Al-Masudi Quotes

Al-Mas‘udi was an Arab historian, geographer and traveler. He is sometimes referred to as the "Herodotus of the Arabs". Al-Mas‘udi was one of the first to combine history and scientific geography in a large-scale work, The Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems , a world history. More generally, described as prolific and as a polymath, he was the author of "over twenty" works, which dealt with "a wide variety of religious and secular subjects, including history (both Islamic and universal), geography, the natural sciences, philosophy, and theology."

Also known as Geographer, Traveller

When a man dies, his wife is burned alive with him, but if the wife dies before her husband, the man does not suffer the same fate. If a man dies before marriage, he is given a posthumous wife. The women passionately want to be burned because they believe they will enter paradise.

Al-Masudi
- Women
- Paradise
- Burned
Via the squares on the chessboard, the Indians explain the movement of time and the age, the higher influences which control the world and the ties which link Chess with the human soul.

Al-Masudi

He who has never left his hearth and has confined his researches to the narrow field of the history of his own country cannot be compared to the courageous traveller who has worn out his life in journeys of exploration to distant parts and each day has faced danger in order to persevere in excavating the mines of learning and in snatching precious fragments of the past from oblivion.

Al-Masudi
An agile, well-trained, brave elephant, ridden by a good mahout, its trunk armed with the kind of sabre known as a qartal and covered with chain mail, while the rest of its body is protected by sheets of bark and iron, surrounded by 500 men to defend it and protect it to the rear, can fight against 6000 men on horseback.

Al-Masudi
- Men
- Fight
- Elephant
It was at this time that backgammon was invented and began to be popular. It is a kind of paradigm of how wealth is acquired, which in this world is not the reward of intelligence or ability, just as luck is not a product of skill... If luck favours the player, he gets what he wants; if it doesn't, a skilled and prudent man cannot win that which fortune only bestows on whom it likes. It is thus that the good things of this world are apportioned by chance.

Al-Masudi
The sciences were financially supported, honoured everywhere, universally pursued; they were like tall edifices supported by strong foundations. Then the Christian religion appeared in Byzantium and the centres of learning were eliminated, their vestiges effaced and the edifice of Greek learning was obliterated. Everything the ancient Greeks had brought to light vanished, and the discoveries of the ancients were altered out of recognition.

Al-Masudi