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Middle East books The Best Divisions for Knowl, Safarnama, The history of al‑Ṭabar, The Cambridge History of, History of the Arabs | ||
Futūh al-Buldān (Arabic: فتوح البلدان) is an Arabic book by Persian historian Ahmad Ibn Yahya al-Baladhuri.
The work by which he is best known is the Kitab Futuh al-Buldan ("Book of the Conquests of the Lands"), edited by M. J. de Goeje as Liber expugnationis regionum (Leiden, 1870; Cairo, 1901). This work is a digest of a larger one, which is now lost. It contains an account of the early conquests of Muhammad and the early caliphs. Al-Baladhuri is said to have spared no trouble in collecting traditions, and to have visited various parts of north Syria and Mesopotamia for this purpose.
Columbia University published a translation into English in two volumes as "The Origins of the Islamic State. The first (1916) was by Philip Khuri Hitti. The second (1924) was by Francis Clark Murgotten.
The book has the form of a geographical description of the Caliphate empire in which the main information about each location is a political history of how it came to be included in the empire and some of the early political events.
He also made some translations from Persian into Arabic.