Ibn Hawqal based his great work of geography on a revision and augmentation of the text called
Masālik ul-Mamālik by
Istakhri (AD 951), which itself was a revised edition of the
Ṣuwar al-aqālīm by
Ahmed ibn Sahl al-Balkhi, (ca. AD 921). However Ibn Hawqal was more than an editor, he was a travel writer writing in the style followed later by
Abu Ubaydallah al-Bakri in his
Kitab al-Masālik wa-al-Mamālik, a literary genre which uses reports of merchants and travellers. Ibn Hawqal introduces 10th century humour into his account of
Sicily during the
Kalbid-Fatimid dynasty. As a primary source his medieval geography tends to exaggeration, depicting the "barbaric and uncivilised" Christians of
Palermo, reflecting the prevailing politics and attitudes of his time. Yet his geographic accounts of his personal travels were relied upon, and found useful, by medieval Arab travellers. The chapters on
al-Andalus, Sicily, and the richly cultivated area of
Fraxinet (
La Garde-Freinet) describes in detail a number of regional innovations practiced by Muslim farmers and fishermen. The chapter on the
Byzantine Empire—known in the Muslim world as, and called by the Byzantines themselves, the "Lands of the Romans"—gives his first-hand observation of the 360 languages spoken in the
Caucasus, with the
Lingua Franca being Arabic and
Persian across the region. With the description of
Kiev, he may have mentioned the
route of the
Volga Bulgars and the
Khazars, which was perhaps taken from
Sviatoslav I of Kiev. He also published a cartographic map of
Sindh together with accounts of the geography and culture of Sindh and the
Indus River. ==Editions==