Cartography between Christian Europe and the Arabic-Islamic World, 1100-1500: Divergent Traditions 9004444912, 9789004444911

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Cartography between Christian Europe and the Arabic-Islamic World, 1100-1500

Maps, Spaces, Cultures Editors Surekha Davies (Utrecht University) Asa Simon Mittman (California State University, Chico) Editorial Board Ricardo Padrón (University of Virginia) Ayesha Ramachandran (Yale University) Dan Terkla (Illinois Wesleyan University) Michiel van Groesen (Leiden University)

Volume 3

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/msc

Cartography between Christian Europe and the Arabic-Islamic World, 1100-1500 Divergent Traditions Edited by

Alfred Hiatt

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: Detail from The Catalan Atlas, a work created by the Jewish mapmaker Cresques Abraham for the Christian King of France, Charles V, showing the cities of Mecca and Medina, a Muslim in prayer, and the Queen of “Sebba” (Saba) on the Arabian peninsula. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS espagnol 30. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hiatt, Alfred, editor. Title: Cartography between Christian Europe and the Arabic-Islamic world, 1100-1500 : divergent traditions / edited by Alfred Hiatt. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2021] | Series: Maps, spaces, cultures, 2352-7900 ; volume 3 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020058312 (print) | LCCN 2020058313 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004444911 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004446038 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Cartography–History–To 1500. | Cartography–Europe–History–To 1500. | Cartography–Arab countries–History–To 1500. Classification: LCC GA221 .C38 2021 (print) | LCC GA221 (ebook) | DDC 526.094/0902–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020058312 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020058313

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2352-7900 isbn 978-90-04-44491-1 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-44603-8 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Acknowledgements vii List of Figures VIII Notes on Contributors Xii Introduction: Cartography between Christian Europe and the Arabic-Islamic World 1 Alfred Hiatt 1 The Transmission of Theoretical Geography: Maps of the Climata and the Reception of De causis Proprietatum Elementorum 40 Alfred Hiatt 2 Ptolemy’s Geography in the Arabic-Islamic Context 74 Jean-Charles Ducène 3 The Transmission of Celestial Cartography from the Arabic-Islamic World to Europe: The Celestial Maps in MS Schoenberg ljs 057 91 Elly Dekker 4 Geography at the Crossroads: The Nuzhat ­al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq of al-Idrīsī 113 Alfred Hiatt 5 “ Transitional” or “Transcultural” Maps? The Function and Impact of Arabic-Islamic Elements in Latin Christian Cartography of the Early Fourteenth Century 137 Stefan Schröder 6 Pluricultural Sources of the Catalan Atlas 160 Emmanuelle Vagnon Conclusion: Divergent Traditions 189 Alfred Hiatt and Yossef Rapoport Bibliography 197 Index  229

Acknowledgements This volume originated in an international network, sponsored by The Leverhulme Trust, which ran between 2013 and 2015. Meetings organised under the aegis of the network culminated in a colloquium, entitled “Cartography between Europe and the Islamic World 1100-1600”, which took place at Queen Mary, University of London, in S­ eptember, 2014. I remain very grateful for the support given to the project by The Leverhulme Trust, and for the priceless assistance provided by the network administrator, Matthew Champion, and by my colleagues at Queen Mary, e­ specially Jerry Brotton and Yossef Rapoport. The papers assembled here do not represent a record of discussions within the network (having been in most cases developed significantly after the network ended), and they are intended to cover a smaller range of topics, and a shorter time-span, but to do so in more depth than was possible at a conference and associated meetings. Nevertheless they aim to address the same questions about the relationship between maps and geographical thought in Latin Christendom and the Arabic-Islamic world that were considered by the network, for – as should be evident from the following pages – these questions remain open, inviting a range of responses and approaches. On behalf of the contributors, I thank Surekha Davies and Asa Mittman for welcoming this volume into their series. Along with an anonymous reader, they provided valuable criticism and guidance which significantly improved the work presented here. Finally, I would like to thank Wendel Scholma, Peter Buschman, and the production team at Brill for all their assistance with the last stages of ­publication. AH

Figures Cover. Detail from The Catalan Atlas, a work created by the Jewish mapmaker Cresques Abraham for the Christian King of France, Charles V, showing the cities of Mecca and Medina, a Muslim in prayer, and the Queen of “Sebba” (Saba) on the Arabian peninsula. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS espagnol 30. 0.1 The two diagrams above combine to show the five zones and the passage of the zodiac. North at the top. Below, a wind diagram, oriented to the east. From a copy of Macrobius, Commentarii in somnium Scipionis, in a thirteenth-century manuscript copied at Tegernsee. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 18208, fol. 32r. 8 0.2 Division of the world into the seven climes. South at top. Frontispiece to a ninth/fifteenth-century copy of Ibn Ḥawqal’s Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2214, fol. 1r. 10 0.3 World map from a sixth/twelfth-century copy of al-Iṣṭakhrī, Kitāb al-masālik wa-al-mamālik. South at top. Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, MS Or. 3101, pp. 4–5. 12 0.4 Map of Iraq from a ninth/fifteenth-century copy of Ibn Ḥawqal’s Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ. South at top. Tigris and Euphrates river system, with cities on the Tigris including ­Baghdad, Wāsiṭ, and Tikrīt. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2214, fol. 21v. 13 0.5 Rectangular world map from a copy c. 1200 of the fifth/eleventh-century Fatimid Kitāb Gharāʾib al-funūn (“Book of Curiosities”). South at top. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arab. c. 90, fols 23v-24r. 14 0.6 Latin world map copied in Italy between 762 and 777 CE. South at top. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 6018, fols 63v-64r. © Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. 16 0.7 The Hereford world map, c. 1300. East at top. © Hereford Cathedral. 17 0.8 Francesco Beccari, Sea Chart (1403), showing the Mediterranean, Aegean and Black Seas, and the Atlantic coastline from Britain to the Canary Islands. North at top. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. 18 0.9 Fra Mauro, Mappa mundi, mid fifteenth century. South at top. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. By permission of the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo. 20 0.10 World map in an early printed edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia (Ulm, 1482). London, British Library, Maps C.1.d.2. © The British Library Board. 20 0.11 Tripartite map with inscriptions in Arabic and Latin, in an eighth- or ninthcentury manuscript of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae. East at top. Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, Vitr. 14.3, fol. 116v. 24

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0.12 Hereford world map, c. 1300. Detail of mirabilia in Africa, including Hermaphrodites (“Gens uterque sexus”) and people with concrete mouths (right); rhinoceros and unicorn (centre); and mandrake and salamander (left). © Hereford Cathedral. 25 0.13 Drawing of the wāqwāq tree in the Kitāb Gharāʾib al-funūn (“Book of Curiosities”). Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arab. c. 90, fol. 27r. 27 0.14 The “Maghrib chart”. Sea chart with Arabic inscriptions, showing the Mediterranean basin, Iberian peninsula, French, English and eastern Irish coastlines. West at top. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, S.P. II, 259. © Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana / Mondadori Portfolio / Bridgeman Images. 32 1.1 World map illustrating Macrobius, Commentarii in somnium Scipionis. German, c. 1000. North at top, division of sphere into five zones. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS D’Orville 77, fol. 100r.  42 1.2 Petrus Alfonsi, diagrams in a twelfth-century manuscript of Dialogus contra Judaeos showing the climata and the theory of solar eccentricity. South at top in both diagrams. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 10624, fol. 73r. 51 1.3 Diagram (right) illustrating the seven climes, from a thirteenth- or fourteenthcentury copy of the Liber de Orbe attributed to Māshāʾallāh. South at top. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Conv. Soppr. J.I.32, fol. 15r. By permission of the Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali e per il turismo/ Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. 54 1.4 John of Sacrobosco, De sphera. Climata diagram in a fourteenth-century manuscript indicating torrid and frigid regions to the south and north of the climes. North at top. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 7421, fol. 30r. 56 1.5 John of Wallingford, adapted climata diagram c. 1250, oriented to the east, showing climes in the northern hemisphere, and discussion of the earth’s shape and the ­antipodes in the southern hemisphere. London, British Library, Cotton MS Julius D.VII, fol. 46r. © The British Library Board. 60 1.6 World map from a thirteenth-century Italian copy of De causis proprietatum elementorum. North at top. Milan, Biblioteca Trivulziana MS 764, fol. 82v. © Comune di Milano. 66 1.7 World map extracted from De causis proprietatum elementorum, copied at the beginning of a fourteenth-century astrological miscellany. North at top. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale ­Centrale, MS Conv. Soppr. J.V.6 (San Marco 189), fol. 1r. By permission of the Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali e per il turismo/Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. 67 1.8 World map in a mid fourteenth-century manuscript of Albertus Magnus, De causis proprietatum elementorum. North at top. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2292, fol. 77ra. 69

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3.1a Northern celestial hemisphere. Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection of Manuscripts, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania, MS ­Schoenberg ljs 057, p. 112. 99 3.1b Southern celestial hemisphere. Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection of Manuscripts, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania, MS ­Schoenberg ljs 057, p. 113. 99 3.2 Images of Bootes in the star catalogue in MS Schoenberg ljs 057 (left) and on the northern celestial hemisphere (right). Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection of Manuscripts, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania, MS Schoenberg ljs 057, p. 119 and p. 112, respectively. 100 3.3 Lines of constant longitude marked on a section of the northern celestial hemisphere in MS Schoenberg ljs 057. Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection of Manuscripts, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania, MS Schoenberg ljs 057, p. 112. 102 3.4 Images of Auriga in the star catalogue in MS Schoenberg ljs 057 (left) and on the northern celestial hemisphere (right). Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection of Manuscripts, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania, MS Schoenberg ljs 057, p. 144 and p. 112, respectively 105 3.5 Images of Auriga on Cusanus’s globe in Bernkastel-Kues, St Nicolas Hospital (left) and on the northern celestial hemisphere (right), in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 5415, fol. 168r. Image of Cusanus’s globe reproduced from J. Hartmann, “Die astronomischen Instrumente des Kardinals Nikolaus Cusanus,” Abhandlungen der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Mathematisch-Physikalische Klasse, Neue Folge 10 (1919), Plate IV; Vienna hemispheres courtesy Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Picture Archive. 106 3.6 Corona Borealis on the Arabic globe in Florence, Museo Galileo, 2712 (left), on the northern celestial hemisphere in Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection of Manuscripts, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania, MS Schoenberg ljs 057, p. 112 (centre), and on the Arabic globe in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ge A 325 Rés (right). Photograph of the Florence globe by Franca Principe; Paris globe image reproduced from Edmé François Jomard, Les Monuments de la géographie, ou Recueil d’anciennes cartes européennes et orientales (Paris, 1854). 107 3.7 Ivy leaf on the Arabic globe in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ge A 325 Rés (left) and the flower on the Arabic globe in Dresden, Staatlicher Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon, E II 1 (right). Paris globe image reproduced from Edmé François Jomard, Les Monuments de la géographie, ou Recueil d’anciennes cartes européennes et orientales (Paris, 1854); Dresden globe image by Peter Müller. 109

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4.1 World map in a c. 1300 manuscript of al-Idrīsī, Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq alāfāq. South at top. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2221, fols 3v-4r. 121 4.2 Sectional map 4.1 (fourth clime, first section) in al-Idrīsī, Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq. South at top. Southern and western coast of the Iberian peninsula, with al-Andalus divided between east (left page) and west (right). Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2221, fols 184v-185r. 128 4.3 Sectional map 3.2 (third clime, second section) in al-Idrīsī, Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq. South at top. North African coast from Būna to Tripoli (Tarāblus), including the islands of Kerkenna and Djerba. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2221, fols 107v-108r. 131 4.4 Sectional map 3.5 (third clime, fifth section) in al-Idrīsī, Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq. South at top. Eastern Mediterranean coast and Red Sea. Paris, ­Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2221, fols 130v-131r. 133 5.1 World map in the Liber secretorum of Marino Sanudo, c. 1321. East at top. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 2972, fols 112v-113r. © Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. 139 5.2 Circular world map in the the Kitāb Gharāʾib al-funūn (“Book of Curiosities”), c. 1200. South at top. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arab. c. 90, fols 27v-28r.  143 5.3 Detailed view of the Mountains of the Moon from (left to right) Figs 5.1 (Vesconte-Sanudo world map), 4.1 (world map in al-Idrīsī’s Nuzhat al-mushtāq), and 5.2 (circular world map in the Book of Curiosities). 146 5.4 Detailed view of the Caspian Seas from (left to right) Figs 5.1 (Vesconte-Sanudo world map), 4.1 (world map in al-Idrīsī’s Nuzhat al-mushtāq), and 5.2 (circular world map in the Book of Curiosities). 148 6.1 The Catalan Atlas, geographical panels (west). Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS ­espagnol 30 (c. 1375). 163 6.2 The Catalan Atlas, geographical panels (east). Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS ­espagnol 30 (c. 1375). 163 6.3 The Catalan Atlas, detail. Veiled nomad and King Mansā Mūsā. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS espagnol 30. 172 6.4 The Catalan Atlas, detail. The western coastline of India. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS espagnol 30. 177 6.5 The Catalan Atlas, detail. Caravan in the Lop Nor desert. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS espagnol 30. 180 6.6 Dromedaries in the “Tours Pentateuch”. Paris, B ­ ibliothèque nationale de France, MS Nouv. acq. lat. 2334, fol. 30r. 183 6.7 The Catalan Atlas, detail. The ritual of Sati. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS espagnol 30. 185

Notes on Contributors Elly Dekker is an independent scholar interested in astronomical models and instruments such as astrolabes, celestial globes and celestial maps. She has published numerous scientific papers in addition to catalogues on major globe collections in Greenwich and Florence, and more recently a book on maps and globes made before 1500: Illustrating the Phaenomena. Celestial cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (2013). At present she is working in collaboration with Kristen Lippincott on an edition and commentary of Alessandro Piccolomini, De le Stelle Fisse, printed in Venice in 1540, which book includes the first printed star atlas. Jean-Charles Ducène is an Arabist and Directeur d’études at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris. He is the author of many articles on Islamic cartography and geography, and has published editions and translations of several Arabic works, including L’Afrique dans le Uns al-muhaǧ wa-rawḍ al-furaǧ d’al-Idrīsī (2010), and Les tables géographiques du manuscrit du Sultan Rasūlide al-Malik al-Afḍal (2013). As seen in his book L’Europe et les géographes arabes du Moyen Âge (2018), he is interested in the development of geography as a body of knowledge, as well as in the particular representations elaborated by Arab geographers. Alfred Hiatt is Professor of Medieval Studies in the Department of English at Queen Mary, University of London. He is the author of Dislocations: Maps, Classical Tradition, and Spatial Play in the European Middle Ages (2020), and Terra Incognita: Mapping the Antipodes before 1600 (2008), as well as several articles on the history of cartography, and medieval geographical thought. Yossef Rapoport is Professor in Islamic History in the School of History at Queen Mary, ­University of London. He is the author of several articles on Islamic maps, as well as Islamic Maps (2019). With Emilie Savage-Smith he is the co-author of Lost Maps of the Caliphs: Drawing the World in Eleventh-Century Cairo (2018), and the co-editor of An Eleventh-Century Egyptian Guide to the Universe: The Book of Curiosities (2014).

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Stefan Schröder is a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki. He has published a book on “Otherness” in late medieval pilgrimage reports to the Holy Land – Zwischen Christentum und Islam. Kulturelle Grenzen in den spätmittelalterlichen Pilgerberichten des Felix Fabri (2009) – and written several related articles on medieval travelling and on images of Islam and Judaism. He is the author of several articles on the history of cartography with the focus on the influence of Islamic maps in medieval Europe. He is currently working on a project entitled “Historicizing the Crusades: Strategies of Historiographical Writing and Functions of the Past in the Late Middle Ages”. Emmanuelle Vagnon is a Research Fellow at the CNRS, in the Laboratoire de Médiévistique Occidentale de Paris (LaMOP, University Pantheon-Sorbonne). She is the author of Cartographie et représentations de l’Orient méditerranéen en Occident, du milieu du XIIIe à la fin du XVe siècle (2013), and co-editor of L’Âge d’or des cartes marines. Quand l’Europe découvrait le monde, catalogue of the exhibition at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (2012), and of La Fabrique de l’océan Indien. Cartes d’Orient et d’Occident (2017). She has written several articles on medieval maps and portolan charts.

INTRODUCTION

Cartography between Christian Europe and the Arabic-Islamic World Alfred Hiatt Over the past three decades considerable scholarly attention has been directed towards cultural relations between Latin Christendom and the Arabic-Islamic world during the Middle Ages. The nature of this attention has been diverse, multi-disciplinary and therefore resistant to simplification. However, two principal axes of interest may be identified within recent contributions to this topic. Scholars have, on the one hand, studied the methods and motivations for the transmission of scientific knowledge from the Arabic-Islamic world to the Latin West from the eleventh century onwards, and they have traced the wide-ranging effects of that transmission upon European cultural life.1 Fields such as mathematics, astronomy, medicine and philosophy were profoundly altered by the translation and circulation of Arabic texts, while many other pursuits – including literature, the visual arts and material culture more 1 B.-M. Scarcia Amoretti, ed., La diffusione delle scienze islamiche nel Medio Evo europeo (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1987); D. Agius and R. Hitchcock, eds, The Arab Influence in Medieval Europe (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1994); Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, La connaissance de l’Islam dans l’Occident médiéval, ed. Charles Burnett (Farnham: Ashgate, 1994); Ahmad Hasnawi, Abdelali Elamrani-Jamal, and Maroun Aouad, eds, Perspectives arabes et médiévales sur la tradition scientifique et philosophique grecque (Leuven: Peeters, 1997); ­Isabelle Draelants, Anne Tihon and Baudouin van den Abeele, eds, Occident et Proche-Orient. Contacts scientifiques au temps des Croisades (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000); Élisabeth Malamut and Mohamed Ouerfelli, eds, Les échanges en Méditerranée médiévale: Marqueurs, réseaux, circulations, contacts (Aix-en-Provence: Presses universitaires de Provence, 2012); John Tolan, Gilles Veinstein and Henry Laurens, Europe and the Islamic World: A History, trans. J. M. Todd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013). On translations particularly see Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, La transmission des textes philosophiques et scientifiques au Moyen Âge, ed. Charles Burnett (Farnham: Ashgate, 1994); Andreas Speer and Lydia Wegener, eds, Wissen über Grenzen. Arabisches Wissen und lateinisches Mittelalter (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006); Max Lejbowicz, ed., Une conquête des savoirs. Les traductions dans l’Europe latine (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009); Charles Burnett, Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages: The Translators and their Intellectual and Social Context (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009); David M. Freidenreich and Miriam Goldstein, eds, Beyond Religious Borders: Interaction and Intellectual Exchange in the Medieval Islamic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); Charles Burnett and Pedro Mantas-España, eds, Ex Oriente Lux: Translating Words, Scripts and Styles in Medieval Mediterranean Society (Córdoba: UCO Press, 2016). © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446038_002

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generally – felt the influence of contact zones such as al-Andalus, Sicily, and the near east. This debt of Christian European culture to the Arabic-Islamic world, and particularly the latter’s contribution to the rise of Aristotelianism, has been acknowledged since at least the nineteenth century, but recent scholarship has taken important strides in specifying the chronology, techniques, uses – and the limits – of “knowledge transfer” to the Latin West. The other major axis around which recent work pivots may broadly be defined as that of perception and representation. Here scholars have been less concerned with documenting the transmission of texts than with analysing the idea of Islam as conceived and depicted within Europe. Such work has tended to respond directly or obliquely to the impact of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), which identified, however fleetingly, classical and medieval roots of modern European attitudes towards Islam and the east.2 Medievalists and early modernists have subsequently investigated representations of Muslims and their beliefs in literature, historical writing, and the visual arts, in an attempt to assess the role of Islam as an outside force necessary to define and construct identity within Christian communities.3 Much less attention has been directed to the other direction of travel, that is, the influence of medieval European Christian texts and ideas in the Islamic world, at least before the fifteenth century. In part this has been because the governing assumption of much work has been the textual and technical superiority of the Islamic world: put simply, Europe seemingly had little to offer in intellectual terms, at least until the later Middle Ages, whereas contact with Arabic texts profoundly enriched European scholarship. As we shall see, however, while a version of this paradigm has been asserted for the history of mapmaking in the Middle Ages, there are reasons to doubt it. The motivations for the attention directed towards Islam and Europe in recent years have been political and institutional, as well as intellectual. For 2 For example, Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), 55–63, 68–73. 3 See particularly Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009). For other examples (albeit with different emphases) in what is now a large field see Katherine Scarfe Beckett, AngloSaxon Perceptions of the Islamic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Geraldine Heng, Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003); John Tolan, L’Europe latine et le monde arabe au Moyen Âge: Cultures en conflit et en convergence (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2009); Nicholas Paul and Suzanne Yeager, eds, Remembering the Crusades: Myth, Image, and Identity (­Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012); Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Karla Mallette, eds, A Sea of Languages: Rethinking the Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013).

