Yāqūt Shihāb al-Dīn[1] ibn-ʿAbdullāh al-Rūmī al-Ḥamawī (1179–1229) (Arabic: ياقوت الحموي الرومي) was a Muslim scholar of Byzantine ancestry[2] active during the late Abbasid period (12th–13th centuries).
He was born in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, called in Arabic al-Rūm, whence his nisba "al-Rūmi".
[2] Captured in war and enslaved,[2] Yāqūt became "mawali"[note 1] to ‘Askar ibn Abī Naṣr al-Ḥamawī, a trader of Baghdad, Iraq, the seat of the Abbasid Caliphate, from whom he received the laqab "al-Hamawī".
As ‘Askar's apprentice, he learned about accounting and commerce, becoming his envoy on trade missions and travelling twice or three times to Kish in the Persian Gulf.
[6] Yāqūt spent ten years travelling in Iran, Syria, and Egypt and his significance as a scholar lies in his testimony of the great, and largely lost, literary heritage found in libraries east of the Caspian Sea, being one of the last visitors before their destruction by Mongol invaders.