MASʿUDI, ABU’l-ḤASAN ʿALI b. Ḥosaynb. ʿAli b. ʿAbd-Allāh Hoḏali, a tenth-century geographer and historian and an important source of information on pre-Islamic and early Islamic Iran. Reportedly a descendant of the Prophet’s companion ʿAbd-Allāh b. Masʿud (d. 32/652-53?), he was born in Baghdad, probably around 275/890. In addition to the so-called Arab sciences of the Qurʾān, the Hadith, Arabic grammar and poetry, tribal genealogy, history, jurisprudence, and theology, he studied the “ancient sciences” of philosophy, astronomy, geography, medicine, and music. He also traveled extensively. His first recorded journey (303/915-16) took him to Khuzestan, Fars, Kerman, Sejestān, and parts of Khorasan. From there he crossed the Indus valley to the Punjab and Sind (the northeastern and southern provinces of what is today Pakistan) and traveled down the western coast of India. Later voyages took him to Oman, Yemen, the Hejaz, the eastern Mediterranean coast, northern Syria, and northern Iraq. After exploring the Caspian Sea region and the Caucasus, he settled in Egypt. He appears to have lived and worked in the capital, Fosṭāṭ, from approximately 330/942 to his death in 345/956 (Shboul, pp. 1-29; Miquel, I, pp. 202-12).

Masʿudi is credited with up to forty-six works, on Muslim creeds and sects, natural philosophy, history, and other subjects (Moruj I, secs. 2-18; Shboul, pp. 55-77; Khalidi, pp. 154-64; Pellat, p. 784). Only two undoubtedly authentic items have survived:  Moruj al-ḏahab wa maʿāden al-jawhar, whose manuscripts are based on a draft dated to 332/943-44 (Tanbih, p. 97); and al-Tanbih wa al-ešrāf, which he completed shortly before his death. These two books are among several that he wrote to supplement his now-lost magnum opus, Aḵbār al-zamān (Moruj I, secs. 1-2), and its successors, all of which surveyed: (1) the regions and peoples of the earth, and (2) the history of the Muslim community from its origins to the mid-tenth century. As supplements, the Moruj and the Tanbih consist largely of material omitted from their predecessors. Between them, nevertheless, the two contain information on an impressively wide range of topics. Thanks to Masʿudi’s curiosity about matters usually ignored by other authors, his works remain indispensable sources for the cultural history of Southwest Asia.

Although Masʿudi’s surviving works contain no declarations of creed, his treatment of early Islamic history, especially the caliphate of ʿAli b. Abi Ṭāleb  and the titles of certain now-lost works (e.g., al-Bayān fi asmāʾ al-aʾemma; Moruj III, secs. 1612-757, IV, sec. 2798) leave little doubt that he was an Imami Shiʿite. Like some contemporary Shiʿite scholars, he seems to have preferred the Ẓāheri (literalist) approach to feqh, though he is known to have studied with at least one Shafiʿite jurist (Tanbih, pp. 4-5; Stewart). Like many Shiʿites, too, he favored the rationalist epistemology of the Moʿtazilites, whose doctrines he explains in the Moruj al-ḏahab (IV, secs. 2254-61). He proposed naturalistic explanations of such matters as demonic apparitions (MorujII, secs. 1207, 1344), hinting that only religious tradition prevents him from dismissing them altogether (II, sec. 1003). He also preferred direct observation over uncritical citation of sources, insisting that “one who has spent his days roaming the earth” makes a far better authority than “one who huddles by the censer at home” (MorujI, sec. 7). Moreover, he believed that systematic inquiry was cumulative and progressive:  “As one thinker after another discovers what his predecessors did not, knowledge grows and expands” in a process that “appears to be infinite and to have no predetermined end” (Tanbih, p. 76). These convictions are not merely rhetorical; rather, they shape both the form and the content of his surviving works.

According to Masʿudi, every nation has a history, which it transmits from one generation to the next to preserve the memory of great events. To prevent the loss of such memories, history must be written down. For this reason, Alexander the Great ordered his people to make a written record of his career. His example inspired the Sasanian Ardašir b. Bābak (ARDAŠIR I), who, after he had overthrown the Parthian Empire (moluk al-ṭawāʾef), “undertook the recording of his career, his counsels, and his battles.”  Extended to his successors, this project resulted in a careful record of events from his time to that of the last Sasanian monarch, Yazdegerd III. Unfortunately, Ardašir wanted to consign his predecessors to oblivion, and so few records remain of the dynasties that preceded his (Tanbih, pp. 196-97). Since then, presumably as a result of the Muslim conquest, even more has been lost: “[The Persians’] history has been effaced, their achievements have been forgotten, and their traditions have lapsed, all because of the passage of time and the rush of events.”  What little is known is nevertheless worth reporting, for the Persians “were a people of lofty glory and splendid nobility (al-ʿezz al-šāmeḵ wa’l-šaraf al-bāḏeḵ), able leaders and rulers, doughty on the field of battle and tough in combat; the nations paid them tribute and obeyed them for fear of their might and the great number of their troops” (Tanbih, p. 105).

Masʿudi’s treatment of non-Muslim societies is dispassionate and non-polemical.  His account of pre-Islamic history suggests that human beings can grasp essential truths about nature and society without help from divine revelation. In the Moruj (I, secs. 152-86), he begins his survey of ancient civilizations with India, the first nation to establish a social order based on philosophical teachings. In the Tanbih, he begins with the Persians, who attained the highest form of political organization possible before Islam: “Their territory was vast, their history long, their dynastic succession unbroken, their administration efficient, their lands prosperous, and their subjects well cared for” (Tanbih, p. 6). Only when they neglected religion (of whatever form) and the administration of justice did the ancient empires collapse. In his own day, the Muslim community, despite its receipt of revelation through the Prophet and the Imams, is falling apart for the same reason (Tanbih, p. 400; Khalidi, pp. 102-6).

Within this broad vision of human history, the Moruj and the Tanbih devote considerable attention to Iranian history, religion, folklore, and related matters. In the Tanbih, Masʿudi lists the topics related to the Persians covered in the Moruj. These include accounts of their kings, their religion, their seven alphabets, their festivals, the sacred girdles (kasātij; MP kostīg) that they wear around their waists, their views on kingship, and the signs that foretold their defeat by the Arabs; their food, drink, clothing, laws, cities, canals, monuments, fire temples, and beliefs about light; their religious and royal officials, banners, genealogies, noble families, and geographical differences; and their belief that royal power will one day return to them (Tanbih, pp. 107-8). Since many of these topics are mentioned only briefly, or not discussed at all, in the Moruj, it is clear that the now-lost final version contained a good deal more on Iranian topics than the surviving draft. Also among Masʿudi’s now-lost works is one devoted entirely to Persian history, titled Maqātel forsān al-ʿajam, which related the adventures of Šahrabrāz and “other Persian knights and brave warriors,” in chronological order (Tanbih, p. 102).

The following sections list Masʿudi’s sources on Iran and summarize—using his names and terms, not those of modern Iranology—the accounts he composed on the basis of them. The transliteration of the names generally follows the voweling of the Pellat edition of the Moruj and the de Goeje edition of the Tanbih.