Introduction

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ideological reasons, many scholars have sought a different narrative to that of the “clash of civilizations”.4 Rosamund Mack, for example, concluded her 2002 study of the connections between Islam and Italian art, Bazaar to Piazza, with the positive thought that “[s]ixteenth-century East-West trade and artistic exchange softened a clash of civilizations, establishing a historical precedent for cultural coexistence and mutual enrichment”.5 While attempts to assert an “Islamo-Christian civilization”, positing a synchronous religious and intellectual development of cultures in explicit opposition to the thesis of a “clash”, can seem strained,6 more persuasive arguments have been made for the interdependence of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism in the Middle Ages.7 One of the more interesting effects of the need to examine interactions across linguistic and devotional boundaries has been the methodological challenge such enquiry has posed to disciplines that have traditionally regarded the study of Christian and Islamic texts and images as separate fields. Studies such as Hans Belting’s “westostlische Geschichte” (west-eastern history) of visual theory in the Renaissance – which aims to understand the emergence of perspective in Western art as both product of, and divergence from, Islamic mathematical theory – hold the promise of a radically revised and decentred picture of the Middle Ages, in which claims to cultural exclusivity have been swept aside.8 In this context, the world picture itself can serve as an important test case. What level of exchange and interaction between Christian and Muslim cultures does the history of cartography in medieval Europe and the Arabic-Islamic world 4 This phrase derives its fame from Samuel Huntington’s essay in Foreign Affairs 72 (1993): 22–49, although Huntington himself seems to have drawn it from Bernard Lewis’ essay, “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” Atlantic Monthly 266.3 (1990): 47–60 (at 60). Neither essay makes a serious attempt at historical analysis, except of the most generalised kind: see David Nirenberg, Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today (­Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 194. 5 Rosamund E. Mack, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600 (Berkeley: UCLA Press, 2002), 179. For a sense of the polemics surrounding the contributions of the Islamic world to European culture see Max Lejbowicz, ed., L’Islam médiéval en terres chrétiennes: Science et idéologie (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2008). 6 Richard W. Bulliet, The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); Allen James Fromherz, The Near West: Medieval North Africa, Latin Europe and the Mediterranean in the Second Axial Age (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016); see further Ramzi Rouighi’s review of The Near West in American Historical Review 123 (2018): 340–41. 7 See Nirenberg, Neighboring Faiths. 8 Hans Belting, Florence and Baghdad: Renaissance Art and Arab Science, trans. Deborah Lucas Schneider (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 2011). Orig: Florenz und Bagdad: Eine westöstliche Geschichte des Blicks (Munich: Beck, 2008). Belting’s work was stimulated by George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2007).

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reveal? Did the imago mundi and its counterpart the ṣurat al-arḍ constitute a bridge between civilisations – or did they sit apart on opposite banks of the Mediterranean, looking inland? 1 Geographical thought in Medieval Christian Europe and the Arabic-Islamic World Before reviewing the evidence for interactions in the field of spatial representation, it will be helpful to outline the basic features of Arabic and Latin geographical traditions. In the first place, however, some clarification of terminology is necessary. Terms such as “Arabic-Islamic maps” and the “ArabicIslamic world” are clearly dangerously vague concepts,9 which shift depending on which period of history one has in mind: the “Islamic world” in 1100 looks rather different to the “Islamic world” around 1500. The opposition to Europe may also not always be a helpful one, since for a large portion of the period in question Islam extended well into parts of Europe – most notably in the case of al-Andalus – and by the end of it the Ottoman Empire was pressing hard against “European” frontiers. Moreover, Europe itself is a notoriously unstable concept in the Middle Ages, although perhaps it is in geographical texts that it finds its clearest articulation.10 An even more pertinent objection to the discussion of interactions between medieval Muslim and Christian mapmakers is that it runs the risk of excluding the crucial role played by Jewish intermediaries, as conduits between faiths, and between north Africa and Europe. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, there remain valid justifications for continuing to use terms such as the “Arabic-Islamic world”. Not only is there is a lack of viable alternatives, there is also precedent in the works of Muslim geographers themselves, such as al-Muqaddasī, who understood the empire al-Islām to include places with a significant Muslim population, from the Maghrib to al-Sind, as well as realms under Islamic rule.11 While fully acknowledging the imperfection of any 9 10

11

See the appropriately cautionary remarks of Daniel König, Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West: Tracing the Emergence of Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 1–6. For exploration of the idea of Europe in the contexts of mapmaking see Ingrid Baumgärtner and Hartmut Kugler, eds, Europa im Weltbild des Mittelalters: Kartographische Konzepte (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008); Klaus Oschema, Bilder von Europa im Mittelalter (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2013), esp. 348–60, 451–81; for medieval Arabic-Islamic representation of Europe see Jean-Charles Ducène, L’Europe et les géographes arabes du Moyen Âge (IXe-XVe siècle) (Paris: CNRS, 2018). Al-Muqaddasī, The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions: Ahsan al-Taqāsīm fī Maʿrifat al-Aqālīm, trans. Basil Collins (Reading: Garnet, 2001). Cf. al-Iṣṭakhrī, Kitāb masālik wa-almamālik, ed. M.J de Goeje, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1927), 4 (“bilād al-Islām”).

Introduction

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terminology, this volume will therefore use “Arabic-Islamic” to refer to authors and works operating within Islamic traditions, and (for the most part) in the Arabic language, in comparison with authors and works operating within Christian traditions, in Latin and European vernaculars. This comparison necessarily includes consideration of Jewish astronomical and geographical texts, but excludes (for the most part) discussion of Byzantine material. That said, it is worth emphasising the importance of viewing Christianity, Islam, and Judaism as plural, often fractured, entities during the centuries under discussion. In neither Christian Europe nor the Arabic-Islamic world was geography, still less cartography, a field of study in its own right. In the Latin tradition the description of the earth was incorporated within the seven liberal arts under geometry. Descriptions of the world occurred in a variety of contexts – notably as a preface to historical writing,12 or within the medieval encyclopedia (as in the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville, and later books of nature),13 or as rhetorical display within literary texts.14 Maps were even more peripatetic texts. Many of those that survive are preserved in manuscript books of different kinds, including bibles, psalters, exegetical works, histories, and cartularies. Others, such as the sea charts of the later Middle Ages, circulated independently. Although relatively few survive, records attest that maps were frequently displayed in monumental form, again in a variety of contexts, including churches, halls, refectories, royal and noble bedchambers, and with supports that included walls, tables, and floor mosaics.15 12

13

14

15

Paulus Orosius, Historiarum adversum paganos libri vii, ed. C. Zangemeister (Vienna: C. Geroldi filium, 1882), 1.2; Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 1.1; Ranulf Higden, Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden monachi Cestrensis, ed. Churchill Babington, 9 vols (London: Longman, 1865–86), vol. 1. Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, “Mappa mundi und Chronographia: Studien zur imago mundi des abendländischen Mittelalters,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 24 (1968): 118–86; Evelyn Edson, Mapping Time and Space: How Medieval Mapmakers viewed their World (London: British Library, 1997), 97–131; Margriet Hoogvliet, Pictura et Scriptura: Textes, images et herméneutique des mappae mundi (XIIIe-XVIe siècles) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 154–68. The poem “Adelae Comitissae” by Baudri de Bourgueil, and the Alexandreis of Walter of Châtillon offer excellent twelfth-century examples of descriptions of mappae mundi in Latin verse: Baudri de Bourgueil, Poèmes, ed. and trans. Jean-Yves Tilliette, 2 vols (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1998–2002), vol. 2, 2–43; Walter of Châtillon, Alexandreis, ed. Marvin L. Colker (Padua: Antenore, 1978), 1.396–426; 7.393–430. See generally David Woodward, “Medieval Mappaemundi,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 1: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. J. Brian Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 286–370, and more recently Patrick Gautier Dalché, ed., La Terre: Connaissance, représentations, mesure au Moyen Âge (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 48–53, 347–84.

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In Arabic texts, geography could be expressed as something much closer to being an independent subject, but it was frequently presented either as matter incidental to astrological science, or as part of knowledge essential for administration and trade, or (as it was in the Latin world too) within the context of travel narrative. In its highest form it was considered an art, part of the practice of literary expression, the adab, as well as a science.16 Broadly speaking, two distinct genres of geographical description can be discerned in medieval Arabic texts. One, associated with scholars working in third/ninth-century17 Baghdad, such as al-Khwārazmī and Abū Maʿshar, and indebted to the mathematical geography of Claudius Ptolemy (second century CE), presented the ṣurat al-arḍ, the extent of the world and peoples and places on it, as part of their exposition of the influence of planets and stars on earthly events. The other geographical genre was non-mathematical.18 This geography, which first flourished in the fourth/tenth century, typically contained a mixture of itineraries, postal routes, enumerations of administrative divisions (provinces and districts), as well as ethnographic detail, historical anecdote, and poetry. While it could be expressed in the form of written description without graphic representation, one strand of non-mathematical geography used maps to depict different regions as well as the entire known world. Known to historians of cartography as the “Balkhī school” of mapmakers, the authors of this mode of geographical representation produced perhaps the best known and certainly longest-lasting genre of Arabic-Islamic map. Manuscripts of “Balkhī school” geographers survive in significant number, although there are relatively few known cases of maps being prepared for the purposes of display outside of the book in the medieval Arabic-Islamic world.19 16 17

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André Miquel, La géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu’au milieu du 11e siècle, 3 vols (Paris: Mouton, 1967–80). Throughout this volume dates for Arabic-Islamic authors and texts are given with reference to both Muslim and Christian calendars, except where discussion focusses exclusively on the reception of such texts and authors in the Latin West. Dates for LatinChristian authors are given with reference to the Christian calendar only. Gerald R. Tibbetts, “The Beginnings of a Cartographic Tradition,” and “The Balkhī School of Geographers,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 2, book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, ed. J. Brian Harley and David Woodward (­Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 90–107, 108–36; Karen C. Pinto, Medieval Islamic Maps: An Exploration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016); Yossef Rapoport, Islamic Maps (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2019); Sonja Brentjes, “Cartography,” in The Encyclopedia of Islam Three, ed. Kate Fleet et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2007-). Exceptions are generally maps produced for high status patrons. They include a map on cloth woven with gold, silver and silk thread made for the Fatimid caliph al-Muʿizz (r. 341–65/953–75), the famous map engraved in silver produced for Roger II of Sicily, and presumably too the map produced for the caliph al-Maʾmūn in third/ninth-century

Introduction

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Christian European and Arabic-Islamic scholars inherited from classical antiquity the notion of a spherical earth, divided into two hemispheres. The known world – Asia, Europe and Africa – therefore constituted only roughly a quarter of the globe. Many of the same questions about the earth are evident in both traditions: these typically concern the shape of the earth, its position with regard to celestial regions, the relationship between land and water, and the differences in temperature experienced in different parts of the world. The answers to these questions were often very similar, and indeed there was demonstrable transference of texts and ideas from the ArabicIslamic tradition to the Latin one on the subject of the climes, the disposition of land and water, and the interrelation of earthly and heavenly phenomena.20 At the same time, certain differences between the traditions are evident. The question of the antipodes – that is, whether regions beyond the known world supported human life – came to the Latin West with a significant classical and late antique legacy, running from Plato and Aristotle through Cicero and his commentator Macrobius to Augustine of Hippo and Martianus Capella. The antipodes generated commentary, speculation, and visual representation. Macrobius’ Commentary on Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis (Dream of Scipio), and Martianus Capella’s encyclopedic work, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury) presented the theory that the spherical world was divided into five zones: two zones of intense cold at the far north and south of the world; a central zone of intense heat – including an equatorial ocean which perpetually burned up and regenerated; and two temperate zones, one in each hemisphere.21 Macrobius and Martianus also explained that, in addition to the equatorial sea, a band of ocean ran from pole to pole, with the result that the earth was divided into four segments. One of these segments contained the inhabited world (oikoumenē); the other three – one on the underside of the northern hemisphere, and two more in the southern – were unknown, and unknowable, to “us” due to the barriers formed by the expanse of ocean, the intense heat of the “torrid” zone, and the intense cold of the “frigid” zones (Fig. 0.1). Yet the question of the antipodes, and the possibility of inaccessible regions of the earth, seems never to have arisen in the Arabic-Islamic world. Though Baghdad, though the physical form of this image can only be conjectured. See Tibbetts, “Beginnings,” 90–96. Al-Muqaddasī attests a map made of linen, and another on cotton, in Naysābūr in Khurāsān, as well as maps drawn on paper: Best Divisions, 5, 9. 20 See Chapters One and Three in this volume. 21 Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, ed. and trans. M. Armisen-Marchetti, 2 vols (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2001–3), 2.5–9; Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, ed. James Willis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1983), 6.602–8.

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fig. 0.1 The two diagrams above combine to show the five zones and the passage of the zodiac. North at the top. Below, a wind diagram, oriented to the east. From a copy of Macrobius, Commentarii in somnium Scipionis, in a thirteenth-century manuscript copied at Tegernsee. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 18208, fol. 32r.

Introduction

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they differed on the precise extent of human habitation, most commentators agreed that only the northern quarter of the globe was inhabited, that desert prevented human settlement in the far south, and that the underside of the earth, in both hemispheres, was covered with water. Rather than the division of the earth into five zones, which was a standard point of reference for Latin geographical description, Arabic texts divided the inhabited earth into seven latitudinal bands known as al-aqālīm, the plural of iqlīm, from the Greek klima. These aqālīm ran from, or near to, the equator (depending on the commentator) to latitudes as far north as 66 degrees (Fig. 0.2). Derived from classical Greek sources such as Ptolemy’s Almagest and Tetrabiblos, the climes were closely associated with astronomical theory (some texts linked each clime to the influence of particular planets) and were broadly aligned with mathematically-based geography, though they could be described independently of mathematical calculation.22 At the same time they functioned as a means of organising the known world in ethnographic terms, often within a clear hierarchy. The fourth clime, which ran across the Mediterranean and included Baghdad as well as al-Andalus, was generally regarded as optimal in terms of temperature and therefore of civilization. A steady decline could be observed in climes both to the south and north, where extremes of temperature resulted in sterile territories and barbarous populations. While the division of the earth into seven climes was not unknown in the Latin West (descriptions could be found in Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis historia and in Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis), the popularity of the scheme certainly increased with the transmission of Arabic astronomical materials as well as its inclusion in texts that summarised Arabic-Islamic geographical theory, such as Petrus Alfonsi’s early twelfth-century Dialogus contra Judaeos. The beginnings of Arabic-Islamic geography are usually located during the caliphate of al-Maʾmūn (198–218/813–33). Al-Khwārazmī’s influential adaptation of Ptolemy’s Geographia (from a Syriac intermediary, rather than directly from Greek) took place during al-Maʾmūn’s reign, and a large world map was reportedly produced in Baghdad for the Abbasid caliph.23 The map did not survive and its exact nature remains uncertain, but it is generally supposed to represent the mathematical geographical tradition with its roots in the calculations of Ptolemy and his predecessor, Marinus of Tyre. Although mathematical geography in the tradition of al-Khwārazmī continued to flourish

22 23

For references and extended discussion see Chapter One in this volume. Further discussion of al-Khwārazmī’s translation can be found in Chapter Two in this volume.

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fig. 0.2 Division of the world into the seven climes. South at top. Frontispiece to a ninth/ fifteenth-century copy of Ibn Ḥawqal’s Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2214, fol. 1r.

in the work of al-Bīrūnī (d. c. 440/1048) and others,24 few examples of world maps constructed on mathematical principles survive from the Arabic-Islamic 24

Gerald Tibbetts, “Later Cartographical Developments,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 2, book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, ed. J. Brian ­Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 137–55.

Introduction

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world; those that do are either hybrid in nature, incorporating elements of non-mathematical geography, or late medieval.25 Far more numerous are the world and regional maps that illustrate descriptive geographical treatises in the “ways and realms” tradition (dubbed by Konrad Miller the “Islam Atlas”). These treatises have their earliest surviving expression in the Kitāb al-masālik wa-al-mamālik (Book of Ways and of Realms) of Ibn Khurradādhbih, a third-/ ninth-century director-general in the “Post and Intelligence Department” in Baghdad and Samarra. Ibn Khurradādhbih’s work is not illustrated with maps, but by the fourth/tenth century works of this ilk were being furnished with a world map and a series of regional maps to accompany the written text. The most significant landmarks in this regard were the Kitāb al-masālik wa-almamālik of al-Iṣṭakhrī (fl. 324/936), and the Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ (Book of Geography) of Ibn Ḥawqal. The maps in these texts are thought to derive from the lost work of the mapmaker Abū Zayd al-Balkhī (hence the possibly misleading term “Balkhī school”).26 Whatever their original provenance, they have certain reasonably consistent features. The world maps in manuscripts of al-Iṣṭakhrī and Ibn Ḥawqal are usually circular, oriented to the south, with prominent representation of the Nile, the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean; in terms of size and detail they place particular emphasis on North Africa and the near east, though they include representation of India and China (Fig. 0.3). That emphasis is carried through in the regional maps, whose main purpose is to represent lands ruled by Muslims, or with a significant Muslim population. Different regional divisions can be found in different authors (and there was evidently a lively debate among geographers about where borders should be drawn),27 but generally within the “ways and realms” tradition the principal regions of the Arabic-Islamic world – the Maghrib and al-Andalus; Egypt; the Arabian peninsula; Syria; Iraq; Fars (Iran/Persia) – and the outer provinces 25

26

27

Prominent examples include the rectangular world map in the fifth-/eleventh-century Fatimid Book of Curiosities, which has a scale bar but which is not in fact drawn to scale; the “Ibn Ḥawqal III” world map in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2214, fols 52v-53r, a copy of a map derived from a Ptolemaic model; and the map found in a manuscript of al-ʿUmarī’s eighth-/fourteenth-century Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār (Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum Library, MS A 2797, fols 292v-293r), which contains a graticule of latitude and longitude, and a scale running along the equator. For recent discussion see Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith, Lost Maps of the Caliphs: Drawing the World in Eleventh-Century Cairo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 98–99, 286–87. Tibbetts, “The Balkhī School of Geographers,” 109, himself expresses some reservations; for recent criticism of the term see Pinto, Medieval Islamic Maps, 55–57; Adam Silverstein, “Geography in Arabic,” in The Encyclopedia of Islam Three, ed. Kate Fleet et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2007-). See for example al-Muqaddasī, Best Divisions, 4–5, 9, 64, 129, 133.

