There is no consensus regarding his origin. Some sources describe him as Persian, while others state he was Arab. The Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition states that his "biography is unknown, or almost so". The Encyclopedia Iranica states: "Biographical data are very meager. From his nesbas (attributive names) he appears to have been a native of Eṣṭaḵr in Fārs, but it is not known whether he was Persian".
Istakhri's account of windmills is the earliest known. Istakhri met the celebrated traveller-geographer Ibn Haukul, while travelling in the Indus Valley. and Haukul's magnum opus, Kitab al-Surat al-Ard, incorporated the work of Istakhri.
Istakhri's two surviving works are:
- Masālik al-Mamālik ("Routes of the Realms" or "Books of roads and kingdoms") This combines maps with descriptive text to describe the geography of Iran and surrounding kingdoms. It is based mainly on lists of stations of postal routes, and seems intended to help commit those lists to memory rather than to guide travellers through the territory. There is no consistency between the map projections. An illuminated manuscript dated 706 AH (1306-07 AD) now resides in the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art. It contains many maps, though some mentioned in the text are missing.
- Ṣuwar al-ʿAqālīm ( "Pictures of the Regions")
An 8-volume edition of works by medieval Arab geographers, edited by the Dutch orientalist Michael Jan de Goeje in a series titled Bibliotheca geographorum Arabicorum was published by Brill, Lugduni-Batavora (Leiden) in the 1870s. An edition of Istakhri's MS text was produced for the first volume under the Latin title Viae Regnorum descriptio ditionis Moslemicae - "Description of Roads of the Kingdoms in Muslim territories". In 1927 the editor Theodore Noldeke produced a second edition.
In 1845 the German orientalist A. D. Mordtmann published a translation in Hamburg with the title Das Buch der Länder von Schech Ebu Ishak el Farsi el Isztachri, with a foreword by C. Ritter. (Schriften der Akademie von Ham Bd. 1, Abth. 2).
Al-Birjandi
