiman al-Tajir

10th century	Ibn Khordadbeh Ahmad ibn Rustah Ahmad ibn Fadlan Abu Zayd al-Balkhi Abū Muhammad al-Hasan al-Hamdānī Al-Masudi Istakhri Khashkhash Ibn Saeed Ibn Aswad Ibn Hawqal Ibn al-Faqih Al-Muqaddasi Al-Ramhormuzi

11th century	Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī Abu Saʿīd Gardēzī Al-Bakri Mahmud al-Kashgari Domiyat

12th century	Al-Zuhri Muhammad al-Idrisi Abu'l Abbas al-Hijazi

13th century	Ibn Jubayr Saadi Shirazi Yaqut al-Hamawi Ibn Said al-Maghribi Ibn al-Nafis

14th century	Al-Dimashqi Abu'l-Fida Ibn al-Wardi Hamdollah Mostowfi Ibn Battuta Lin Nu

15th century	Abd-al-Razzāq Samarqandī Ghiyāth al-dīn Naqqāsh Ahmad ibn Mājid Zheng He Ma Huan Fei Xin

16th century	Sulaiman Al Mahri Piri Reis Mir Ahmed Nasrallah Thattvi Amīn Rāzī

17th century	Evliya Çelebi

Works

Influences

Geography (Ptolemy)

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