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fig. 0.3 World map from a sixth/twelfth-century copy of al-Iṣṭakhrī, Kitāb al-masālik wa-almamālik. South at top. Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, MS Or. 3101, pp. 4–5.

such as Khurāsān, Khūzistān, and Kirmān, each had their own map to accompany a written description (Fig. 0.4). Geographical genres were never rigid, and it is clear that interaction between mathematical and descriptive geography was reasonably common. Two telling examples of such interaction can be found in the Fatimid Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes (Kitāb Gharāʾib al-funūn wa-mulaḥ al-ʿuyūn), dated to the fifth/eleventh century, and al-Idrīsī’s mid sixth-/twelfth-century Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq (Promenade for the one eager to penetrate distant horizons). The Book of Curiosities consists of two parts. The first, devoted to the heavens, comprises descriptions of the zodiac, stars and planets; the second, on the earth, comprises two world maps (one rectangular, the other circular), a description of the climes and a remarkable array of regional maps and diagrams, including maps of the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, the Caspian Sea, islands (Sicily, Cyprus), and rivers (the Nile, the Euphrates, the Tigris, Indus, and Oxus).28 In their focus on maritime and fluvial geography, these maps do not conform to the “ways and realms” tradition represented by al-Iṣṭakhrī and Ibn Ḥawqal. Nor for the most part do 28

An Eleventh-Century Egyptian Guide to the Universe: The Book of Curiosities, ed. and trans. Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith (Leiden: Brill, 2014).

Introduction

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fig. 0.4 Map of Iraq from a ninth/fifteenth-century copy of Ibn Ḥawqal’s Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ. South at top. Tigris and Euphrates river system, with cities on the Tigris including B ­ aghdad, Wāsiṭ, and Tikrīt. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2214, fol. 21v.

they appear to derive from mathematical geography. However, the map of the Nile, which marks the equator and the first three climes, and includes references to the latitude and longitude of particular places, is clearly related to a

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fig. 0.5 Rectangular world map from a copy c. 1200 of the fifth/eleventh-century Fatimid Kitāb Gharāʾib al-funūn (“Book of Curiosities”). South at top. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arab. c. 90, fols 23v-24r.

map produced by al-Khwārazmī, while the rectangular world map, although in many ways indebted to the geography of Ibn Ḥawqal, can be understood to preserve the frame of a map constructed on mathematical principles, as marked by its representation of a scale bar (evidently poorly understood by the map’s copyist, and perhaps too by the original mapmaker) (Fig. 0.5).29 A similar mingling of approaches characterises al-Idrīsī’s work. The Nuzhat al-mushtāq uses the seven climes as the basis for its description of the world, but divides them into ten longitudinal sections, resulting in 70 regional subdivisions. These subdivisions are not, in fact, mathematically calculated, but they represent an expansion of the scope of the “ways and realms” tradition, particularly with regard to northern European and Asian regions, and at least some maps seem originally to have included co-ordinates.30 Al-Idrīsī credits both Ptolemy and al-Khwārazmī, and Ibn Khurradādhbih and Ibn Ḥawqal as sources, indicating his inheritance and adaptation of both mathematical and non-mathematical strands of geography. These examples of the Book of Curiosities and the Nuzhat al-mushtāq indicate the vitality of spatial representation in the Arabic-Islamic 29 30

Book of Curiosities, 87–89, 176–85; for discussion see Rapoport and Savage-Smith, Lost Maps of the Caliphs, 75–100, 107–15. Jean-Charles Ducène, “Les coordonnés géographiques de la carte manuscrite d’al-Idrīsī (Paris, Bnf ar. 2221),” Der Islam 86 (2009): 271–85. See Chapter Four for further discussion of al-Idrīsī.

Introduction

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world, and suggest the wide dissemination and eager criticism of the image of the world and its regions. The religious dimension of spatial representation in the Arabic-Islamic world, often understated on maps, is manifest in another genre that straddles descriptive and mathematical geography: the representation of the qibla, the direction towards the Kaʿba in Mecca which, following a Qurʾānic injunction, Muslims must face when they pray.31 The Kaʿba was understood in relation to geographical space – with, for example, Yemen to its south, Egypt to its northwest, Iraq to its north-east, and India to its east – and numerous medieval texts and diagrams were devoted to specifying the position of the qibla in different parts of the world. Many such diagrams were schematic in form, with varying degrees of complexity and detail; they were usually centred on the Kaʿba, with segments containing different regions arranged around it. A minority of qibla maps used mathematical principles, such as co-ordinates of latitude and longitude, to express the relationship between different places and the Kaʿba.32 Both mathematical and non-mathematical methods of representing the qibla further attest the importance of geographical consciousness within Islamic societies, here at the level of daily devotional practice. The representation of the world in the Latin West was rooted in classical geographical tradition. Key texts of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages disseminated an image of the world that corresponded broadly to that of the high Roman Empire, albeit with accretions of various kinds. Of particular importance were Julius Solinus’ Polyhistor or Collectanea, a redaction of Pliny’s Naturalis historia; the description of the world at the beginning of Paulus Orosius’ early fifth-century Historiae adversus paganos; and book 14 of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae. None of these texts appears originally to have contained a map, but their detailed verbal description of the known world provided a framework for subsequent cartographic representation. The earliest surviving world maps date from the eighth century, and suggest the strong likelihood of the survival of classical Roman models (the only surviving Roman world map, the “Peutinger Table”, is extant in a copy of c. 1200), but also the emergence of a Christianised world image, with a strong emphasis on the Holy Land (Fig. 0.6).33 The use of maps in an explicitly religious text – not a feature 31

32 33

David A. King and Richard P. Lorch, “Qibla Charts, Qibla Maps, and Related Instruments,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 2, book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, ed. J. Brian Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 189–205; The Qurʾān 2:144. See King and Lorch, “Qibla Charts,” for examples. Albi, Médiathèque Pierre-Amalric, MS 29, fol. 57v, copied in Spain or Septimania in the eighth century; Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 6018, fols 63v-64r, copied between 762 and 777 in Italy. For detailed overview of the early medieval Latin

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fig. 0.6 Latin world map copied in Italy between 762 and 777 CE. South at top. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 6018, fols 63v-64r.

of Islamic geography aside from the qibla map tradition – is easy to find in the Latin West, and from an early date: maps on occasion appear in Bibles or as a tool of e­ xegesis, and the world map that illustrates Beatus of Liébana’s eighth-century Commentary on the Apocalypse survives in no less than fourteen manuscripts.34 By the twelfth century, mappae mundi of considerable size and detail are attested in monasteries and cathedrals; while none of these maps has survived, other than in a reduced copy, they undoubtedly provided

34

tradition see Patrick Gautier Dalché, “Conceptions et représentations géographiques du haut Moyen Age: conditions, techniques intellectuelles, évolutions,” Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 67 (2020), 335–78. For a description of the Arnstein Bible map see Edson, Mapping Time and Space, 92–94; for an example of an early exegetical map see Thomas O’Loughlin, “Map and Text: A Mid Ninth-Century Map for the Book of Joshua,” Imago Mundi 57 (2005): 7–22; on the Beatus tradition see Sandra Sáenz-López Pérez, The Beatus maps: The Revelation of the World in the Middle Ages, trans. Peter Krakenberger and Gerry Coldham (Burgos: Siloé, 2014). Certain parallels with Christian exegetical maps can be seen in the maps that illustrate the commentary on the Pentateuch produced by Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaqi) c. 1100, though the evidence for interaction with Christian and/or Islamic mapping traditions should be handled with caution: see Benjamin Z. Kedar, “Rashi’s Map of the Land of Canaan, ca. 1100, and Its Cartographic Background,” in Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Fresh Perspectives, New Methods, ed. Richard J.A. Talbert and Richard W. Unger (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 155–68.

Introduction

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fig. 0.7 The Hereford world map, c. 1300. East at top.

the basis for large world maps of the thirteenth or early fourteenth centuries.35 The Hereford and Ebstorf world maps, both now dated to c. 1300, show the impressive scope that mappae mundi had achieved by this time. Such maps, consistently oriented to the east, gave spatial meaning to Christian history by representing events including the expulsion from the earthly paradise, the Flood, the itinerary of the Israelites to the promised land, and the Crucifixion, while also including secular mythology such as Jason’s quest for the golden fleece, Daedalus’ labyrinth in Crete, or the columns of Hercules at the mouth of the Mediterranean (Fig. 0.7).36 Particularly evident in maps such as Hereford 35

36

Patrick Gautier Dalché, La “Descriptio Mappe Mundi” de Hugues de Saint-Victor (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1988); P.D.A. Harvey, “The Sawley Map and Other World Maps in Twelfth-Century England,” Imago Mundi 49 (1997): 33–42; Nathalie Bouloux, “L’espace habité,” in La Terre: Connaissance, représentations, mesure au Moyen Âge, 259–441. The Hereford Map, ed. Scott D. Westrem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001); Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte, ed. Hartmut Kugler, 2 vols (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2007). Note too the Duchy of

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fig. 0.8 Francesco Beccari, Sea Chart (1403), showing the Mediterranean, Aegean and Black Seas, and the Atlantic coastline from Britain to the Canary Islands. North at top. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

and Ebstorf is the development of “encyclopedic” elements in Asia and Africa, such as remarkable plants, animals and monstrous beings, virtually all derived from late antique texts such as Solinus, but in much greater abundance than in earlier mappae mundi. The centering of these maps on Jerusalem (not a consistent feature within the mappa mundi tradition) appears to be another thirteenth-century innovation.37 World maps from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries show the increasing influence of sea charts, and a by no means uniform tendency to incorporate new information about distant parts of the world. Sea charts (usually known in Anglophone scholarship as “portolan charts”), whose origins seem to go back to the late twelfth century, presented a particularly detailed representation of Mediterranean, Black Sea, and northern Atlantic coastlines (Fig. 0.8). While they were produced, perhaps in small numbers, in the thirteenth century, they seem to have been relatively common by the first half of the fourteenth

37

­ ornwall map from around the same period, which judging by its surviving fragment was C evidently also a large and detailed mappa mundi. See Marcia Kupfer, “The Jerusalem Effect: Rethinking the Centre in Medieval World Maps,” in Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, ed. Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai, and Hanna Vorholt (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 353–65.

Introduction

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century.38 Pietro Vesconte, a Venetian chartmaker, contributed a world map and regional maps to Marino Sanudo’s 1321 crusading tract, the Liber secretorum fidelium crucis. The world map in this text reveals not only the drawing of coast-lines with reference to sea charts, but also the clear use of Arabic-Islamic cartography.39 The fourteenth century seems also to have seen the development of a hybrid sea-chart world map, in which pictorial and topographic elements filled interior space. The deluxe Catalan Atlas, produced in Majorca by the Jewish chartmaker Cresques Abraham for the King of France, provides the most elaborate example of this kind of mappa mundi rooted in the sea chart tradition, while also incorporating information derived from reports of the east such as the Divisement dou monde of Marco Polo.40 Reports of the Indies, such as those given by Marco Polo and Odoric da Pordenone were received in a variety of ways, and they were not systematically trawled by those compiling maps and geographies.41 However, it is possible to see a significantly changed representation of Asia on maps such as the magnificent planisphere produced by the Camaldolese monk, Fra Mauro, for which Marco Polo was a significant source (Fig. 0.9).42 Fifteenth-century mappae mundi such as Fra Mauro’s continued to respond to sea charts, as well as to the information contained in the narrative of Polo and others, but they also responded to the translation of Ptolemy’s Geographia into Latin. This event, which took place in the first decade of the fifteenth century, did not have the immediately transformative effect on European mapping that has sometimes been supposed, but it is true to say that by the end of the century, and the time of the New World discoveries, the Ptolemaic world image had become common to the point of banality in educated circles throughout Europe (Fig. 0.10).43 38

39 40 41 42 43

For an introduction to sea charts see Tony Campbell, “Portolan Charts from the Late Thirteenth Century to 1500,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 1: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. J. Brian Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 370–463; Ramon J. Pujades i Bataller, Les cartes portolanes: la representació medieval d’una mar solcada/Portolan Charts: The Medieval Representation of a Ploughed Sea (Barcelona: Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya, 2007); Philipp Billion, Graphische Zeichen auf mittelalterlichen Portolankarten: Ursprünge, Produktion und Rezeption bis 1440 (Marburg: Tectum, 2011). For further discussion of the Vesconte-Sanudo world map see Chapter Five in this ­volume. Further discussion of the Catalan Atlas can be found in Chapter Six of this volume. See Marianne O’Doherty, The Indies and the Medieval West: Thought, Report, Imagination (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 161–99. Angelo Cattaneo, Fra Mauro’s Mappa Mundi and Fifteenth-Century Venice (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). Patrick Gautier Dalché, La Géographie de Ptolémée en Occident (IVe-XVIe siècle) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009).

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fig. 0.9 Fra Mauro, Mappa mundi, mid fifteenth century. South at top. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana.

fig. 0.10 World map in an early printed edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia (Ulm, 1482). London, British Library, Maps C.1.d.2.

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Introduction

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The rapid overview of European Christian and Arabic-Islamic mapping that I have just given cannot do justice to the complexities of either tradition, but it may be enough to indicate the existence of shared ground as well as some significant differences between the two. It is worth emphasising that, aside of any question of influence, in its basic form the world image in the Latin West and the Arabic-Islamic world was essentially the same, comprising an outer encircling ocean, a prominent Mediterranean basin and Nile (the presence of a western Nile, extending from the Atlas mountains, can be found on maps from both traditions),44 a tendency to emphasise urban space, and a lively interest in regional and provincial subdivision. That said, at the level of detail very considerable divergences between the traditions emerge. In the Christian tradition foundational descriptions of the earth such as the opening of Orosius’ Historiae and book fourteen of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae defined the westernmost extent of the world as the pillars of Hercules, set at the mouth of the Mediterranean; in the far east of Asia was India and Taprobana (Sri Lanka), though for Isidore the easternmost part of the world was the earthly paradise.45 From north to south the known world extended from Scythia to Ethiopia, with deserted and uncultivated lands to be found in the far north as well as in the far south. Broadly speaking, the same boundaries can be found in Arabic-Islamic geography, albeit with further extension into the bilād al-sīn (China) in the east, and of course without Christian features such as the earthly paradise. That said, Orosius and Isidore, and the medieval authors, compilers and translators who adapted them, provided significantly more information about northern Europe than their Arabic-Islamic counterparts, but with nothing like, for example, the detailed accounts of Berber tribes in north-west Africa supplied by Ibn Ḥawqal, or the detail of south-east Asia recorded by Ibn Khurradādhbih.46 Orosius’ Historiae offers a rare example of a Latin text that was translated into Arabic. The Kitāb Hurūshiūsh is the product of late third/ninth- or fourth/ tenth-century Andalusian intellectual exchange; one current conjecture is that it was translated in Cordoba by two translators, one Christian and one ­Muslim, perhaps with the aim of supplying the need felt in Mozarabic Spain for a 44 45 46

Robin Seignobos, “L’origine occidentale du Nil dans la géographie latine et arabe avant le XIVe siècle,” in Orbis Disciplinae: Hommages en l’honneur de Patrick Gautier Dalché, ed. Nathalie Bouloux, Anca Dan and Georges Tolias (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 371–94. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae XIV: De Terra, ed. and trans. Olga Spevak (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2011), 14.3.2. Ibn Ḥawqal, Opus geographicum auctore Ibn Ḥauḳal (Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ), ed. J.H. Kramers, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1938–9), 100–7; Ibn Khurradādhbih, Kitāb al-masālik wa-l-mamālik (Liber viarum et regnorum), ed. M.J. de Goeje (Leiden: Brill, 1889), 37–53.

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universal Christian history in Arabic, but whatever the identities of the translators it was consistently associated with the Umayyad court by Arabic-Islamic authors.47 The Kitāb Hurūshiūsh provides a relatively faithful translation of Orosius’ geography, one which does not in general attempt to modernise the text’s spatial reference. Yet close inspection reveals quite a number of alterations. While the dimensions and toponymy of Spain vary little from the source – Narbona, Brigantia, Galicia, Gades, and the Pyrenees are all transliterated – the “insulae Baleares” become “jazīra mīūrqa wa minūrqa” (island of Majorca and Minorca).48 The Kitāb alters Orosius’ description of Spain, omitting his description of the province of Aquitaine, and substituting “al-andalus” for the original’s “Hispania”, just as it includes the “balad al-barbar” in north Africa.49 Furthermore, there is a significant insertion in the Kitāb Hurūshiūsh’s geography. After translating Orosius’ account of Mediterranean and Atlantic islands, the Kitāb Hurūshiūsh adds a lengthy list of rivers culled from the Cosmographia Julii Honorii.50 This work (of uncertain date, but certainly in circulation by the mid sixth century CE when it was cited by Cassiodorus) purports to derive from an imperial survey commissioned by Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, conducted by four surveyors, who were sent respectively to the east, west, north and south.51 It records seas, islands, rivers, mountains, peoples, provinces, and towns, and is the basis for the image of the emperor and three surveyors that appears in the lower left margin of the Hereford map.52 The Kitāb Hurūshiūsh includes the story of Caesar’s commission at the start of the chapter, then gives information on the number of oceans, islands, mountains, countries and provinces, then the list of over 50 rivers. It does not constitute an “updating”, and may very well derive from the Latin source text used by the compiler of the 47

48 49 50 51 52

Hans Daiber, “Orosius’ Historiae adversus paganos in arabischer Überlieferung,” in Tradition and Re-interpretation in Jewish and Early Christian Literature: Essays in Honor of Jürgen C. H. Lebram, ed. J.W. van Henten et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 202–49; Ann Christys, Christians in al-Andalus (711–1000) (Richmond: Curzon, 2002), 135–57; Christian C. ­Sahner, “From Augustine to Islam: Translation and History in the Arabic Orosius,” Speculum 88 (2013): 905–31. For a summary of different theories about the translation see König, ­Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West, 84–85. Kitāb Hurūšiūš, ed. Mayte Penelas (Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas, 2001), 40 (p. 28). Kitāb Hurūšiūš, 40 (p. 28); 45 (p. 30). Kitāb Hurūšiūš, 56–116 (pp. 32–42). Geographi Latini minores, ed. Alexander Riese (Heilbronn, 1878; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1964), 71–103. The Hereford Map, 2–3; Claude Nicolet and Patrick Gautier Dalché, “Les ‘Quatre Sages’ de Jules César et la ‘Mesure du Monde’ selon Julius Honorius: réalité antique et tradition médiévale,” Journal des savants (1986): 157–218.

