Abu-l-Hasan Ali al-Masudi, an Arab of Baghdad, travelled through Syria,
Palestine, Arabia, Zanzibar, Persia, Central Asia, India, and Ceylon; he
claims even to have reached the China Sea. He gathered his gleanings into
a thirty-volume encyclopedia, which proved too long for even the spacious
scholars of Islam; he published a compendium, also gigantic; finally
(947) -- perhaps realizing that his readers had less time to read than he
had to write -- he reduced his work to the form in which it survives, and
gave it the fancy title, "Meadows of Gold and Mines of Precious Stones."
Al-Masudi surveyed omnivorously the geography, biology, history, customs,
religion, science, philosophy and literature of all lands from China to
France; he was the Pliny os well as the Herotodus of the Moslem world. He
did not compress his material to aridity, but wrote at times with a genial
leisureliness that did not shun, now and then, an amusing tale. He was a
bit skeptical in religion, but never forced his doubts upon his audience.
In the last year of his life he summarized his views on science, history
and philosophy in a "Book of Information," in which he suggested an
evolution "from mineral to plant, from plant to animal, from animal to
man." Perhaps these views embroiled him with the conservatives of Baghdad;
he was forced, he says, "to leave the city where I was born and grew up."
He moved to Cairo...[where] he died ... in 956, after ten years of exile.
Will Durant, "The Age of Faith" Volume 4 of "The Story of Civilization" New
York, MJF Books (reprint of the original Simon & Schuster printing of 1950),
pp 238,239
Bill Hamilton whamilto@mich.com
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