 Al-Bakri based his work on the accounts of traders, the writings of Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Warraq, ("On the Topography of North Africa"), and Abraham ben Jacob.Despite the fact that al-Bakri never left al-Andalus, his writings are regarded as objectively reporting the accounts of other travelers by contemporary historians, and much of what he wrote is substantiated in other sources.He described a wide array of regions from the Atlantic Ocean, through the Sahara, to Central Africa, giving descriptions of the geography, people, culture and political situation in each region.