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Kitāb Hurūshiūsh.53 But it does testify to the way in which classically-derived geographical information circulated, to the level of authority accorded the “imperial” survey, and to the free manner in which the text of Orosius could be supplemented – in this case filled out with a comprehensive topographical list not present in the original. Although the influence of the Kitāb Hurūshiūsh on Arabic-Islamic geography appears to have been relatively limited, the book was a source for a number of Arab geographers, including the Andalusian authors al-Rāzī and al-Bakrī, as well as another Arabic-Islamic geographer with strong links to al-Andalus, al-Idrīsī.54 Mozarabic Andalusia would seem to provide the context for another example of the translation of geographical material in the form of a tripartite map found in an eighth- or ninth-century manuscript of Isidore’s Etymologiae (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, Vitr. 14.3, fol. 116v) (Fig. 0.11). Apart from four inscriptions in Latin, the map is written entirely in Arabic. It is likely to be a later addition to the manuscript, which contains many Arabic glosses to the Latin text of the Etymologiae.55 A reasonable hypothesis is that the compiler of the manuscript drew the outline of the map but left it blank, to be filled by one or more later annotators.56 As is standard within the Latin tradition the map associates the peoples of the three partes of the world with the three sons of Noah (the “banū sām”, i.e. sons of Shem, in Asia; the “banū Jāfat”, i.e. Japhet, in Europe; and the “banū Ḥām” in Africa). But although some of the peoples and places it identifies are shared with Latin versions of the same map, 53 54

55

56

There is a brief discussion of this question in Daiber, “Orosius’ Historiae adversus paganos in arabischer Überlieferung,” 217–18. The description of Spain as triangular was particularly influential: see Luis Molina, “Orosio y los geógrafos hispanomusulmanes,” Al-Qantara 5 (1984): 62–92; al-Bakrī, Kitāb al-masālik wa-l-mamālik, ed. A.P. Van Leeuwen and A. Ferre, 2 vols (Tunis: Al-Dār al-ʿArabīya lil-Kitāb, 1992), vol. 2, 19; al-Idrīsī, Opus geographicum sive “Liber ad eorum delectationem qui terras peragrare studeant”, ed. E. Cerulli et al. (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, 1970–84), IV.1.1 (p. 525). For descriptions of the map see Leonid Chekin, Northern Eurasia in Medieval Cartography: Inventory, Text, Translation, and Commentary (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 59–61; G. Menéndez-Pidal, “Mozárabes y Asturianos en la cultura de la alta edad media,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 134 (1954): 137–291, at 169–72; Stefan Schröder, “­Kartographische Entwürfe iberischer Provenienz. Zu Raum und Ordnungsvorstellungen auf der Iberischen Halbinsel in Karten des 9. bis 12. Jahrhunderts,” in Von Mozarabern zu Mozarabismen: Zur Vielfalt kultureller Ordnungen auf der mittelalterlichen Iberischen Halbinsel, ed. Matthias Maser et al. (Münster: Aschendorff, 2014), 257–77: 266–76. On the likelihood of a ninth- or tenth-century translation of the Etymologiae into Arabic, and its importance for al-Bakrī, see Jean-Charles Ducène, “Al-Bakrī et les Étymologies d’Isidore de Séville,” Journal Asiatique, 297 (2009): 379–97. Schröder, “Kartographische Entwürfe”, 275–76.

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fig. 0.11 Tripartite map with inscriptions in Arabic and Latin, in an eighth- or ninth-century manuscript of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae. East at top. Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, Vitr. 14.3, fol. 116v.

it introduces a number, particularly in Africa, that derive from Arab sources: Sind; the Zanj; al-Habasha (Ethiopia); the Copts; “the Blacks” (“Sudān”); and the Berbers; as well as Mecca and al-Ḥijāz in Asia, and the Khazars in Europe. Precise details of where and how this particular map came to be adapted in this way are not clear, but it at least testifies to the possibilities for the movement of form and the reinterpretation of content across languages and faiths

Introduction

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fig. 0.12 Hereford world map, c. 1300. Detail of mirabilia in Africa, including Hermaphrodites (“Gens uterque sexus”) and people with concrete mouths (right); rhinoceros and unicorn (centre); and mandrake and salamander (left).

within a hybrid cultural milieu, even if those possibilities were not always taken advantage of over the course of the Middle Ages. One final point of comparison that reveals both similarities and differences is the representation of monstrous peoples. It is this aspect of the Latin tradition that shows with most clarity the importance of the ends of the earth as a site for the contemplation of humanity and its limits. One strand of mappae mundi depict marvellous peoples in the far south of Africa, as well as in northern Europe and Asia (Fig. 0.12).57 These beings all show some distortion of human features but on these world images they were explicitly embraced as part of God’s creation, along with other natural marvels such as mandrakes, basilisks and bonnacons. At first glance Arabic-Islamic maps seem far more austere in their representation of monsters and marvels. But it could be argued that they too allude to and stage the limits of the human. The great shared feature between the two traditions is Gog and Magog: more precisely perhaps the shared feature is Alexander and his tutor, Aristotle. Alexander’s enclosure of Gog and Magog marked the imminent threat of apocalypse in the Christian tradition, since the release of Gog and Magog would occur as a prelude to the 57

On monsters and other mirabilia on medieval European maps see Hoogvliet, Pictura et Scriptura, 181–219; Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150–1750 (New York: Zone, 1998), 25–39; Asa Simon Mittman, Maps and Monsters in Medieval England (London: Routledge, 2006); Chet Van Duzer, “Hic sunt dracones: The Geography and Cartography of Monsters,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. Asa Simon Mittman and Peter J. Dendle (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 387–435.

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Last Judgement (an event represented at the top of the Hereford map). Within Islam the function of Gog and Magog (Yājūj wa-Mājūj) was similar: the Qurʾān describes their enclosure by Alexander behind a barrier to be razed by God at the end of time.58 The origin of these creatures was disputed: on one account, they were the product of Adam’s nocturnal emission, mixed with earth; another claimed that Mājūj had been born of Eve’s menstrual blood.59 Elsewhere on the Arabic-Islamic map it is possible to see negotiation of the boundaries between human and non-human. The people known as the “wāqwāq” hover between the categories of ethnography and mirabilia. The location of the wāqwāq was never clearly defined, and shifted from author to author, but they were generally associated with the east and the south.60 A text in the Book of Curiosities identifies a curious tree on Wāqwāq island, bordering on Sofalah in east Africa. The fruit of the tree has the appearance of women suspended by their hair: “They have breasts, female sexual organs, and curvaceous bodies, and they scream ‘wāqwāq’. When one of them is cut off the tree, it falls down dead and does not talk any more”.61 The trees, we are told, gain in attractiveness the further one progresses into the island: the plump interior fruit talks and screams for a day after being removed from its tree; sexual intercourse with the fruit is said to be pleasurable for the one who cuts it down. Both world maps in the Book of Curiosities mark the wāqwāq islands, and, prior to the circular world map, a later reader added a fine illustration of the tree (Fig. 0.13). The Book also contains a chapter on “deformed humans”, some of which are shared with the Latin tradition: people with faces in their chests, cannibals, and a race with enormous ears, as well as many others unfamiliar to it, such as the nisnās, half-people with half a head and face, one eye, an arm and a leg. The overwhelming emphasis of this chapter is on deformation as the result of miscegenation: creatures born from the union between humans and land animals (the bawāqīr), humans and sea animals, humans and birds of prey (resulting in “a nation that look like Turks with long beards, fangs and claws”), and even the offspring of Gog and Magog’s union with sea animals (aḥbūsh).62 These races are not all located at the ends of the earth – the nisnās dwell in Yemen – but many are noted for their extreme position: the offspring of humans and sea animals dwell on Thule in the far north-west; the children of humans and birds 58 59 60 61 62

The Qurʾān 18:93–98; 21:96. See “Yadjudj wa-Madjudj,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, ed. P. Bearman et al, 11 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1969–2002); Travis Zadeh, Mapping Frontiers across Medieval Islam: Geography, Translation, and the ʿAbbasid Empire (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011). G.R. Tibbetts and Shawkat Toorawa, “Wakwak,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition. Book of Curiosities, 519. Book of Curiosities, 514–15.

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fig. 0.13 Drawing of the wāqwāq tree in the Kitāb Gharāʾib al-funūn (“Book of Curiosities”). Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arab. c. 90, fol. 27r.

of prey live in the furthest east; the Damdam, who value copper more than gold, are found in the south-west of Africa.63 The humanity of such creatures is not as firmly expressed as it is in the European tradition; they seem to stand 63

Book of Curiosities, 515.

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on a threshold between human and animal, and – in the case of the wāqwāq – plant, as human seed, the essence of humanity, is led astray. 2

The Question of Interaction

As this overview of the two traditions makes clear, there is much common ground, as well as certain clear differences between medieval Christian European and Arabic-Islamic geographical thought. What evidence is there, then, of exchange between them? This question is particularly pointed given the overwhelming evidence, as previously mentioned, for exchange in other fields. Recent studies of the enormous impact of scientific materials translated from Arabic into Latin in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries have produced a clearer picture of the complex mixture of personal and institutional factors behind this remarkable engagement with non-Christian cultures and traditions.64 Nevertheless, crucial questions remain unanswered, and one of them concerns the level of interest of the translators in spatial representation contained in Arabic texts. There is no doubt that the study of medicine, mathematics, astronomy, natural philosophy, and alchemy in Europe would have been very different without the translation of knowledge from the ArabicIslamic world. But what of geography? It has been noted that, in twelfth-century Spain, translators such as Gerard of Cremona, Hermann of Carinthia, and Robert of Chester ignored not only Arabic juridical and literary texts, but even the more “scientific” disciplines such as music and geography.65 The attention of the Latin translators seems to have been directed overwhelmingly towards mathematical, astrological, astronomical and divinatory texts in the first half 64

65

Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, “Translations and translators,” in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. R.L. Benson and G. Constable (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982), 421–62 remains a valuable overview. For more recent discussion see Dimitri Gutas, “What was there in Arabic for the Latins to Receive? Remarks on the Modalities of the Twelfth-Century Translation Movement in Spain”; Charles Burnett, “Humanism and Orientalism in the Translations from Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages”; and Dag Nikolaus Hasse, “The Social Conditions of the Arabic-(Hebrew-)Latin Translation Movements in Medieval Spain and in the Renaissance,” all in Wissen über Grenzen, 3–21, 22–31, 68–88; Charles Burnett and Pedro Mantas-España, eds, Mapping Knowledge: Cross-Pollination in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Córdoba and London: CNERU, Warburg Institute, 2014); Rosa Maria Bacile and John McNeill, eds, Romanesque and the Mediterranean: Points of Contact across the Latin, Greek and Islamic Worlds c. 1000 to c. 1250 (Leeds: British Archaeological Association, 2016). Jacques Verger, “Les sciences arabes en Occident au Moyen Âge,” in L’Islam au carrefour des civilisations médiévales, ed. Dominique Barthélémy and Michel Sot (Paris: Presses de l’université Paris-Sorbonne, 2012).

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of the twelfth century, with religious and philosophical works receiving sustained attention from the 1140s.66 Transmission of geographical descriptions, maps and diagrams seems to have been largely incidental, a by-product rather than an objective of their labours. There were of course many opportunities for the transmission of Arabic maps and geographical texts to the Latin West between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries, and arguments in favour of the influence of Arabic-Islamic maps in Christian Europe are not new. In the middle of the nineteenth century Joachim Lelewel structured his history of medieval geography in alternating chapters between Latin and Arabic traditions. Lelewel included comparative discussion in his work and argued for the influence of Islamic maps on certain Latin mappae mundi.67 Perhaps the most forceful articulation of influence in the first half of the twentieth century came from Konrad Miller’s Mappae Arabicae, a work self-published by the author between 1926 and 1931. Miller confidently, perhaps provocatively, asserted the significance of Arabic-Islamic maps for the history of European cartography.68 Miller hailed the Arabs as the world leaders of geography and cartography from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, and like Lelewel posited the influence of Arabic-Islamic maps on European Christian maps such as the Vesconte-Sanudo world map in the Liber secretorum fidelium crucis, as well as the Catalan Atlas.69 His compilation, photographic reproduction and transcriptions – however error-strewn – of Arabic maps remain impressive achievements. It is in fact a striking feature of the history of cartography in its manifestations prior to World War II that some of its most important publications sought a cross-cultural approach to the field – an approach that in some ways became harder to sustain during the subject’s post-war professionalization. Between 1930 and 1935, the Egyptian prince, Youssouf Kamal, published under the title “Époque arabe” five fascicules of his five-volume Monumenta Cartographica Africae et Aegypti, chronologically organised, comprising a mixture 66 67

68 69

Gutas, “What was there in Arabic for the Latins to Receive?”; Hasse, “Social Conditions.” Géographie du Moyen Âge, 4 vols (Brussels: Pilliet, 1850–57), e.g. vol. 2, 45–48. For discussion of earlier European interest in Arabic-Islamic geography see Marina Tolmacheva, “The Medieval Arabic Geographers and the Beginnings of Modern Orientalism,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27 (1995): 141–56. Konrad Miller, Mappae Arabicae: Arabische Welt- und Länderkarten des 9. – 13. Jahrhunderts, 6 vols (Stuttgart, 1926–31). Mappae Arabicae, vol. 5, 99: “. . . die Araber neben den Griechen und etwa noch Römern das einzige Volk in der Welt und in der Geschichte bilden, welches sich zu selbständigen kartographischen Leistungen emporgerungen hat. Eine Geschichte der Kartographie kann deshalb nicht geschrieben werden ohne Kenntnis der Leistungen des arabischen Stammes.”

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of Arabic, Syriac, Coptic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin geographical works from time of the Arab conquests to the end of the thirteenth century. A further four fascicules comprising Volume Four, “Époque des Portulans suivie par l’époque des découvertes” (1936–39), took the story into the fifteenth century, concentrating increasingly on Latin texts, although with still a significant amount of Arabic material.70 By the time of works such as Leo Bagrow and R.A. Skelton’s History of Cartography, however, only a slim chapter was devoted to Islamic maps, while the 1964 census of mappae mundi published as Monumenta Cartographica Vetustioris Aevi ignored Islamic material completely.71 The University of Chicago Press’ monumental, and in certain ways radical, History of Cartography series went some distance to redressing the side-lining of Arabic-Islamic material, but by now the Latin and Arabic traditions were regarded separately, with no serious attempt to compare them. The bulk of volume one (1987) of the series was devoted to medieval European cartography, while a large portion of volume two (1992) provided a survey of medieval Islamic mapmaking. There were good reasons, both practical and intellectual, for the separation of Islamic and European cartography within the Chicago series, and the fact that both volumes remain important touchstones for those working on maps in these two traditions indicates their success. However, the question we should now ask, after more than a quarter of a century, is whether it remains intellectually valid to continue to separate Islamic from Christian European, Arabic from Latin, when we consider the history of cartography. The answer could well be “yes”. Careful consideration might lead to the conclusion that – except in perhaps a handful of cases – Christian European and Islamic maps of the Middle Ages should be investigated separately, as essentially independent traditions. Yet it also seems true that a failure to compare is likely to lead to false generalisations about “medieval” spatial representation, and that – more positively – much can be learned by reflecting on shared elements and difference within the two traditions.

70

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Youssouf Kamal, Monumenta Cartographica Africae et Aegypti, 5 vols (Cairo, 1926–51). See too the relatively substantial treatment of Arabic-Islamic cartography, following the “rise and fall” paradigm, and replete with virulent anti-clericalism, in George H.T. Kimble, Geography in the Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1938), 44–68. The account of the “contribution of the Moslems” in John Kirtland Wright, The Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades: A Study in the History of Medieval Science and Tradition in Western Europe (New York: American Geographical Society, 1925), 77–87, 95–102, is well-informed. Leo Bagrow, History of Cartography, rev. ed. R.A. Skelton (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1964), 53–59; Marcel Destombes, ed., Monumenta Cartographica Vetustioris Aevi. Vol. 1: Mappemondes, AD 1200–1500 (Amsterdam: Israel, 1964).

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Since Miller, various links and translations between Islamic and Christian geography have been posited. At one extreme are the arguments of Fuat Sezgin, who has made the case for extensive levels of Arabic-Islamic influence in the Latin West.72 Sezgin believes that the world map produced for the caliph al-Maʾmūn in the third/ninth century made significant revisions and improvements to Ptolemy’s world map, particularly the reduction by ten degrees of the longitudinal axis of the Mediterranean between Tangiers and Antioch, and that these revisions are visible on a number of western maps, including a map attributed to Brunetto Latini, another described by Roger Bacon, and the Vesconte-Sanudo world map.73 In his view, an updated version of the map made for al-Maʾmūn must have circulated in western Europe, along with the circular world map of al-Idrīsī. In addition, Sezgin argues for the Arab origins of the sea chart, citing as proof the “Maghrib chart”, a map with toponyms in Arabic that has received a variety of dates ranging from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (Fig. 0.14).74 According to this view, any properly scientific advances in European mapmaking during the Middle Ages (such as improved levels of accuracy – always judged, of course, by a modern standard) should be attributed to the more sophisticated scientific culture of the Arabic-Islamic world. Sezgin’s use of evidence has been critiqued elsewhere;75 here it is necessary only to note two broad problems with the case he makes. In the first place, there is something curiously self-defeating about arguments that assume the inherent superiority of modern Western science but strive to displace Eurocentrism by asserting the origins of scientific advance in the Arabic-Islamic world. The upshot is simply to reinforce old paradigms of cultural primacy, perhaps seen most spectacularly in Sezgin’s claim that Columbus’ discovery of the New World was achieved on the back of the achievements of Arab cartographers and navigators who had reached the American continent and started to survey it by the beginning of the fifteenth century.76 Secondly, the effect of concentrating only on narrowly-defined scientific achievements is to flatten the account of Arabic-Islamic maps themselves, while denigrating the value of their Latin contemporaries. Sezgin has, in the end, very little to say about 72

Fuat Sezgin, Mathematical Geography and Cartography in Islam and their Continuation in the Occident, trans. Guy Moore and Geoff Sammon, 3 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science, 2000–2007). 73 Sezgin, Mathematical Geography and Cartography, vol. 1, 205–26. 74 Sezgin, Mathematical Geography and Cartography, vol. 2, 27–31. 75 Patrick Gautier Dalché, “Géographie arabe et géographie latine au XIIe siècle,” Medieval Encounters 19 (2013): 408–33, at 410; cf. Pinto, Medieval Islamic Maps, 14–15. 76 Fuat Sezgin, Pîrî Re’īs and the Pre-Columbian Discovery of the American Continent by M ­ uslim Seafarers (Istanbul: Boyut, 2013), esp. 66–67.

