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Abu Hamid al-Gharnati

Abū Ḥāmid al-Gharnāṭī was an Arab traveler, geographer, and writer from Granada, Al-Andalus. who travelled around eastern and central Europe, and wrote about his travels in an Arabic travelogue, Tuhfat al-Albab. He also wrote about spectacular places and things in al-Mu’rib ‘an ba’d ‘aja’ib al-Maghreb, works that combine geographical description, ethnographic observation, and accounts of marvels. He established a genre of books of wonder in Arabic. Many of the things he saw and wrote about were embellished with fantastic details.

Biography
His nisbas al-Māzinī and al-Qaysī connect him with Arab tribal lineages associated with the wider Qays confederation. Al-Gharnati's family is thought to have fled Granada to escape the reign of the Almoravid emir Yusuf ibn Tashfin. He travelled from Iberia to Egypt and Syria in 1106, reaching Alexandria in 1115 via Sardinia and Sicily, writing about Mount Etna. He moved to Baghdad in 1123. He lived with the Volga Bulgarians from 1131 to 1150 and travelled to Hungary, where he worked as an advisor in the court of King Géza II. He moved through Kiev to Baghdad in 1154 and lived in Mosul from 1161, Aleppo from 1165, and finally Damascus from 1169. He wrote about places such as Mount Etna during journeys through Sicily and the central Mediterranean. == References ==
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