MASUD', or AL MASUD' (ABUL HASAN ALI BEN ITUSEDT BEN ALI), b. Baghdad, 9th c. descended from the great family of the Abdallah-ben-Masud, one of whose members. had attended Mohammed, on his flight to Medina. Masudi early devoted himself to profound studies, to which he added by prolonged travels in Spain, Russia, and through out the east. In the year 303, of the hegira, he was in China, where ..krabie colonies already existed: thence he passed through Arabia and Persia to the Caspian sea. Thirty years later, we find him in Syria, and the second edition of his Golden, Meadows, his last work, was written in Egypt. He is supposed to have died at Cairo, in the 345th year of the. hegira, A.D., 956. He was a rnost voluminous writer upon a great variety of subjects, and no Arabian author enjoys a higher reputation with his countrymen. He was a geo grapher, a philosopher, a student of religions, to whom Confucianism and Christianity were as familiar as -Mohammedanism, and a historian acquainted with the ancient and modern history of the east and west. His History of the Time.s,a history of all nations, has never been printed. A manuscript of it in twenty quarto volumes is in the library of the mosque of St. Sophia. His Book of the Middle, devoted largely to geographicaE inquiry, is known in Europe, only by quotations from it in Arabic writers. As his other works were too voluminous to become popular, he compiled a series of extracts from the History:and Book of the Middk, and published them, with some additions, under the title of Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems. This work contains a general view of the
political, religious, and social history of the most important Asiatic and European court, tries; and it includes a treatise on their geography. A partial translation of the Meadows, appeared at London, in 1841, from the pen of Dr. Aloysius Sprenger, and as El Masudt's Historical Encyclopcedia; and there is a French translation called Les Prairies d' Or, by Derenburg. Among Masudi's often quoted works, but existing in manuscript only, are The Book of Conskleration, which treats of the order of succession to the Khalifati; the treat ise On Sincerit,y, which gives an account of the various Mohammedan sects, and a treat ise on The Principles of Religion. Dr. John Nicholson published in 1840 An Account of the Establishment of the Fatemite Dynasty in Africa, from a manuscript ascribed to Yfasucl NASTJLIPATAIr, also called KISTNA or KRISHNA, a maritime district of British India, in the government of Madras. Area, 8,036 sq. m.; pop. '71, 1,452,374. Along the. shore to a distance of 40 or 50 m. inland, the surface is exceedingly low, lower in some places than the shore itself, and the beds of the Kistnah and the Godavery, the chief rivers. The commercial crops are chay-root, indigo, tobacco, and cotton. Chief town, MASII LIPATAll, on a wide bay, iu lat. 16° 12' n. Pop. '72, 36,188, who carry on cotton manu factures to some extent.