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fig. 0.14 The “Maghrib chart”. Sea chart with Arabic inscriptions, showing the Mediterranean basin, Iberian peninsula, French, English and eastern Irish coastlines. West at top. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, S.P. II, 259.

al-Idrīsī, the many Kutub al-masālik wa-al-mamālik, or non-mathematical geography generally, except insofar as this material can be brought to bear on his claims for the technical sophistication and influence of al-Maʾmūn’s map. Aside from its particular claims for influence, the core narrative that underlies Sezgin’s thesis is a familiar one that continues to be reproduced. This is that the Islamic world reached its cultural apogee between the third/ninth and sixth/twelfth centuries, before experiencing a plateau. By contrast, so the narrative goes, during the same period Latin Europe was initially a backward region, but gradually assumed a leading position in cultural, economic and political terms (due in large or small part, depending on the commentator, to the transfer of knowledge from Arabic-Islamic sources).77 Maps can be deployed in illustrative support of this narrative. Inaccurate medieval European mappae mundi are compared unfavourably with “more realistic” Arabic-Islamic models, 77

The Cambridge World History V: Expanding Webs of Exchange and Conflict, 500 CE-1500 CE, ed. Benjamin Z. Kedar and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 10; cf. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. Dean Milman, M. Guizot and William Smith, 8 vols (London: Murray, 1903–14), vol. 6, 398–99.

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which unfortunately endured “stagnation” after the sixth/twelfth century, and were eventually overtaken by the rapid advances in European maps, led by the sea chart tradition, with its accurate, proto-modern depiction of coastlines.78 Again, this approach to maps, and to cultural achievement more generally, sees value only in realism and accuracy as defined by post-Enlightenment standards, disregarding or at best downplaying any literary, historiographical, spiritual, political or intellectual function of spatial representation, and refusing to consider texts in their own terms and in the terms of the cultures that produced them. The effects of such an approach to the history of cartography are reductive and deadening; when applied to entire civilizations the result tends towards crass caricature. One alternative to grand narratives of epochal change is to explore instances of transmission in detail, without a-priori value judgements, and without the need to assert the superiority of one culture over another. To date, steps have been taken along this path by a relatively small, if growing, body of scholarship devoted to the interrelations between European and Islamic cartography,79 78 79

The Cambridge World History V, 7–9. For representative examples see Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, “Die stumme Weltkarte im Bodleian Douce 319 – ein arabisches Dokument in einer abendländischen Handschrift?,” in Wissen über Grenzen, 791–804; Emmanuelle Tixier, “La description d’alAndalus par al-Idrīsī,” in Chrétiens, juifs et musulmans dans la Méditerranée médiévale, ed. B. Grévin, A. Nef and E. Tixier (Paris: De Boccard, 2008), 75–88; Jean-Charles Ducène, “L’Europe dans la cartographie arabe médiévale,” Belgeo (2008): 251–67; Mónica Herrera Casais, “Granada en los atlas náuticos de al-Šarafī,” Al-Qantara 30 (2009): 221–35; Sonja Brentjes, “Revisiting Catalan Portolan Charts: Do They Contain Elements of Asian Provenance?,” in The Journey of Maps and Images on the Silk Road, ed. Philippe Forêt and Andreas Kaplony (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 181–201; Brentjes, Travellers from Europe in the Ottoman and Safavid Empires, 16th-17th centuries: Seeking, Transforming, Discarding Knowledge (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010); Brentjes, “Medieval Portolan Charts as Documents of Shared Cultural Spaces,” in Acteurs des transferts culturels en Méditerranée médiévale, ed. Rania Abdellatif et al. (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012), 135–46; Michael Borgolte, “Christliche und muslimische Repräsentationen der Welt. Ein Versuch in transdisziplinärer Mediävistik,” Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften: Berichte und Abhandlungen 14 (2008): 89–147; Sean Roberts, Printing a Mediterranean World: Florence, Constantinople and the Renaissance of Geography (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2012); Jean-Charles Ducène, “Le portulan arabe décrit par al-ʿUmarī,” Cartes et géomatique 216 (2013): 81–90; Schröder, “Kartographische Entwürfe iberischer Provenienz”; Christoph Mauntel and Jenny Rahel Oesterle, “Wasserwelten. Ozeane und Meere in der mittelalterlichen christlichen und arabischen Kosmographie,” in Wasser in der mittelalterlichen ­Kultur/ Water in Medieval Culture. Gebrauch – Wahrnehmung – Symbolik/ Uses, Perceptions, and Symbolism, ed. Gerlinde Huber-Rebenich, Christian Rohr, and Michael Stolz (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 59–77; Christoph Mauntel et al., “Mapping Continents, Inhabited Quarters and The Four Seas. Divisions of the World and the Ordering of Spaces in Latin-Christian, Arabic-Islamic and Chinese Cartography in the Twelfth to Sixteenth Cen-

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while a limited number of studies have pursued comparisons between other cartographic cultures.80 But a compelling thesis to describe and explain interaction has not emerged. Indeed, contrary to a model of extensive transfer, considerable scepticism has been articulated about the extent of the links between Latin and Arabic geographical thought. Patrick Gautier Dalché has set out a picture, for the twelfth century at least, of limited diffusion of ArabicIslamic geography within Europe.81 The impact of Arabic-Islamic astronomical geography on the Latin West from the twelfth century is undisputed: the calculation of latitude and longitude, the division of the northern hemisphere into climes rather than zones, awareness in distilled form of Ptolemy’s Geographia (long before its complete translation into Latin) – all seem to derive from contact with Arabic texts.82 In turn, this new information encouraged some thinkers to examine certain tenets of Latin geographical thought, such as the theory of an uninhabitable torrid zone at the equator – a theory incompatible with the system of the climes.83 Beyond the theoretical model represented by the climes, however, it is much harder to find conclusive evidence of the assimilation of Arabic-Islamic regional and world description to European maps. At the level of descriptive geography, Gautier Dalché argues that there was surprisingly little exchange: that Arabic-Islamic influence on the mappa mundi tradition (at least in the twelfth century) was negligible, and that in the case of sea charts, the direction of travel was emphatically from Latin West to the Arabic-Islamic world.84 It is certainly possible to cite evidence of European mapmakers making use of Arabic sources, whether in the form of written texts or orally transmitted information. It is also true that the case of al-Idrīsī stands as a remarkable example of the elaboration of Arabic-Islamic geography by a Muslim author in the service of a Christian prince. However, the evidence of Christian European use of

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turies. A Critical Survey and Analysis,” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 5 (2018): 295–367; Christoph Mauntel, ed., Geography and Religious Knowledge in the Medieval World (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021). Andreas Kaplony, “The Conversion of the Turks of Central Asia to Islam as Seen by Arabic and Persian Geography: A Comparative Perspective,” in Islamisation de l’Asie centrale: Processus locaux d’acculturation du VIIe au XIe siècle, ed. Étienne de la Vaissière (Paris: Association pour l’avancement des études iraniennes, 2008), 204–24; Hyunhee Park, Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds: Cross-Cultural Exchange in Pre-Modern Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Park’s negative appraisal of medieval European mapmaking (e.g. 3, 83) must be treated with considerable caution, however. Patrick Gautier Dalché, “Géographie arabe et géographie latine,” 408–33. Gautier Dalché, “Géographie arabe et géographie latine,” 411–21. Gautier Dalché, “Géographie arabe et géographie latine,” 418–19. Gautier Dalché, “Géographie arabe et géographie latine,” 421–33.

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Arabic sources becomes far stronger from the fourteenth century, while, however justly celebrated, al-Idrīsī’s Nuzhat al-mushtāq remains unprecedented, and apparently of little influence within the Latin West. The case of sea (or portolan) charts has attracted particularly polarised views. Among a small number of surviving pre-1500 sea charts written in Arabic, most attention has been given to the “Maghrib chart” (Fig. 0.14), so called because it appears to emphasise the western Mediterranean. In his seminal essay on portolan charts, Tony Campbell dismissed the possibility raised in earlier scholarship that this map could represent the oldest surviving chart, seeing it instead as an early fourteenth-century copy of another map.85 As previously mentioned, Fuat Sezgin saw the map quite differently, arguing that it attested an Arabic-Islamic tradition of sea charts that pre-dated and originated the Latin tradition.86 Subsequent work on sea charts has strongly questioned this view, redating the “Maghrib chart” to the fifteenth century, and reaffirming Campbell’s assessment of its derivative nature.87 Away from the debate about this particular map, other scholars considering the possibility of Arabic-Islamic origins for sea charts have pointed not only to the absence of any reference to such maps in Arabic sources prior to the fourteenth century, but also to the evidence of different traditions of maritime mapping, whether oral, in the form of lists and ledgers, or diagrammatic, as found in the Book of Curiosities.88 Were sea charts available to Arab authors in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they would have used, cited, and reproduced them, and they do not. It is in western sources, from the thirteenth century onwards, that evidence in the form of references, reproduction and adaptation, first appears. Yet while the case for Arabic-Islamic origins can be dismissed, sea charts should be viewed more productively as sites for cultural exchange, whether through the introduction of contemporary Arabic place names into a Christian European repertoire, or through the documented work of Jewish intermediaries, such as the Cresques families, on the island of Majorca where there was significant interchange of information within a diverse mercantile community.89 Moving 85

Campbell, “Portolan Charts,” 418, 445. The chart is Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, S.P. II, 259. 86 Sezgin, Mathematical Geography and Cartography, vol. 2, 3–83. 87 Pujades, Portolan Charts, 508–9; Billion, Graphische Zeichen auf mittelalterlichen Portolankarten, 218; Gautier Dalché, “Géographie arabe et géographie latine,” 422–23. 88 Rapoport and Savage-Smith, Lost Maps of the Caliphs, 148–53. 89 See Chapter Six for elaboration of this point. Note too the arguments of Phillip Billion on the basis of visual language for the influence of North African or Sephardic Jewry on the earliest sea charts: Graphische Zeichen auf mittelalterlichen Portolankarten, 278–93. On the earliest dated Arabic sea chart see Mónica Herrera Casais, “The 1413–14 Sea Chart of

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beyond polarising questions of origins and cultural patrimony can thus have the positive effect of revealing shared knowledge and a plurality of cultures interacting within the same space. Gautier Dalché’s critical assessment of claims for the extensive influence of Arabic-Islamic maps on European cartography demands that we interrogate the terms in which we conduct research. Is “exchange” an appropriate description of the movement of spatial representation “between Christian Europe and the Arabic-Islamic world”? If so, was this exchange two-way? “Influence” is an attractive term but, as Gautier Dalché points out, also a tricky concept – easy to assert, difficult to prove. No doubt other terms are possible, and perhaps preferable. A study of the question of intellectual relations between Europe and Islam in the Middle Ages advocates “crosspollination” over “influence” because crosspollination better captures the unpredictable and often undirected nature of contacts between cultures.90 And of course languages other than English offer suggestive alternatives: Begegnung; diffusione; carrefour; Belting’s Blickwechesel (an exchange of glances but also a shift of focus).91 At the same time, Gautier Dalché’s study provocatively raises the opposite possibility: that of a lack of influence. That is, it is possible that cartographic relations between Christian Europe and Islam may be characterised by difference and divergence rather than exchange and sharing. This – one must emphasise – need not be a disappointing conclusion. If what we find is difference, then the explanations for difference are likely to be productive. But whether exchange, influence, or divergence – or other terms – are found to be most appropriate, it is at least clear that the context and the evidence should determine the terminology, and not the other way around. The essays in this volume should be understood as the necessary first steps in opening out a field for further study. They cannot hope to be definitive or conclusive statements on their topics, since so little comparativist work on map history has been done. Nor do they pretend to provide comprehensive coverage of medieval Christian and Islamic cartographic traditions. Certain genres Aḥmad al-Ṭanjī,” in A Shared Legacy: Islamic Science East and West, ed. Emilia Calvo et al. (Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, 2008), 283–301. 90 James E. Montgomery, “Islamic Crosspollinations,” in Islamic Crosspollinations: Interactions in the Medieval Middle East, ed. James Montgomery, Anna Akasoy and Peter E. Pormann (Exeter: E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 2007), 336–444; cf. Mapping Knowledge: Cross-Pollination in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. Burnett and Mantas-España. See Kirk Ambrose, “Influence,” Studies in Iconography 33 (2012): 197–206 for a revised understanding of the use of “influence” as a critical term. 91 Belting, Florence and Baghdad, 4–5.

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of maps, particularly perhaps local maps and sea charts, will be under-represented in the following pages. However, the aim of the book as a whole is to consider different types of map – including celestial maps, maps of the climes, and world and regional maps – while at the same time broadening the frame of reference in which such texts are viewed. The crucial questions of transmission of knowledge and interaction between Arabic-Islamic and European Christian cartographic traditions are addressed throughout the volume, both through detailed case studies and through synthetic overviews. Some chapters focus critically on particular instances where transference of knowledge has been claimed. Elly Dekker examines the case of a pair of celestial hemispheres found in a fourteenth-century compendium of Hebrew astrological and astronomical treatises written in Spain. She argues that these hemispheres must ultimately derive from a fourth-/tenth-century Arabic globe using iconography derived from the work of the Persian astronomer al-Ṣūfī (292–376/ 903–86), and that this globe was copied as a pair of hemispheres by Jewish scholars in Spain. On the other hand, while not doubting the enormous influence of Arabic astronomy on the Latin West, she finds little evidence to support the notion that this pair of hemispheres had any influence on Latin map or globe making, and questions the thesis that an Arabic “missing link” is needed to explain the appearance of pairs of celestial hemispheres in Europe in the fifteenth century. Chapter One considers another aspect of astronomical tradition, the theory of the division of the earth into seven climes. Here too there is clear evidence for the influence of Arabic texts describing the climes on Latin tradition, in which it is possible to see adaptations and elaborations of the system in the later Middle Ages. This chapter goes on to consider another act of undisputed transmission: the only known instance of the wholesale translation of a world map from Arabic to Latin. Even in this case, though, the nature of the transmission is problematic. The map that was translated was originally part of a now lost Arabic treatise on the elements whose twelfth-century Latin translation is entitled De causis proprietatum elementorum; although the Latin text survives in over 100 manuscripts, just two of these contain the map, which was clearly poorly understood and seems to have had relatively little impact, unlike the content of the treatise, which entered into mainstream debates about the relationship between the four elements. Two chapters consider in more depth the impact of Arabic-Islamic sources on Latin mappae mundi. Stefan Schröder examines the often-cited case of the influence of al-Idrīsī’s world map on the world map of Vesconte-Sanudo in the Liber secretorum fidelium crucis. His careful study confirms that, indeed, the Latin map must have used an Arabic source, since the presence of toponyms

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clearly derived from Arabic can have no other plausible explanation. By the same token, Schröder shows the relatively limited use of this source, confined to a handful of toponyms and the representation of the Mountains of the Moon in southern Africa, and the Caspian Sea. Its deployment by VesconteSanudo needs to be understood in the context of Sanudo’s crusading project, in which elements derived from the Arabic-Islamic tradition were included not because of their greater accuracy, but because they helped to draw attention to areas of strategic and cultural interest to Sanudo and his audience. In a similar vein, Emmanuelle Vagnon investigates the question of the influence of Islamic texts and images on the Catalan Atlas. The production of the atlas by a Jewish cartographer on the island of Majorca for the French king lends itself to the supposition of cultural transfer. Vagnon affirms that the sources of the atlas can in many instances be considered “pluricultural”. Here the emphasis is on the shared nature of certain traditions, and the circulation of information across cultural, religious and linguistic borders, particularly in mercantile and maritime centres. While arguments can be made for the transmission of particular elements of text and iconography on the map from the Arabic-Islamic world, the ultimate sources of such elements cannot always be determined and may not be exclusive to any single Mediterranean culture. This case study offers, then, another way of thinking about cultural contact and interaction that may be more flexible than debates about influence and borrowing. The two remaining chapters in the volume consider the two texts that, more than any other, are at the heart of the question of interaction between Arabic-Islamic and European Christian geographical thought: Ptolemy’s Geography and al-Idrīsī’s Nuzhat al-mushtāq. Jean-Charles Ducène provides a lucid account of the transmission of the Geographia to the Arabic-Islamic world. This is an important question for several reasons. In the first place, the translation and adaptation of the Geographia into Arabic was itself a significant act of inter-cultural transmission, with lasting consequences on Arabic-Islamic geography. Secondly, it elucidates one of the key differences between medieval Arabic and Latin geography: the tangible presence of Ptolemy’s Geography in one, against its presence only in a very diffused form in the other. Thirdly, the tendency to assume a Ptolemaic foundation for the Arabic-Islamic mathematical tradition makes it all the more crucial to establish what exactly authors of Arabic maps and other geographical texts meant when they referred to “Btolomayus” as one of their authorities. One such author was al-Idrīsī; no book on cultural interaction between the Arabic-Islamic world and Latin Christendom in the field of geography would be complete without consideration of his Nuzhat al-mushtāq. After taking stock of recent research and argument about the history of al-Idrīsī himself and his role at the Norman court in Palermo,

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Chapter Four examines the Nuzhat al-mushtāq from the point of view of its sources and its attitude to Christian and Muslim realms on either side of the Mediterranean. The chapter makes the argument that the Nuzhat al-mushtāq should be considered primarily an expression of Arabic-Islamic geography, rather than itself a point of meeting between Latin and Arabic traditions, and that it may have been intended to serve the interests of Roger II of Sicily more than has commonly been allowed. Two overriding objectives direct the essays in this volume. The first is to encourage scholars who specialise in Latin and other Christian European maps to look carefully at, and learn more about, Arabic-Islamic maps – and viceversa. The second is to introduce to a wider audience the question of the interrelation and divergence of medieval Christian European and Arabic-Islamic maps. So far, maps and the representation of space have rarely been part of the ongoing conversations, alluded to at the beginning of this introduction, about interaction between the Arabic-Islamic world and the Latin West during the Middle Ages. It is hoped that this volume will enable spatial representation to enter the discussion. At the very least, it seems certain that we have much to learn from an approach that brings together apparently separate cartographic traditions – their contexts, their functions, their visual and verbal languages, their makers and users – to think about what their shared features, their similarities and differences, reveal.

