Al-Masudi

(c. 893 - c. 956)

Called by one biographer the “imam of encyclopedism,” al-Masudi was born in Baghdad around 893. As a young man, he traveled around Persia and the Caspian Sea before settling in Egypt, where he wrote most of his thirty-six works. Aside from The Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems, a history of the world and a volume of corrections, all are now lost, including The Secret of Life and Reports of the Times and the Events into Which Past Communities, Defunct Races, and Disappeared Empires Have Sunk.