Naser Khosrow: Why He Measured Cities Instead of Painting Them
To be honest, most of us expect scenery from a travelogue: a sunset that loses its color, a bazaar whose smell and bustle you can feel. Naser Khosrow Qobadiyani, however, writes less about such things in his travelogue. In each city he enters, he looks for the price of meat and bread, measures the width of the river in gaz, counts the steps of the mosque, and notes how much the road wardens charge per load. This choice is neither lack of taste nor haste; it is a writerly decision, and its lesson is serious for anyone who writes.
The Man Who Traveled with Gaz and Dirhams
In 437 AH, in middle age, Naser Khosrow sets out from Merv and returns to Balkh seven years later; along the way he passes through Nishapur, Qazvin, Tabriz, and Aleppo, goes to Jerusalem and Mecca, stays for several years in Fatimid Cairo, and returns by way of Basra and Isfahan. The travelogue is the product of those same seven years. The important point is that in his philosophical and Ismaili works he writes a difficult, terminology-heavy prose, but in the travelogue he writes in the simplest Persian prose. This simplicity is not accidental; anyone who wants to “record” something has no right to distract the reader from numbers with ornament and rhymed prose.
Silence About Scenery, Detail About Livelihood
When we look at his descriptions, we see a recurring pattern: landscape is almost absent, but the machinery of city life is present. About Isfahan he speaks of water, qanats, and gardens; about Cairo he describes the Nile gauge and the measurement of the river’s flood; he measures the dimensions of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in gaz and cubits; he mentions Egypt’s hospitals and endowments; and in the cities along his route he notes customs practices and road tolls. All of these share one feature: they are verifiable.
A landscape-oriented travel writer writes something that is seen only through his eyes; Naser Khosrow writes something that anyone else could have gone, seen, and counted. It is precisely this “verifiability” that elevates the text from memoir to document.
Numbers Instead of Adjectives: Four Decisions Worth Imitating
The difference between these two approaches can be seen in a simple table:
| Topic | Landscape-oriented approach | Document-oriented approach (Naser Khosrow) |
|---|---|---|
| Bazaar | “a bustling, colorful bazaar” | type of goods, price, unit of weight, share of tolls |
| Building | “a magnificent and unrivaled edifice” | length and width in gaz, number of doors and columns |
| Water | “clear water that carries the heart away” | source, route, quality, maintenance cost |
| People | “hospitable people” | public institutions: waqf endowments, hospitals, road regulations |
The third column is in fact a list of techniques: measuring before describing, recording prices as temporal anchors, writing about institutions instead of intentions, and avoiding adjectives that cannot be falsified.
Paraphrased from the travelogue: wherever he sees something new, before praising it he asks for its measurements; and wherever he hears a price, he records it for the unknown reader.
How Documentary Authority Is Constructed
Three things turn Naser Khosrow’s text into a document. First, dating: the reader knows which observation belongs to which year. Second, spatial sequence: the route is clear, so the details can be reconstructed on a map. Third, repetition of measures: in different cities he measures the same thing—for example, water, tolls, and road security. This repetition permits comparison, and comparison is the lifeblood of historical analysis.
To this list one must also add limitations. Naser Khosrow is a religious missionary, and in places his gaze is selective; he writes little about himself and says almost nothing about personal fears and doubts. Being a document does not mean complete impartiality; it means transparency of criteria. Comparing him with figures such as Ibn Battuta or Evliya Çelebi is also illuminating: they are more verbose, but they leave behind less measurable data.
Six Exercises for Today’s Writer
- Measure before you reach for an adjective: instead of “a narrow street,” write the approximate width and the number of commercial units.
- Record the price: A monetary figure is the best anchor for comparing periods; a reader ten years later will use it.
- Look at institutions, not intentions: The existence of a library or a mother-and-child room can be verified; the kindness of a city’s people cannot.
- Date every observation: Even the day and hour can multiply the value of the record.
- Write down what is ordinary to a local: Nasir Khusraw understood the value of mundane information; what the city’s inhabitants forget is gold for the future.
- Keep yourself out of the frame—but not always: The narrator’s absence makes the text objective; yet a brief confession in the right place gives the record human credibility.
Conclusion
Nasir Khusraw’s travelogue teaches us that description is not the rival of documentation; when details are accurate and measurable, description also takes shape on its own. Today’s reader sees in that text both fifth-century Cairo and learns something about writing: that writing about a city requires a calculating curiosity before it requires poetic talent. If you want to write a text that people will refer to years later, start with your notebook, not with beautiful adjectives.