CHAPTER 1

The Transmission of Theoretical Geography: Maps of the Climata and the Reception of De causis Proprietatum Elementorum Alfred Hiatt Throughout Christian Europe and the Arabic-Islamic world, medieval scholars inherited the notion of a spherical earth, divided into two hemispheres. The known world therefore constituted only a part, roughly a quarter, of the globe. Inevitably, this image of the world, which was ultimately a product of classical Greek mathematics, raised questions. What lay beyond the known world? And as for the known world, how was it structured and according to what principles should it be represented? Latin and Arabic traditions offered distinctive responses to these questions, partly as a result of the different sources they inherited from classical Greece and Rome. Yet theoretical geography was one area in which, from the twelfth century onwards, Arabic texts undoubtedly influenced Latin writing. The theory of the latitudinal division of the known world into climes (climata) was far from unknown in Christian Europe, but it gained greater currency there through its dissemination in the works of Petrus Alfonsi, and through the translation of Arabic astronomical texts into Latin. Similarly, debates about the relationship between the elements of earth and water, with obvious implications for geographical thought, arose from the translation of Aristotelian and pseudo-Aristotelian texts in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. One such text was an obscure ninth-century treatise, translated into Latin as De causis proprietatum elementorum (On the causes of the properties of the elements), which subsequently enjoyed great popularity, surviving in over 100 manuscripts. The treatise contained a map which, extant in just two of the many De causis manuscripts, constitutes the only known example of a medieval map wholly or largely translated from Arabic into Latin. An investigation of the nature and extent of these interactions in the field of theoretical geography reveals the possibilities, but also some of the limitations, that characterise the movement of spatial representation between the ArabicIslamic world and the Latin West during the later Middle Ages.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004446038_003

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Maps of the Climata

The Latin West inherited two ostensibly contradictory approaches to the representation of the world sphere and the extent and subdivisions of the known world. Classical zonal theory, on the one hand, maintained that the spherical world was divided into five zones: two zones of intense cold at the far north and south of the world; a central zone of intense heat – including an equatorial ocean which perpetually burned up and regenerated; and two temperate zones, one in each hemisphere. This theory, which derives from ancient Greek mathematical cosmology, was embedded in standard classical Latin texts such as Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis (Dream of Scipio), Virgil’s Georgics, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Lucan’s Bellum civile (Civil War). It was most clearly distilled in two works of late antiquity, Macrobius’ Commentarii in somnium Scipionis (Commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio), and Martianus Capella’s encyclopedic work, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury).1 These fifth-century texts also explained that, in addition to the equatorial sea, a band of ocean ran from pole to pole, with the result that the earth was divided into four segments. One of those segments constituted the known world of Europe, Asia and Africa; the other three – one on the underside of the northern hemisphere, and two more in the southern – were unknown, and unknowable, to those in the known or inhabited world (oikoumenē) due to the barriers formed by the expanse of ocean, the intense heat of the “torrid” zone, and the intense cold of the “frigid” zones. Macrobius gave instructions for a diagram to illustrate zonal theory, and called for an image to demonstrate the relationship between sea and land in the known world, and the relationship of the oikoumenē to the antipodes; well over one hundred copies of his map survive, dating from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries (Fig. 1.1).2 On the other hand, the Latin West also inherited the classical theory of the climata. The precise extent and even number of the climes differed from commentator to commentator, but the core principle was that each clime was a band of territory running latitudinally across the earth’s surface, from the far east to the far west. It is clear that the climata were the products of ancient Greek astronomical observation.3 Their calculation depended on the ability 1 Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, ed. and trans. M. Armisen-Marchetti, 2 vols (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2001–3), 2.5–9; Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, ed. James Willis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1983), 6.602–8. 2 Commentarii, 2.9; see Alfred Hiatt, “The Map of Macrobius before 1100,” Imago Mundi 59 (2007): 149–76. 3 There is debate about whether the invention of the climata as a scheme should be attributed to Eratosthenes or Hipparchus. See Didier Marcotte, “La climatologie d’Ératosthène

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fig. 1.1 World map illustrating Macrobius, Commentarii in somnium Scipionis. German, c. 1000. North at top, division of sphere into five zones. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS D’Orville 77, fol. 100r.

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to compare the position of the sun at the same time in different locations, and the climes were frequently distinguished from each other by the degree of elevation of the pole star, as well as the length of the longest day in each clime, or part thereof. Most cosmographers identified seven climata (in accordance with the number of planets), though some added more, and the climes were often identified by means of a significant city within their boundaries.4 Similarly, the starting point for the climata (above, on, or to the south of the equator), and their extent to the north were matters for divergence. In addition to their presence (in a more or less digested form) in Strabo and Ptolemy,5 it is explicitly as Greek science that the climata are presented in the sixth book of Pliny the Elder’s first-century CE Naturalis historia (Natural History). Pliny explains that by dividing the earth into “segments” that run latitudinally from east to west, one can perceive association and natural connection between peoples and cities based on their shared experience of the stars, of the length of days and nights, and of the “curve of the earth” (convexitas mundi).6 Significantly, Pliny supplements the division into seven climata which he says was “worked out by the ancients” with further segments worked out by “the most scrupulous of their followers”: three in the north, and two additional circles in the south.7 As a result, this overview of the known world ultimately extends from Meroe in the south to Thule in the north-west, and includes Dacia, the northern Gallic provinces, Britain and the “Hyperboreans” in the extreme north. In addition to Pliny, the medieval West received the account of the climata in Book Eight of Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis. There Martianus identified eight climata, respectively of Meroe, Syene, Alexandria, Rhodes, Rome, a sixth that extended through the Hellespont, Thrace and the border of Germania and Gaul, a seventh – Diaborysthenus – that passed à ­Poséidonios: genèse d’une science humaine,” in Sciences exactes et sciences appliquées à Alexandrie (IIIe siècle av. J.-C.-Ier siècle ap. J.-C.), ed. Gilbert Argoud and Jean-Yves Guillaumin (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne, 1998), 263–77; D. Shcheglov, “Eratosthenes’ Parallel of Rhodes and the History of the System of Climata,” Klio 88 (2006): 351–59. 4 The fundamental study of the climata remains Ernst Honigmann, Die sieben Klimata und die poleis episēmoi: eine Untersuchung zur Geschichte der Geographie und Astrologie im Altertum und Mittelalter (Heidelberg: Winter, 1929). See too O. Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 3 vols (Berlin: Springer, 1975), vol. 1, 332–38; vol. 2, 725–36. 5 Strabo, Geography, ed. and trans. H.L. Jones, 8 vols (London: Heinemann, 1917–1933), II.5.34– 5; IX.1.2. Ptolemy’s Almagest, trans. G.J. Toomer (London: Duckworth, 1984), II.12–13; Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, ed. and trans. F.E. Robbins (London: Heinemann, 1940), II.2–3. 6 Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historiae libri XXXVII, ed. C. Mayhoff, 6 vols (Leipzig: Teubner, 1892– 1909), vol. 1, 517–18 (6.211). 7 Pliny, Naturalis historia, vol. 1, 521–22 (6.219–20): “sequentium diligentissimi”.

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through the Black Sea towards Germania and Britain, and the last beyond the Palus Maeotis and within the Rhipaean mountains.8 Martianus did not note any contradictions between the scheme of the climata outlined in Book Eight, dedicated to astronomy, and the zonal theory he espoused in Book Six (geometry), and it was apparently not until the twelfth century that the incompatibility of the two systems became problematic. By that stage zonal theory had emerged in the West as the standard mode of representing the entire sphere, largely compatible with the division of the known world into the three parts of Asia, Europe and Africa. Yet the idea of the climata was far from lost. Cassiodorus mentioned the concept in his Institutiones,9 Isidore of Seville subsequently identified seven “climata caeli” in his Etymologiae,10 and Bede gave the climata extensive and notably cogent treatment in his scientific works, De natura rerum and De temporum ratione, where he responded to Pliny’s scheme.11 In addition to Pliny, the works of Martianus (particularly Book Eight) attracted the attention of Carolingian scholars, and were copied widely in subsequent centuries.12 1.1 The Seven Climes in the Arabic-Islamic Tradition In Arabic texts the division of the inhabited earth into the seven climata (aqālīm), rather than the five zones, was the norm. Depending on the commentator, the climes began either around 12 degrees north, at the equator, or 8

De nuptiis, 8.876–77. The Palus Maeotis corresponds to the modern Sea of Azov; the ­Rhipaean mountains were a conjectured range, usually located in the far north. 9 Cassiodorus, Institutiones, ed. R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937), 156 (2.7.3). 10 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae III, ed. G. Gasparotto, trans. J.-Y. Guillaumin (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2009), 105 (3.41.4). 11 Bede, De natura rerum, in Opera 6.1, ed. Charles W. Jones (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975), 229–31 (ch. 47); De temporum ratione, in Opera 6.2, ed. Jones (Turnhout: Brepols, 1977), 381–86 (ch. 33); Patrick Gautier Dalché, “Connaissance et usages géographiques des coordonnées dans le Moyen Âge latin (du Vénérable Bède à Roger Bacon),” in Science antique, science médiévale (Autour d’Avranches 235), ed. L. Callebat and O. Desbordes (Hildesheim: Olms, 2000), 401–36; reprinted in Gautier Dalché, L’Espace géographique au Moyen Âge (­Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2013), 257–92: 259–60. 12 See Cora E. Lutz, “Martianus Capella,” in Catalogus translationum et commentariorum. Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries: Annotated Lists and Guides, vol. 2, ed. P.O. Kristeller (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1971), 367–81; Charles G. Nauert, “C. Plinius Secundus (Naturalis historia),” in Catalogus translationum et commentariorum, vol. 4, ed. F. Edward Cranz (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1980), 297–422, esp. 302–4; Michael D. Reeve, “The Editing of Pliny’s Natural History,” Revue d’histoire des textes, n.s. 2 (2007): 107–79; Natalia Lozovsky, “The Earth is Our Book”: Geographical Knowledge in the Latin West ca. 400–1000 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 113–38 (on the reception of Book Six of De nuptiis).

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up to 24 degrees south of the equator, and could extend to a latitude of, variously, 48, 50, 63 and 66 degrees north.13 This system of the climes was derived only in part from Greek texts such as Ptolemy’s Almagest and his Tetrabiblos, which emphasised the connection between climate and human characteristics, drawing sharp distinctions between south and north, east and west, and assigning particular regions to each star sign. It also reveals the influence of Persian and possibly Indian sources.14 In his Kitāb al-tafhīm li-awāʾil ṣināʿat al-tanjīm (Book of Instruction on the Principles of the Art of Astrology) al-Bīrūnī (d. c. 440/1048) described the seven climes in detail, recording major cities and peoples in each, but he also noted contradictory statements about the latitudes of the climes, and different models for dividing the earth – including those of the Greeks, Persians, and Hindus, as well as Noah’s division of the world between his three sons.15 Unlike the theory of zonal division, the organisation of space into climes allowed the possibility of human habitation at the equator and even beyond. In the Almagest, Ptolemy had noted that regions beneath the equator could be inhabited, and might be temperate, but at the same time admitted ignorance of their nature.16 Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna, d. 428/1037) noted the excellent quality of the climate in equatorial regions.17 However, most commentators drew attention to the deserts and generally harsh conditions of the far south, matched by the freezing qualities of the far north. Each clime was associated with particular places and peoples and, in astronomical geography, with the influence of certain planets. According to Abū Maʿshar, for example, Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius exerted their influence in 13

Gerald R. Tibbetts, “The Beginnings of a Cartographic Tradition,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 2, book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, ed. J. Brian Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 90–107: 102–4; A. Miquel, “iḳlīm,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed, ed. H.A.R. Gibb et al. ­(Leiden: Brill, 1971), vol. 3, 1076–78; Honigmann, Die sieben Klimata, 112–83. 14 Ahmet T. Karamustafa, “Introduction to Islamic Maps,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 2, book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, ed. J. Brian ­Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 3–11, esp. 7–8, and more generally Honigmann, Die sieben Klimata. 15 Kitāb al-tafhīm li-awāʾil ṣināʿat al-tanjīm (Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Art of Astrology), trans. R. Ramsay Wright (London: Luzac, 1934), 236–41. See Godefroid de Callataÿ, “Kishwār-s, planètes et rois du monde: Le substrat iranien de la géographie arabe, à travers l’exemple des Ikhwān al-Ṣafā,” in Perspectives on Islamic Culture, ed. B. ­Broeckaert, S. Van den Branden, and J-J. Pérennès (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 53–71. 16 Ptolemy, Almagest, 2.6 (p. 83). 17 Liber canonis Avicenne (Venice, 1507), fol. 2v; A Treatise on The Canon of Medicine of Avicenna Incorporating a Translation of the First Book, trans. O. Cameron Gruner (London: Luzac, 1930), Book 1, thesis 3, no. 34 (p. 61).

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eastern regions; Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn in the south; Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius in the west; while Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces governed the north.18 The influential Compendium of Astronomy (Kitāb Jawāmīʿ ʿilm al-nujūm) of al-Farghānī, a scholar active during the caliphate of al-Maʾmūn (198–218/813– 833), provided a list of regions, cities, and topographical features on each clime, prior to his discussion of the stars.19 In the fourth Epistle of the Neoplatonist group known as the “Brethren of Purity”, the climes acquire particular political and moral significance. The Brethren’s epistle “On Geography”, which probably dates from the fourth/tenth century, drew on Greek science as mediated by al-Farghānī as well as the third/ninth-century translator of Ptolemy, al-Khwārazmī, but it also shows Persian influences.20 The latter may in part explain the Brethren’s assertion of the superiority of the fourth clime as “the clime of the prophets and wise men”, where the inhabitants are especially moderate and moral, in contrast to the savagery and ugliness found especially in the first, second, sixth and seventh climes.21 At the same time as exalting the central clime, the Brethren acknowledge the arbitrary nature of the climatic divisions – “imaginary lines drawn by the ancient kings who traversed the inhabited quarter of the Earth” – emphasising, in accordance with Neoplatonic philosophy, the mutability of the earthly realm, its subordination to the celestial, and the cyclical nature of political power.22 Geographers associated with the “Balkhī” school of mapmaking such as al-Iṣṭakhrī, Ibn Ḥawqal, and al-Muqaddasī mention the climes, but tend to downplay or subordinate them to the emphasis of their works on regional geography, going so far as to use the term al-iqlīm to mean a region or province.23 Slightly later works, such as the fifth-/eleventh-century Fatimid Book of Curiosities and al-Idrīsī’s sixth-/twelfth-century Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq 18

Abū Maʿshar, The Abbreviation of the Introduction to Astrology: Together with the Medieval Latin Translation of Adelard of Bath, ed. and trans. Charles Burnett, Keiji Yamamoto, and Michio Yano (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 102. 19 Alfraganus/al-Farghānī, Elementa Astronomica, ed. and trans. J. Golius (Amsterdam, 1669), 35–39. See Honigmann, Die sieben Klimata, 134–55. 20 Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, On Geography, ed. and trans. Ignacio Sánchez and James Montgomery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 30–42. 21 On Geography, 69–70. 22 On Geography, 57–58; 75–78. I have discussed in more depth the question of the geographical determinism implicit (and often explicit) in the scheme of the seven climes in “Geographical Determinism? The Seven Climes in Medieval Arabic and Latin Traditions,” in Spreading Knowledge in a Changing World, ed. Charles Burnett and Pedro Mantas-España (Córdoba: Córdoba University Press, 2019), 271–95. 23 Honigmann, Die sieben Klimata, 178–83; Miquel, “iḳlīm,” 1076–78; Zayde Antrim, Routes and Realms: The Power of Place in the Early Islamic World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 89–94.

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al-āfāq are more respectful. Al-Idrīsī’s world map in the Nuzhat al-mushtāq (see Fig. 4.1) contains clear demarcation of the seven climes; and a small map of the climes appears in his less famous work, the Uns al-muhaj wa-rawḍ alfuraj (“Gardens of pleasure and recreation of the souls”).24 The Book of Curiosities identifies the seven climes from “Diyāmāris” in the south (notable for naked people and monstrous animals) through the less frightful Diyāstānis, cultured Alexandria, the optimal fourth clime of Rhodes, the distinctly sub-optimal clime of Biqulus Bunṭūs (Propontis), whose reddish-blond inhabitants were lecherous, rough and less learned than those of the previous clime, then Māsū-būnṭūs (Gr. Mesos Pontos) with a description of Amazons that may derive from Hippocrates, and finally Bāristhānīs (Borysthenes), inhabited by nomads.25 One source for the Book of Curiosities’ description of the climes appears to be the Kitāb al-‘unwān of the fourth-/tenth-century Christian-Arab historian Agapius (Mahboub) of Manbij, who in turn claims to be drawing on Ptolemy. Agapius not only lists the climes in terms similar to those found in the Book of Curiosities (the praise of the fourth clime also echoes the geographic epistle of the “Brethren of Purity”), but mentions maps and diagrams (al-ṣūra wa-al-shakl) which illustrate the system of the seven climes, and which he himself has drawn.26 These remarks, along with provision for a diagram in the epistle of the “Brethren”, indicate the circulation of maps of the climes within the Islamic world from at least the fourth/tenth century, although no copies are extant from before the sixth/twelfth century.27 24 25 26 27

Partially edited in Jean-Charles Ducène, L’Afrique dans le Uns al-muhağ wa-rawḍ al-furağ d’al-Idrīsī (Leuven: Peeters, 2010). An Eleventh-Century Egyptian Guide to the Universe: The Book of Curiosities, ed. and trans. Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 168–75/431–35. Agapius (Mahboub) of Manbij, Kitab al-ʿUnvan: Histoire universelle, ed. and trans. Alexandre Vasiliev, 4 vols (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1947–74), vol. 1, 604–17. Compare the late fourth-fifth/tenth-eleventh-century description of the climes by the Andalusian author al-Munajjim or al-Zayyāt: El “Ḍikr al-aqālīm” de Isḥāq ibn al-Ḥasan al-Zayyāt, ed. Francisco Castelló (Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona, 1989), which seems likely to have been accompanied by a map. The map of the Nile by al-Khwārazmī (as preserved in the copy dated 1037 in Strasbourg, Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire, MS 4247, fols 30v-31r) features lines marking the equator and the first, second and third climes, while al-Khwārazmī’s follower Suhrāb (early tenth century) included the climata in his sketch of a world map (London, British Library, MS Additional 23379, fol. 4v). For examples of twelfth-century Arabic maps of the climes see Gerald R. Tibbetts, “Later Cartographic Developments,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 2, book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, ed. J. Brian Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 137–55: 146–48. More work is needed on the construction and circulation of maps of the climes in the twelfth century. See for example the maps that accompany an anonymous Andalusian treatise, copied in 1192, now El Escorial, Biblioteca de San Lorenzo, MS árabe 1636, fols 100v-117v; for the text of

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1.2 The Climata in the Latin West 1100–1500 The concept of the climata gained renewed traction in the Latin West in the twelfth century. Already from the late tenth century, tables of the climes derived from Arab sources had appeared within the Latin literature designed to facilitate the use of astrolabe. Although generally utilitarian in purpose, such tables were susceptible to a fuller and more overtly geographic development.28 It was in the twelfth century, though, that discussion of the climes took on new dimensions. Perhaps the most significant twelfth-century treatment of the climata occurred in what is ostensibly an unlikely text, the Dialogus contra Judaeos of Petrus Alfonsi. Petrus, still a rather shadowy figure, was a Jew who converted to Christianity, being baptized in 1106 in the capital of Aragon, Huesca.29 Petrus’ dialogue is between two selves: the convert Petrus, and the Jew Moses – the name of Petrus prior to conversion. In what was to become a relatively popular genre, Petrus devotes himself to exposing the errors of Judaism and, in a brief chapter, those of Islam. An important aspect of Petrus’ proofs is the argument that Christianity is the only rational faith: science (ratio) is on its side, and decisively against other religious beliefs. It is in this context that the climata appear, relatively early in Book One of the Dialogus. In this section of the work, Petrus is particularly concerned to dispute any possibility of God’s corporeality; he targets the views of certain Jewish “sages” (that is, elements of the Haggadah), such as the view he reports that God “exists only in the west”. The shape of the world (figura mundi) reveals the fallacy of such a notion, Petrus proclaims.30 Then, in response to Moses’ plea to say more about the relationship between east and west, Petrus launches into a lengthy digression on the passage of the sun above the earth’s surface, and the consequently different experience of time in different places. A key element of the scheme he outlines is the city of Aren, located at the centre of the earth, where the

28 29 30

the treatise see Leonor Martínez Martín, “Teorías sobre las mareas,” Memorias de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 13 (1971): 135–212. See the Liber de astrolabio, in Gerberti Opera mathematica, ed. Nicolaus Bubnov (Berlin: Friedländer, 1899), 138–46. John Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi and His Medieval Readers (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993); Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann and Philipp Roelli, eds, Petrus Alfonsi and his Dialogus: Background, Context, Reception (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014). Pedro Alfonso de Huesca, Diálogo contra los judíos, ed. Klaus-Peter Mieth, trans. Esperanza Ducay (Huesca: Instituto de Estudios Altoaragoneses, 1996), 15–16. See the discussion in Stefan Schröder, “Die Klimazonenkarte des Petrus Alfonsi. Rezeption und Transformation islamisch-arabischen Wissens im mittelalterlichen Europa,” in Raumkonzepte: Disziplinäre Zugänge, ed. Ingrid Baumgärtner, Paul-Gerhard Klumbies, Franziska Sick (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2009), 257–77.

