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Abdallatif: Al-Ifada wa’l-I’tibar (Short Account of Egypt) (d1231) lived all over the middle east

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Muwaffaq al-Din Muhammad Abd al-Latif ibn Yusuf al-Baghdadi (1162 Baghdad–1231 Baghdad), was a physician, philosopher, historian, Arabic grammarian and traveler. Only his Account of Egypt (in two parts), appears to be known in Europe. It contains a vivid description of a famine caused by the Nile failing to overflow its banks. He also wrote detailed descriptions on ancient Egyptian monuments. He talks about the sources of the Nile.


Taken from: Ahmad Nazmi : The Nile River in Muslim Geographical Sources
Taken from: S. de Sacy, Relation de l’Egypte par Abd al-Latif, (from here are the page numbers)
Also called Abd-Ul-Latif or Abdallatif al-Baghdadi.

P2
….This river offers two remarkable peculiarities. The first is the great distance from its springs to its mouth; no other river known on earth equals the length of the course of the Nile. It has its origin in springs that run from the Mountains of the Moon. Who are situated it is said at 11 deg. On the other site of the equator.
P3
The soil of Egypt is a sandy land, which is not suitable for agriculture; but the waters of the Nile bring with them of the countries of the Blacks, during the flood of the river, a black loam, tenacious and very fat, which is called ibliz. This silt is deposed; and when the earth has drunk the waters, it is ploughed and seeded. Every year a new loam comes fertilizing the ground; and that's why the whole cultivated land in Egypt is planted every year, and leaves no fallow land, as is practiced in Iraq and in Syria: we are content in Egypt to vary the crops on the same land.
P25
............the colocasia is the Egyptian ginger which takes its damp quality, therefore, from the earth of this country : for the same cause its heat and strength decreases. It is thus that the gingers of Zanzibar and of the Indies are stronger and sharper than the Yemeni.
P337
The rivers who come out of the mountains of the moon unite together with others in a very big lake and from this lake the Nile springs.
In the case of more abundant rains, they wash the deposits and stagnant water in the swamps and perhaps the water of the lake from where the Nile springs is without any doubt constantly stagnant, covered with moss and especially by the shores and in the shallows. When the periodical rains come to fall and their waters flow in torrents into this lake, they stir up the bottom of the lake and move the parts which previously were stagnant. Those which were on the shores are swept out to the middle, and are carried by the river current into the river bed.

(1) Arab for the devil (who is also black)