Mapping Frontiers Across Medieval Islam: Geography, Translation and the ’abbasid Empire

The story of the 9th-century caliphal mission from Baghdad to discover the legendary barrier against the apocalyptic nations of Gog and Magog mentioned in the Quran, has been either dismissed as superstition or treated as historical fact. By exploring the intellectual and literary history surrounding the production and early reception of this adventure, Travis Zadeh traces the conceptualization of frontiers within early 'Abbasid society and re-evaluates the modern treatment of marvels and monsters inhabiting medieval Islamic descriptions of the world. Examining the roles of translation, descriptive geography, and salvation history in the projection of early 'Abbasid imperial power, this book is essential for all those interested in Islamic studies, the 'Abbasid dynasty and its politics, geography, religion, Arabic and Persian literature and European Orientalism.

Travis Zadeh is Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at Haverford College, Pennsylvania. He received his PhD from Harvard University in Comparative Literature (2007), and has published articles on Islamic intellectual and cultural history in the Journal of Arabic Literature, the Journal of Qur’anic Studies, Middle Eastern Literatures, and the Journal of the American Oriental Society. He is also the author of the forthcoming book, The Vernacular Qur’an: Translation and the Rise of Persian Exegesis (Oxford University Press in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies), which examines early debates over translating the Qur’an and the development of Persian exegetical literature