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equator intersects with a hypothetical line drawn between the poles.31 Moses requests a geometrical figure to illustrate Petrus’ theory, which he intimates is in conflict with the zonal theory with which he is familiar. Petrus agrees to adduce a diagram of the climata – perhaps the first to be drawn in the Latin West – to demonstrate the position of Aren but more importantly to show the extent of the climata: We show visually Aren situated in the mid-point of the earth, and a straight line from the beginning of Aries to the beginning of Libra proceeding above it; the air there is so temperate that the seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter are always one and the same. There aromatic foodstuffs grow that are beautifully coloured and sweet tasting. Human bodies there are neither lean nor too fat, but seemly and distinguished by moderate levels of moistness. The temperate nature of the climate also makes human bodies harmonious and so too their hearts, because they excel in incalculable wisdom and natural justice. How then can anyone presume to say of this place, above which the sun passes directly, that it is uninhabitable? Rather, the entire space of the habitable earth extends from this place to the northern sphere. The ancients divided this space into seven parts, which they called the seven climata, according to the number of the planets. The first clime commences on the central line, where the city of Aren was built, and the seventh represents the furthest point of the northern world, while the remaining climata occupy the space in between.32 31

32

Diálogo, 17. The function of “Aren” in Arabic astronomical and subsequently Latin geographical texts was essentially theoretical, although it was believed to be a real place. The name is a distortion of the “Ujjain”, the Indian city located 23.17 degrees north of the equator which was an ancient centre of astronomical calculation. On the significance of Petrus’ use of “Aren” see Schröder, “Die Klimazonenkarte des Petrus Alfonsi”, 265–68. Diálogo, 21: “Visu enim probamus Aren in medio terrae sitam, et initium arietis et librae super eam recta progredi linea, aeremque ibi temperatissimum esse, adeo, ut veris, aestatis, autumni et hiemis semper ibi fere tempus sit aequale. Ibi aromatizae species pulchri coloris et melliflui nascuntur saporis. Corpora quoque hominum non macilenta ibi sunt nimis aut pinguia, sed mediocris succi discretione decora. Temporum quoque temperies hominum corpora sibi consona reddit et pectora, quia ineffabili pollent sapientia et naturali iusticia. Quomodo igitur quisquam dicere presumat locum, super quem sol recta preterit linea, inhabitabilem esse? Potius totum terrae habitabile spatium existit continuum a predicto loco usque ad septemtrionalem globum, quod antiqui in septem diviserunt partes, quas septem clymata vocaverunt, secundum numerum septem planetarum. Primum exhibet media linea, ubi Aren civitas est condita, septimum autem septemtrionalis orbis tenet extremum, reliquia vero medium continent spacium”. My translation. I have followed Burnett’s suggested emendation of “materiali iustitia” to “naturali

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A second, in some ways more unusual, diagram follows, showing the passage of the sun around the earth, in response to a question from Moses about why land to the south of Aren is uninhabitable, unlike the land to its north. Petrus asserts that the centre of the solar circle does not correspond to the centre of the earth, with the result that the sun is much closer to the earth in the southern hemisphere than it is in the northern, rendering the land south of Aren sterile and so uninhabitable.33 The purpose of the diagram is to show this asymmetry between the sun’s circuit and the earth, and the greater proximity of the sun to the southern hemisphere. Both diagrams became a standard feature of Petrus’ Dialogus, being reproduced in many of the 76 manuscripts that contain either the entire Dialogus or a considerable portion.34 The climata diagram existed in two basic forms. One, probably the earlier form, simply marked the seven climata, and noted the uninhabitable nature of the regions to the south of Aren “pre nimio calore”, and in the far north “pre frigore”; the other is notable for its prominent representation of Aren at the centre of the earth, accompanied by towers on either side to show nearby cities on the same latitude (Fig. 1.2).35 The diagrams were copied with varying degrees of care, but on occasion were improved: to the climata diagram, one fifteenth-century scribe added winds, zodiacal signs, and a careful rendering of the different centre of the sun’s orbit.36

33

34 35

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­iustitia”: Charles Burnett, “Petrus Alfonsi and Adelard of Bath revisited,” in Petrus Alfonsi and his Dialogus, 77–91: 86 34n. Diálogo, 22–23. This theory was far from new and a tradition of visual representation already existed as part of the transmission of Calcidius’ Commentary on the Timaeus. See Timaeus a Calcidio translatus commentarioque instructus, ed. J.H. Waszink (London and Leiden: Warburg Institute/Brill, 1962), 78–82 (pp. 125–34); cf. Geminos, Introduction aux phénomènes, ed. and trans. Germaine Aujac (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1975), 1.31–41 (pp. 7–9); Martianus Capella, De nuptiis, 8.849. William of Conches includes a diagram with the same purpose in his Dragmaticon: Dragmaticon Philosophiae, ed. I. Ronca (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 4.14.4–6, identified by Barbara Obrist as deriving from the Calcidian tradition: “Guillaume de Conches: Cosmologie, physique du ciel et astronomie. Textes et images,” in Guillaume de Conches: Philosophie et science au XIIe siècle, ed. Barbara Obrist and Irene Caiazzo (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2011), 123–96: 181–85. On manuscripts of the Dialogus see Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann, Darko Senekovic, and Thomas Ziegler, “Modes of Variability: The Textual Transmission of Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogus,” in Petrus Alfonsi and his Dialogus, 227–48; Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi, 98–103; 182–98. See the discussion in Schröder, “Die Klimazonenkarte des Petrus Alfonsi,” 268–70; Stefan Schröder, “Zur Hybridisierung mittelalterlicher Karten. Arabische, syrische, und lateinische Illustrationen der sieben Klimazonen in Vergleich,” in Integration und Desintegration der Kulturen im europäischen Mittelalter, ed. Michael Borgolte et al. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2011), 474–88: 481. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 191, fol. 38v. Reproduced and discussed in Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi, 104–7.

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fig. 1.2 Petrus Alfonsi, diagrams in a twelfth-century manuscript of Dialogus contra Judaeos showing the climata and the theory of solar eccentricity. South at top in both diagrams. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 10624, fol. 73r.

Petrus can certainly be understood as an important intermediary of scientific knowledge from the Arabic-Islamic world to the Latin West, but he may also represent trends within Jewish scholarship. Petrus’ discussion of latitude and the division of the earth at the opening of the Dialogus bears comparison to his contemporary Abraham bar Ḥiyya’s Sefer Ṣurat ha-ʿAreṣ (Book of The Shape of the Earth).37 This cosmography was also illustrated with diagrams, one of which – a drawing of two spheres with different centres to illustrate the relation between the earth and the movement of the stars – resembles the second diagram in the Dialogus. In an earlier work, the Sefer ha-ʿIbbur (Book on Intercalation), Abraham had located the beginning of habitable land at 16 degrees south; in the Sefer Ṣurat ha-ʿAreṣ, however, he maintained that the first clime begins at the equator, while the seventh extends to 66 degrees North, beyond which human habitation ceases.38 The ultimate source of 37 38

See Charles Burnett, “The Works of Petrus Alfonsi: Questions of Authenticity,” Medium Aevum 66 (1997): 42–79, at 62 Resianne Fontaine, “Between scorching heat and freezing cold: medieval Jewish authors on the inhabited and uninhabited parts of the earth,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 10 (2000): 101–37, at 109–12.

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Abraham’s geography seems to be Ptolemy’s Almagest, perhaps via the intermediary of al-Farghānī,39 but aspects of his description of the climata reveal the ­intersection of cultures. The fifth clime extends through the lands of Gog and Magog (recognised by Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions), Khurāsān, Rome, Spain, France, and the lands of “Edom” (that is, the lands of Christians in the west).40 The Sefer Ṣurat ha-ʿAreṣ (the title corresponds to the Arabic “Ṣurat al-arḍ”) was translated into Latin in the Middle Ages, and in its Hebrew form seems to have circulated reasonably widely within Jewish circles in medieval Europe.41 Petrus Alfonsi left Spain for England after his conversion. Details of the length, location, and occupation of his English sojourn remain largely conjectural, but it certainly assisted the transmission of the Dialogus in southern England, and it is also likely to have promoted the theory of the climatic (rather than zonal) division of the earth.42 References to the climata appear in Adelard of Bath’s De opere astrolapsus, where the first clime is hailed as the “home of philosophers” (domus philosophica) and the location of the earthly paradise.43 The direct influence of Petrus on Adelard now seems less certain than it once did (Adelard describes 90 climes),44 but there can be little doubt that by the second quarter of the twelfth century a learned milieu in southwestern England was using scientific material derived from the Arabic-Islamic world to supplement their classical and late antique inheritance. The state of knowledge at this time is nicely exemplified by a manuscript copied at Worcester Cathedral Priory between 1120 and 1140.45 This manuscript includes such state-of-the-art texts as the Sententia de dracone, a record of the astronomical teaching of Petrus Alfonsi made by Walcher of Malvern, an associate and perhaps a pupil of Petrus, as well as Adelard’s translation of the astronomical tables of al-Khwārazmī. But the manuscript also contains the astronomical section of Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis, and Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis with Macrobius’ commentary, thereby ensuring the presence of classical zonal theory and Martianus’ account of the climata. 39

40 41 42 43 44 45

R. Abraham bar Ḥiyya ha-Bargeloní, La obra Forma de la tierra, trans. José M. Millás ­Vallicrosa (Madrid-Barcelona: Istituto Arias Montano, 1956), 14, where reliance on al-Farghānī is asserted; see though the discussion in Fontaine, “Between scorching heat,” 111–12. Forma de la tierra, 46–47. Vallicrosa’s remarks in Forma de la tierra, 18–22 offer only a starting point. The translation is contained in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Ott. lat. 2079. See Burnett, “Petrus Alfonsi and Adelard of Bath revisited,” 77–91. Burnett, “Petrus Alfonsi and Adelard of Bath revisited,” 86–87. Burnett, “Petrus Alfonsi and Adelard of Bath revisited,” 87–89. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. F.1.9.

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In Latin writings these seemingly contradictory theories invited a range of responses in the first half of the twelfth century. The more radical response, that of the translator Stephen of Antioch, was to follow Ptolemy in allowing habitation south of the equator, or like Raymond of Marseilles to insist that all land, including that at the equator and in the far north, must be habitable. Raymond, author of a treatise on the astrolabe, nevertheless acknowledged the broad validity of the zones, and in a similar way William of Conches’ glosses on Macrobius and Boethius endorsed his sources’ scheme of zonal division, while admitting the extent of habitable land in the torrid zone as far as Aren.46 William subsequently reverted to a conventionally Macrobian position on the zones in his Philosophia and Dragmaticon philosophiae.47 Petrus Alfonsi was not the only source of information about the climata available to readers of Latin, of course, and a number of different descriptions of their nature seem to have circulated. The long version of the Liber de orbe, a text attributed to Māshāʾallāh (d. after 193/809), and apparently translated into Latin in the first half of the twelfth century (the Arabic original does not survive), contains in one chapter a description of the climata, illustrated by a diagram (Fig.1.3). This version of the text was known to William of Conches, although he made no use of the diagram.48 The Liber de orbe has been connected with the anonymous twelfth-century De philosophia et eius secretis (also known as the Apex physicae), a treatise “de naturis rerum” probably of ­Norman origin, which concludes with a description of the climata.49 Here too 46

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Patrick Gautier Dalché, “Géographie arabe et géographie latine au XIIe siècle,” Medieval Encounters 19 (2013): 408–33, at 417–19 offers a neat summary, and quotation from Stephen of Antioch. Irene Caiazzo, ed., Lectures médiévales de Macrobe: Les Glosæ Colonienses super Macrobium (Paris: Vrin, 2002), 270 (2.8.2); William of Conches, Glosae super Boetium, ed. L. Nauta (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 120–21 (II pr. 7); Raymond de Marseille, Opera Omnia 1: Liber cursuum planetarum, ed. Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, Charles Burnett, and Emmanuel Poulle (Paris: CNRS, 2009), 170–86; Hermann of Carinthia noted habitable islands, including “Arin”, on the equatorial circle: De essentiis, ed. Charles Burnett (Leiden: Brill, 1982), 214–16. William of Conches, Philosophia, ed. and trans. Gregor Maurach (Pretoria: University of South Africa, 1980), 4.1.5–10; William of Conches, Dragmaticon, 3.7.8–10, 6.3.1–6. See Barbara Obrist, “William of Conches, Māshāʾallāh and twelfth-century Cosmology,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 76 (2009): 29–87, on the complexities of the transmission of the Liber de orbe, and on William’s use of Māshāʾallāh. The work was copied in Trier in the thirteenth century, where it was wrongly ascribed to Honorius Augustodunensis. It awaits a satisfactory edition, but see in the meantime Apex phisice anonymi, ed. Hans Lemke and Gregor Maurach, in Abhandlungen der Braunschweigischen Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft 45 (1994): 171–263 and 49 (1999): 7–80; MarieOdile Garrigues, “L’Apex Physicae, une encyclopédie du XIIe siècle,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome (Moyen Âge) 87 (1975): 303–37. On this text’s use of Māshāʾallāh’s Liber

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fig. 1.3 Diagram (right) illustrating the seven climes, from a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century copy of the Liber de Orbe attributed to Māshāʾallāh. South at top. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Conv. Soppr. J.I.32, fol. 15r.

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the fourth clime is hailed as the most temperate, “formerly renowned for generous, noble, and skilful men”, whose inhabitants remain of placid temperament, prodigious memory, and the greatest wisdom.50 Unusually, De philosophia et eius secretis states that the inhabitants of the sixth and seventh climes suffer sudden death if they move to the first or second climes, as happens in reverse to inhabitants of the first two climes when they move to the sixth or seventh, due to the change of air.51 The level of circulation of texts such as the long version of the Liber de orbe (in contrast to the short version, which became a canonical teaching text) and De philosophia et eius secretis is difficult to gauge, but it is at least clear that several texts containing maps and/or descriptions of the climes were available within learned circles in England, France and southern Italy by the mid twelfth century.52 In terms of quantity of copies, the most influential description of the climata came in John of Sacrobosco’s De sphera. John may have been English himself, but the work was certainly compiled at the University of Paris, probably before 1230, although its dating remains uncertain; its subsequent popularity and longevity means that it survives in hundreds of manuscripts and 159 printed editions.53 At the conclusion of the third chapter of De sphera, Sacrobosco describes the world divided by two imaginary lines, one at the equator and the other running pole to pole. These lines divide the world into four quarters, one of which is the known world – but it is not completely habitable, since the areas around the equator are uninhabitable due to excessive heat, and the regions around the Arctic are similarly uninhabitable due to extreme cold.54 Sacrobosco itemises the seven climata, noting the length of the longest

50 51 52

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de orbe, see Obrist, “William of Conches, Māshāʾallāh,” 50–56 and Obrist, “Guillaume de Conches: Cosmologie, physique du ciel et astronomie,” 195–96. De philosophia et eius secretis, 77 (5.31): “quondam magnanimis ac sublimibus peritisque viris clarebat”. De philosophia et eius secretis, 78 (5.34). There are three known Latin manuscripts of the longer version of the Liber de orbe: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 15015 (St-Victor, s. xii-xiii), fols 200r-223v; New York, Columbia University Library, MS Plimpton 161 (England, s. xiii in), fols 1r-30v; Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Conv. Soppr. J.I.32 (s. xiii-xiv), fols 1r-17v: see Obrist, “William of Conches, Māshāʾallāh,” for discussion of the manuscript tradition. De philosophia et eius secretis also is known to survive in full in three manuscripts: Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Barberini lat. 283, fols 45r-106v (England, 1160– 70); London, British Library, MS Harley 4348 (I) (Trier, s. xiii); Trier, Stadtbibliothek, MS 1097 (1324) (s. xvi). Olaf Pedersen, “In Quest of Sacrobosco,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 16 (1985): 175–221. Lynn Thorndike, The Sphere of Sacrobosco and Its Commentators (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), 110.

