Hudud al-'Alam

The Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam (Arabic: حدود العالم, lit. "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).^[1] The title in full is حدود العالم من المشرق الی المغرب (Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam min al-Mashriq ilá l-Maghrib, lit. "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".]"^[2]