Ibn Hawqal

ʻAlī Ibn Ḥawqal al-Naṣībī, born in Nisibis, Upper Mesopotamia;[1] was a 10th-century Arab[2] Muslim writer, geographer, and chronicler who travelled from AD 943 to 969.

One journey brought him 20° south of the equator along the East African coast where he discovered large populations in regions the ancient Greek writers had deemed uninhabitable.

As a primary source his medieval geography tends to exaggeration, depicting the "barbaric and uncivilised" Christians of Palermo, reflecting the prevailing politics and attitudes of his time.

The chapters on al-Andalus, Sicily, and the richly cultivated area of Fraxinet (La Garde-Freinet) describes in detail a number of regional innovations practiced by Muslim farmers and fishermen.

[4] In the 1870s, the famous Dutch orientalist Michael Jan de Goeje edited a selection of manuscript texts by Arab geographers, which was published by Brill, Leiden in the eight-volume series Bibliotheca geographorum Arabicorum.