Retracing his course around the rim of the Indian Ocean, Al Masudi traveled South to the island of Madagaskar and the eastern seaboard of Africa. He describes Shofala as a city of gold and the cities of Africa as rich and prosperous. He returned to Basrah in 922 and wrote his first historical compendium Muruj-al-Zahab wa al-Ma-adin al-Jawahir (Meadows of Gold and Mines of Precious Stones). In this collection, he describes in fascinating detail the habitation, geography and ecology of the lands he had visited.

 Later in his life, Al Masudi moved first to Damascus (Syria) and then to Fustrat (Cairo), Egypt. Here, he wrote his second volume Muruj al Zaman, in thirty volumes. In this masterpiece, he records the cultures, religious practices and customs of the peoples he had visited and makes observations on their civilizations. He was the first historian who based his writings on empirical observation and inductive science. As such, he was a precursor to the great historian Ibn Khaldun and the father of modern historiography. In 955 CE, he wrote Kitab al-Awsat, in which he lists chronologically the historical events from ancient times till the year 955 CE. This was the first scholarly effort to sort out historical events from myths, legends and hearsay. His last work, Kitab al-Tanbih wa al-Ishraf, written in the year of his death 947 CE, provides a summary of his earlier works.

 Al Masudi is sometimes referred to as the Herodotus of the Arabs. This title does justice to neither savant. Herodotus, who preceded Al Masudi by more than a thousand years, was a first rank historian; however, his unverified assertions have sometimes earned him the title “the father of lies”. His great work “the histories” is a compendium of myths, tales, opinions and some facts. His travels to Babylon, Persia and Egypt to collect the material for his books are a subject of controversy and debate. Finally, Herodotus found an explanation for historical events in the whims of Greek gods. By contrast, Al Masudi’s observations have their grounding in geography, ethnography, ecology, anthropology and historical facts. He finds the principle of movement in history in the work of man and his environment, not in the supernatural. His travels to Persia, India, East Africa and China are seldom questioned. Al Masudi’s methodology was anchored in the inductive method which was adopted by the Muslims after their encounter, and their rejection, of the rational, deductive methodology of the Greeks. The empirical method belongs to the Muslims, just as the rational method belongs to the Greeks, and it was al Masudi, not Herodotus, who was the inventor of empirical historiography.

 Al Masudi composed a map of the then known world which represented a significant advance upon earlier maps. It shows a large landmass Al Masudi identifies as unknown territory lying beyond “the ocean of darkness and fog”. The landmass suggests the contour of South America. Al Masudi writes in The Meadows of Gold and Quarries of Jewels that a Muslim sailor Ibn Aswad sailed through the ocean of darkness and fog in the year 889 CE and returned with treasures of gold and silver. The map and the description have led to the speculation that the Americas were known to the Arabs and the Africans.

 Al Masudi was an accomplished geologist and mineralogist. He studied earthquakes and in one his treatises he analyzed the earthquake of 855 CE. He also propounded a theory of evolution from minerals to plants to animals to man. In this work he presages Charles Darwin by nine hundred years.

 This great scholar, founder of the empirical method in the social and historical sciences, passed away in the year 957 CE.

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