مسالك الابصار في ممالك الامصار 2.23

2.23

Shaykh Mubārak said: As for Qubbat al-Islām, it is in the third [clime]. I left it before it was completed, and it is now six years since I was there; I do not think it will have been completed, because of the vastness of what was begun in extending the city's layout and the magnitude of the building. This Sultan had divided it so that it would be built in quarters, a quarter for the people of each class: the soldiers in a quarter, the viziers and secretaries in a quarter, the judges and scholars in a quarter, the shaykhs and fakirs in a quarter, the merchants and tradesmen in a quarter; and in every quarter whatever it needs of mosques, minarets, markets, baths, mills, ovens and craftsmen of every kind, even dyers and painters and tanners, so that the people of one quarter would not need another for selling or buying, taking or giving, each quarter being like a separate city standing by itself, in need of nothing from any other. There is no waste land in this kingdom except about twenty days' journey adjoining Ghazna, because of the tug-of-war between the ruler of India and the ruler of Turkistān and Transoxiana over the edges