Expert geographer, a physicist and historian, Al Masudi (871-957 AD) made an important contribution to earth sciences. Al Masudi is nicknamed the 'Herodotus of the Arabs' because he was the first Arab to combine history and geography. He traveled extensively in India, the Middle East, and Africa. Al-Masudi wrote a 30-volume history of the world and described the experiences of his travels form Europe to India.
As an author, he had extremely diverse interest and an exceptional fecundity. His famous works are
(i) Kitab-Muraj-al-Dhahab,
(ii) Kitab-al-Tanbh Wal-Ishraf,
(iii) Kitab-Akbar-al-Zaman (in 30 volumes), and
(iv) Kitab-al-Ausat.
Most of these works except Kitab-Muraj-al-Dhahab (Golden Meadows) are lost.
The Christians during the 'Dark Age' tried to prove that the earth is flat and rectangular, twice as long west and east as north and south, which is surrounded by water on all sides. The medieval European mind clouded with religious fanaticism was not prepared to accept the idea of sphericity. Al-Masudi had a conception of the sphericity of the earth. He believed that the surface of the sea is curved, since when a ship approached the land, the coast and the objects thereon gradually become more and more visible. He compared the merits and demerits of the earth being spherical instead of flat, saying that had it been flat, all lands would have remained eternally submerged under the sea.
Expressing his opinion about the Encircling Ocean, he stated that according to many authors the Encircling Ocean is the principal sea and that all other seas are derived from it; in the east it is being connected with the China-sea. About the Arabian-sea, AI-Masudi considered it as the largest in the world.
One of the most important contributions of AI-Masudi lies in the field of physical geography. Modern ideas of geomorphology include both the comparative study of landforms and analytical study of processes concerned in their formation. Landforms are visualized to pass through a cycle of development from i.e. youthful stage to maturity and finally to the old stage - the stage of peneplanation.
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