10 ғасырдағы "Әлем шекаралары" кітабы

10th century geography book written in Persian by an unknown author

The Ḥudūd al ʿĀlam (حدود العالم, "Boundaries of the World" or "Limits of the World") is a 10th century geography book written in Persian by an unknown author from Guzgan (present day northern Afghanistan). The title in full is حدود العالم من المشرق الی المغرب (Ḥudūd al ʿĀlam min al Mashriq ilá l Maghrib, "The Boundaries of The World from The East to the West"). In English, the title is also translated as "The Regions of the World" following Vladimir Minorsky's 1937 translation, in which he commented on the title as follows: "The word ḥudūd (properly 'boundaries') in our case evidently refers to the 'regions within definite boundaries' into which the world is divided in the Ḥ. 'Ā., the author indicating with special care the frontiers of each one of these areas, v. i., p. 30. [As I use the word "region" mostly for nāḥiyat it would have been better, perhaps, to translate Ḥudūd al Ālam as "The limited areas of the World".]"

The Orientalist Russian scholar Alexander Tumansky found a manuscript with a copy of this text in 1892 in Bukhara. The copy from the original was made by the Persian chronographer Abu l Mu'ayyad ʿAbd al Qayyūm ibn al Ḥusain ibn 'Alī al Farīsī in 1258.

The sections of its geographical treatise which describes the margins of Islamic world, are of great historical importance. The work also includes important early descriptions of the Turkic peoples in Central Asia. Also noteworthy is the archaic language and style of the Ḥudud, which makes it a valuable Persian linguistic document as well.