Sharaf al-Zamān Ṭāhir Marvazī was a native of Marv. He was a physician at the court of the Seljuk sultan Malik-shāh. He wrote his Ṭabāʾiʿ al-ḥayawān about 1120.[1] His chapter on the Turks, Chapter IX, says of the Kirghiz that they live between the north-east and the north. The Kimek are to their north, and the Yaghmā and Kharlukh to their west.[2] The chapter says that the Kirghiz burn their dead because fire purifies. They did so until they became neighbours of Muslims and began to bury them.[2] It adds that among them a commoner called faghīnūn is summoned on a fixed day each year. Singers and players gather, and the company drinks and feasts. The man falls into a faint and foretells the coming year, rain or drought. The Kirghiz believe him.[2]

The editor takes faghīnūn for an East Iranian word connected with bagh, “God”. He judges the description of the shaman very accurate. He reads the four watercourses of the next notice as the headwaters of the Yenisei in Tuva.[3] He holds that Marvazī drew widely on the lost geography of Jayhānī and that these details go back to it. Marvazī, the Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam and Gardīzī are therefore one witness.[4] A note of his on the Khitan has their founder push the Kirghiz back from the Orkhon in 924. He rests this on a reference of Yelü Dashi in 1123.[5]

References

  1. ^ Minorsky 1942, p. 2,6
  2. ^ a b c al-Marwazī early 12th c., p. 30; Minorsky 1942, p. 30
  3. ^ Minorsky 1942, p. 104–105
  4. ^ Minorsky 1942, p. 6,106,262; Minorsky 1955, p. 6,106,262
  5. ^ Minorsky 1942, p. 78

Literature

  • Sharaf al-Zamān Ṭāhir al-Marwazī, طبائع الحيوان Ṭabāʾiʿ al-Ḥayawān (early 12th c.)
  • V. Minorsky, Sharaf al-Zamān Ṭāhir Marvazī on China, the Turks and India (1942)
  • V. Minorsky, Addenda to the Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam (1955)
  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)

Unresolved source identifiers: taba-i-al-hayawan

Articles resting on this source 7

Camels · Furs and Musk among the Turkic Peoples · Livestock in the Hudud al-Alam · Raw Materials and Trade among the Turkic Peoples · Salt among the Turkic Peoples · Seasonal Pastures · Shamanism

Related

What links here6

Institutions and Titles
Furs and Musk among the Turkic Peoples · Raw Materials and Trade among the Turkic Peoples · Salt among the Turkic Peoples · The Economy of the Steppe Empires
Sources
Gardīzī (Zayn al-akhbār) · Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Marvazī (Ṭabāʾiʿ al-ḥayawān).” Turkic Atlas, revised 7 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/sources/marvazi/

Last revised: 7 November 2026