Importance of Reanalyzing Geographical Manuscripts in Understanding the Linguistic Landscape of Islamic World from a Historical Sociolinguistic Perspective: A Case Study of Ahsan Al-Taqɑsim fi Maʔrefat Al-Aqɑlim

Historical geographical manuscripts are crucial for social, cultural, and linguistic research. One such significant text is "Ahsan Al-Taqɑsim fi Maʔrefat Al-Aqɑlim" by Abuʔabdallɑh Moḥammad bin Aḥmad al-Maqdesi, which provides a detailed description of languages and dialects in Muslim communities in the 10th century. We aimed to investigate the significance of this manuscript in understanding the sociolinguistic status of Islamic communities in that era through these research questions: what is the linguistic value of Maqdesi’s reports? How do they aid in recognizing the language usage, distribution and variation in Muslim communities? A descriptive-analytic analysis was conducted on the linguistic reports from a historical sociolinguistic perspective to identify sociolinguistic themes and classify the relevant content for further interpretation. The analysis revealed that Maqdesi has studied the linguistic status of the Islamic world in a systematic and well-thought plan, and, his observations yielded a relatively clear picture of the linguistic landscape, dialectal differences, language choices and usages, and social attitude towards languages, especially in the eastern regions of the Islamic world in the 10th century. Furthermore, this research highlights the importance of comprehensive and well-categorized historical-geographical language descriptions and the necessity of reanalyzing historical-geographical manuscripts to better understand the historical sociolinguistic status of Iranian languages.