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fig. 1.4 John of Sacrobosco, De sphera. Climata diagram in a fourteenth-century manuscript indicating torrid and frigid regions to the south and north of the climes. North at top. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 7421, fol. 30r.

day at the southernmost, central, and northernmost points of each clime, as well as the elevation of the pole star above the horizon, from 16 degrees N at the centre of the first clime to 48.66 degrees N at the centre of the seventh.55 There are, he acknowledged, many islands and human habitations beyond the seventh clime, but not enough to constitute an eighth.56 A relatively simple diagram seems to have been intended to illustrate his scheme, in which the system of the climata is once again made compatible with zonal theory: the seven climata typically appear in Sacrobosco manuscripts with a frigid zone to their north and a torrid zone in the south (Fig. 1.4).57 More importantly, 55 Sphere of Sacrobosco, 111–12. 56 Sphere of Sacrobosco, 112. 57 Examples can be found, inter alia, in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 10273, fol. 56r; Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 17703, fol. 23v; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 7267, fol. 3v; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 7421, fol. 30r; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 7420A, fol. 99r; London, British Library, MS Harley 3647, fol. 31v. See Donatella Cantele, “Il sistema illustrativo del De sphaera di Johannes de Sacrobosco,” Rivista di storia della miniatura 13 (2009): 97–107. A verbal description of the climata in Icelandic from the fourteenth century (in Reykjavík,

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the level of influence from Islamic science is significantly less in Sacrobosco’s De sphera than can be found in authors such as Adelard of Bath or Sacrobosco’s contemporary, the polymath Robert Grosseteste, whose own De sphaera gave an account of the climata broadly consistent with Petrus’ Dialogus, similarly maintaining that the eccentricity of the solar circuit caused sub-equatorial regions to be uninhabitable due to the greater proximity of the sun.58 Sacrobosco makes no mention of Aren/Arin and uses the same names for the climata as Martianus Capella did (Diameroes; Dyacienes; Dyalexandrios; Dyarodu; Dyaromes; Dyaboristenes; Dyaripheos), apart from the omission of Martianus’ sixth clime (Diahellespontu). The figures Sacrobosco gives for the length of the longest day in each clime differ slightly from those of Martianus, however, and they may show the influence of al-Farghānī (Alfraganus), or reflect direct usage of Ptolemy’s Almagest.59 Overall, Sacrobosco’s incorporation of the ­climata seems best characterised as a revival of a scheme transmitted through Latin texts such as Martianus’ De nuptiis, aided by the availability of classical sources such as the Almagest received through translation from Arabic. Sacrobosco’s commentators supplemented his account of the climata in ways that reveal the interests of late medieval readers of De sphera. One of the earliest commentaries, ascribed to Michael Scot, observed that Jerusalem and Damascus lay within the fourth clime, “Diarhodos”, “whence the prophet David, ‘God has wrought salvation in the middle of the earth’, that is, in the middle of the habitable earth of the seven climes”.60 But if one direction of interpretation was exegetical, another was astronomical. Cecco d’Ascoli’s commentary linked the scheme of the climata more explicitly with the influence of planets, in a way very familiar from Islamic models: “Saturn has dominion in the first, Jupiter in the second, Mars in the third, the sun in the fourth, Venus in the fifth, Mercury in the sixth, the moon in the seventh. And peoples Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, GkS 1812 I 4to, fols. 19v-20r) draws on Martianus Capella, Bede, and Sacrobosco: Rudolf Simek, Altnordische Kosmographie: Studien und Quellen zu Weltbild und Weltbeschreibung in Norwegen und Island vom 12. bis zum 14. Jahrhundert (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990), 321, 502–4. 58 De sphaera, in Die philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, Bischofs von Lincoln, ed. Ludwig Baur (Münster: Aschendorff, 1912), 23–25. Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi, 103. Cecilia Panti, Moti, virtù, e motori celesti nella cosmologia di Roberto Grossatesta: Studio ed edizione dei trattati De sphera, De cometis, De motu supercelestium (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2001), 75, dates Grosseteste’s De sphera to c. 1215, and argues that it used Sacrobosco; the relationship between the two works De sphera remains a matter for debate. 59 Ptolemy’s Almagest, 2.12–13 (pp. 122–30). Alfraganus, Elementa Astronomica, 32–34. See Thorndike’s discussion in Sphere of Sacrobosco, 16–18. 60 Sphere of Sacrobosco, 337: “unde David propheta, ‘In medio terre operatus est deus salutem’ [Psalms 73.12], id est, in medio habitabilis terre septem climatum.”

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living in (each) clime follow the nature of the dominant planet”.61 In this and other ways the commentators brought Sacrobosco much more into the mainstream of thirteenth-century scientific debate, in which Aristotelian science set the agenda, with Arab authors such as Averroes (Ibn Rushd), Avicenna and Alfraganus readily assimilated into the corpus of available authorities. The subtle and learned commentary on Sacrobosco produced by the master Robertus Anglicus at Montpellier (or possibly Paris) in 1271 compares Sacrobosco’s account of the climata with Alfraganus, and notes that according to both “almost all of England” (fere tota Anglia) is beyond the seventh clime. This position cannot be on account of the unsuitability of the island for human habitation (Robertus at this point praises England at length, drawing attention to its fertility and wealth), but because it was not known at the time the climata were devised.62 This comment shows Robertus’ consciousness of the antiquity of the scheme of the climata, and the need to supplement it with new information. The malleability of the scheme emerges equally from a question that attracted considerable interest at this time: the location of the earthly paradise. In his commentary, Michael Scot had posited that paradise could well be located in the southern hemisphere, with the torrid zone the biblical “gladius flammans” placed by God between paradise and exiled humanity.63 Robertus Anglicus noted that paradise “is said” to be beneath the equator, but observed that this possibility contradicted not only zonal theory but also the authority of Alfraganus, Ptolemy, and “other astronomers”, who all located the beginning of the first clime above the equator (obviously this claim applies only to one of Ptolemy’s schema), and who maintain that habitation beneath it is impossible. Robertus confidently asserted the opposite, arguing that Arin itself (an Indian city, he thought) proved that the equator was habitable; moreover the existence of the greater part of Britain beyond the seventh clime showed that the same was possible beneath the first: “space beneath the equator is not only habitable, but outstandingly habitable”, he concluded.64 Beyond Sacrobosco and his commentators, the scheme of the climata seems to have raised as many questions as it answered. One glimpse into the debates that surrounded the divisions of the known world comes from a relatively elaborate climata map in a manuscript compiled around 1250 by John 61 Sphere of Sacrobosco, 404–5: “Nam Saturnus dominatur in primo, Iuppiter in secundo, Mars in tertio, sol in quarto, Venus in quinto, Mercurius in sexto, luna in septimo. Et ­gentes habitantes in climate sequuntur naturam planete dominantis.” 62 Sphere of Sacrobosco, 192. 63 Sphere of Sacrobosco, 321–22. 64 Sphere of Sacrobosco, 190: “locus sub equinoctiali est habitabilis et non solum habitabilis, immo optime habitabilis.”

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of Wallingford, confrere and collaborator with Matthew Paris at the Benedictine monastery of St Albans (Fig. 1.5). On this image John adapted the climata system derived from Arabic-Islamic texts. “Aren” is at the centre of the earth, but whereas Arabic descriptions generally placed Jerusalem in the third clime, here it appears in the fourth clime, at the centre of the northern hemisphere. John also supplied an extra, eighth clima, for “northern parts”, including Britain.65 In an inscription in the map’s southern hemisphere John discusses the relationship between earth and water, and describes an inferno or abyss in the equatorial region, which is the source of all waters on earth. In the same space, John reprised classical antipodal theory derived from Macrobius and Martianus Capella, noting the impossibility of reaching putative inhabitants of the southern hemisphere.66 As John’s remarks indicate, in spite of the clear position of Petrus Alfonsi on the subject, for many scholars the climata did not displace already existing models such as the system of zonal division: instead the diagram left by John is an attempt to reconcile these two different ways of describing the world and its inhabitants. John of Wallingford’s map reveals the active adaptation and even questioning of the scheme of the climata from a northern Christian viewpoint. Similar trends are evident in the works of two of his most famous contemporaries. In the first book of his De natura loci Albertus Magnus outlined some of the problems with the notion of the superiority of the fourth clime. A strong case could be made that the sixth clime was the most temperate, he thought, since its people were better looking, taller, and whiter than those of the fourth. Even if the fourth was the most temperate, Albertus emphasised that the conditions in each clime were not absolute, and must vary depending on local topography.67 Similar arguments appear in the Opus Maius of Roger Bacon, where the authority of Aristotle’s De caelo et mundo and Averroes supports the argument that the Tropic of Capricorn is the likely location of the earthly paradise; the eccentricity of the sun would only serve to make it more, not less, habitable, Bacon suggested.68 In the text of the Opus Maius Bacon promises to draw an 65

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Compare Matthew Paris’ identification of the seven climata in his Chronica majora, in the context of the irruption of the Tartars into parts of eastern Europe: “. . . Indorum, Ethiopum vel Maurorum, Egiptiorum, Jerosolimitanorum, Graecorum, Romanorum, et Francorum.” Chronica majora, ed. Henry Richards Luard, 7 vols (London: Longman, 1872–83), vol. 4, 120. London, British Library, MS Cotton Julius D.VII, f. 46r. De natura loci, in Albertus Magnus, Opera Omnia, vol. 5.2, ed. Paul Hossfeld (Münster: Aschendorff, 1980), 18–19 (1.2). The “Opus Majus” of Roger Bacon, ed. John Henry Bridges, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897), vol. 1, 307.

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fig. 1.5 John of Wallingford, adapted climata diagram c. 1250, oriented to the east, ­showing climes in the northern hemisphere, and discussion of the earth’s shape and the ­antipodes in the southern hemisphere. London, British Library, Cotton MS Julius D.VII, fol. 46r.

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image for Pope Clement IV in which the climata will contain famous cities – located, thanks to an “artificium”, according to degrees of latitude and longitude. Bacon’s figure, which he says was heavily indebted to Ptolemy’s Almagest and Alfraganus, included space to the south and north of the seven climata in acknowledgement of the habitability of regions in the far south and north.69 Bacon’s map does not survive (although it is possible that a world image drawn by Pierre d’Ailly in the early fifteenth century represents a simplified copy),70 but its description in the Opus Maius indicates that it was the most elaborate medieval Latin world map based on the climata. The figure’s inspiration was ultimately Ptolemaic, but the mediation of Arabic-Islamic science was crucial in its conception. In addition to Roger’s acknowledgement of Alfraganus, it seems very likely that he was influenced by “Alhazen’s” De configuratione mundi, the Latin translation of the summary of Ptolemy’s Almagest attributed Ibn al-Haytham (d. c. 1040).71 The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries saw continued adaptation of the scheme of the climata, often in revealing ways. Among the more remarkable witnesses to the currency of the climata is a translation of the Brethren of Purity’s epistle on geography. The translation – “Epistola fratrum sincerorum in cosmographia” – is of uncertain date and origin. It survives in a copy contained in a fourteenth-century Italian (probably Sicilian) manuscript, and may have been made in the previous century.72 The Epistola is a fairly literal rendition of the Brethren’s text, which preserves the exaltation of the fourth clime and the insistence on the artificial nature of the divisions of the climes.73 Evident also 69

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Opus Majus, vol. 1, 295–300; for discussion of the figura see Gautier Dalché, “Les coordonnées géographiques,” 281–92; Patrick Gautier Dalché, “Vers une perfecta locorum doctrina: lieu et espace géographique selon Roger Bacon,” in Représentations et conceptions de l’espace dans la culture médiévale, ed. Tiziana Suarez-Nani and Martin Rohde (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 9–43. Pierre d’Ailly, Ymago Mundi, ed. Edmond Buron, 3 vols (Paris: Maisonneuve Frères, 1930), vol. 1, 140; 216–36; 252–56. Patrick Gautier Dalché, La Géographie de Ptolémée en Occident (IVe-XVIe siècle) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 137. The treatise of Ibn al-Haytham, Maqālah fī hayʾat al-ʿālām, has been translated by Y. Tzvi Langermann as Ibn al-Haytham’s On the Configuration of the World (London: Routledge, 2017). For doubts about the attribution see Roshdi Rashed, “The Configuration of the Universe: A Book by al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham?,” Revue d’histoire des sciences 60 (2007): 47–63. Patrick Gautier Dalché, “Epistola fratrum sincerorum in cosmographia: une traduction latine inédite de la quatrième Risāla des Iḫwān al-Ṣafā,” Revue d’histoire des textes 18 (1988): 137–67; reprinted in L’Espace géographique au Moyen Âge, 119–50. The manuscript is Palermo, Biblioteca comunale, 2 Qq D 121. Significant omissions include the parable of a wise king, designed to show the importance of knowledge of the world, and the Brethren’s concluding announcement of the

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is the difficulty of making sense of toponyms: “Shiraz in Fars” (Shirāz min Fārs) has become “Ytichean de Persia”; “Balkh in Khurāsān” (Balkh min Khurāsān) has become “Belach de Choissan id est de Armenia”; while “Khilāt in Armenia” (Khilāt min Armīnīa) is rendered as “Balach de Armenia”.74 Such corruption – the result of a process of textual transmission – was nevertheless accompanied by attempts to make sense of the epistle’s geography in terms comprehensible to a Latin audience. “Baldak de Irak” (Baghdad) is described as “olim in regno Caldee” (once in the kingdom of the Chaldaeans), while the garbled “Ardrabigen” (Azerbaijan) is glossed “id est de terris Trapisundi” (that is, in the region of Trebizond).75 The only known Latin translation of an Arabic text specifically devoted to geographic matters, the Epistola fratrum sincerorum in cosmographia suggests the obstacles inherent in transmitting descriptive geography, with its wealth of place names and complex regional structures, across languages with different scripts. It is perhaps not surprising that the structure of the climata, with its straight lines and mathematical precision, survived the translation process, while the toponymic detail of the scheme was often lost or distorted. The impact of the Latin translation of the Brethren’s fourth epistle seems to have been minimal, and in fifteenth-century usage the climata tended to be reinserted within a Ptolemaic lexicon, based on the Almagest but also strongly associated with the Geographia, as disseminated in Jacopo Angeli’s Latin translation.76 Yet, now assimilated into the canon of geographical expression, the climata could inhabit surprising new contexts. In a late fifteenth-century north German manuscript three climata maps appear alongside a series of figures designed to illustrate world history and the imminence of Apocalypse. The maps and surrounding texts, which are not in themselves eschatological, move between a seven- or eight-climata scheme (“of theologians”) and a nine- or ten-climata scheme (“of astronomers”), illustrative of the relative flexibility of the concept, but also its vitality within an entirely Christian and – in this case – aggressively anti-Islamic world view in which the territorial expanse of the “law of Mohammed” precedes the reign of Antichrist.77 inception of a cycle of the virtuous, coinciding with a group of virtuous scholars who have agreed not to dispute with one another. 74 “Epistola fratrum sincerorum in cosmographia,” chapter 16, l. 299; 17, l. 338; 18, l. 383. 75 “Epistola fratrum sincerorum in cosmographia,” chapter 17, l. 348; 18, l. 382. 76 See Gautier Dalché, La Géographie de Ptolémée en Occident, 295–96; Marica Milanesi, “Cartografia per un principe senza corte. Venezia nel Quattrocento,” Micrologus 16 (2008): 189–216, at 212. 77 San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 83, fols. 14r-15r. See Chet Van Duzer and Ilya Dines, Apocalyptic Cartography: Thematic Maps and the End of the World in a FifteenthCentury Manuscript (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 117–28.

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Clearly the theory of the climata had a significant impact on the representation of the known world in the Latin West, and on debate about the habitation and climate of regions beyond the ecumene. This was not a case of jettisoning established knowledge in response to the arrival of a superior model. Instead, the dominant mode of reception of the climata was to adapt the scheme to allow an accommodation with existing theories. For some authors such accommodation meant an attempt to reconcile climata with zonal theory. For others it entailed questioning the accuracy of both theories, particularly with regard to their account of habitation at the equator and in the far north of the known world, and the pursuit of topics of debate such as the location of the earthly paradise and the question of the existence of antipodal peoples. In this regard, innovations such as the concept of the equatorial city of Aren stimulated thought and argument, but in many ways raised more questions than they answered. Much the same could be said of another contribution made by the transmission of Islamic-derived science: the revised image of the relation between land and water. 2

The World Map of De Causis Proprietatum Elementorum

In the later twelfth century, probably in the 1180s, a work incorrectly attributed to Aristotle was translated from Arabic into Latin under the title De causis proprietatum elementorum. It is thought that the translator was Gerard of Cremona, who was responsible for the translation of Ptolemy’s Almagest along with numerous other scientific works. The Arabic original of De causis, now lost, was probably written in ninth-century Iraq, although its date and place remain conjectural.78 As the title suggests, De causis is a treatise on the four elements. One of its main objectives was to refute a thesis that the sea regularly moves on the earth’s surface and that as a consequence all parts of the earth had, at some stage, been covered by water. De causis includes discussions of the effects of climate on human appearance and on the question of whether northern climes are more elevated than southern ones. Its conception of geographic space is structured by the theory of the seven climata, and its geographic reference, while centred in the region of Mesopotamia, extends from Scythia to Ethiopia, and from the Atlantic to China. 78

Stanley Luis Vodraska, “Pseudo-Aristotle, De causis proprietatum et elementorum: Critical Edition and Study” (PhD thesis, University of London, 1969), 58–66. References to the text of De causis are to the edition printed as a subtext to Albertus Magnus’ commentary, in Alberti Magni Opera Omnia, vol. 5.2, ed. Hossfeld, 47–104, which uses Vodraska’s edition along with three manuscripts and the text printed in 1560.

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The treatise concludes with a brief description of major seas and rivers, and their position with regard to the encircling ocean and selected regions and cities. This description was supposed to be illustrated by a world map, whose function was to show the relationship between sea and land (“Volo autem ostendere regionum loca et marium”), presumably with the intention of reinforcing De causis’ arguments that the boundaries of sea and land did not change on a regular basis, and that the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and the Mediterranean effectively form a single body of water.79 The text gives specific instructions on the construction of the map, including the toponyms to be included: “I shall place point a at the position of Sin; India at b; Persia at c; Yemen at p . . .”.80 However, apart from the Tigris and Euphrates, these toponyms are limited to the names of regions, so in order to fulfil the map’s stated purpose of showing seas as well as regions, copyists had to add elements from the preceding description of major seas and rivers. Many of these toponyms would have been entirely foreign to a European audience, such as the use of “scemi” to designate the Mediterranean, from the Arabic “bahr al-shām”, the Syrian sea. Some regions too were not standard parts of European spatial representation, notably the far east, marked by “sin”, from the Arabic “al-ṣīn”, China, and “chorascen”, from the Arabic “Khurāsān”, as well as Yemen (“aliemen”) in the Arabian peninsula.81 At the same time, this image contains elements unfamiliar to an Arabic-Islamic audience, such as the description of a northern branch of the Mediterranean as the “mare Berdil”, and the description of the Caspian Sea as an inlet of the outer ocean rather than as an enclosed sea. It may also be that De causis’ river “Geon” in India, which derives from the Arabic “jaīḥūn”, and is normally taken to denote the Oxus river, was assimilated by the treatise’s translator with the Biblical river “Gihon”, one of the four rivers thought to flow from the earthly paradise, and typically connected both with the Ganges and the river Nile. It is possible then that the description of the world in De causis, already a-typical within Arabic-Islamic geography, underwent a degree of Europeanisation in the process of translation. De causis was copied widely throughout Christian Europe as part of the corpus of Aristotelian and pseudo-Aristotelian science that became a staple of 79 80 81

De causis proprietatum elementorum, 102–3. De causis proprietatum elementorum, 103: “Ponam ergo punctum .a. locum Sin et punctum .b. Indiae et punctum .c. terrae Persiae et punctum .p. terrae Iamen”. There has been relatively little scholarship on this map. Vodraska’s thesis that the map was a copy of a Greek original from 300-200 BCE, on the basis of an underlying form in which the image was composed of four quadrants is, at best, highly speculative and unprovable. See more recently Gautier Dalché, “Géographie arabe et géographie latine au XIIe siècle,” 426.

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learning in the thirteenth century. Yet while the Latin text survives in over 120 manuscripts, only two of these are known to contain the map, perhaps a sign of its difficulty and unfamiliarity.82 The two known copies of the map in De causis manuscripts both date from the thirteenth century, and seem likely to be of English and Italian provenance. In both cases, the map is in many ways curious, and it is not clear that its copyists actually understood it very well (Fig. 1.6; see also Appendix to this chapter). Oriented to the north, the map is structured by five major bodies of water: (anti-clockwise, from far left) the Mediterranean; the Indian Ocean, connecting to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf; an unnamed sea in the far east, dividing China from Khurāsān; the Caspian Sea; and an unnamed sea in the north-west. The map is completed by the Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile, and the location of a few significant regions and cities, including Spain (Yspania), Constantinople, Baghdad and Basra. This image diverges in certain ways from the fairly careful instructions given in the text of De causis. Perhaps the most notable divergence is the appearance of a body of water in the north-west of the image, dividing Rome from “Slavonia”. Although an earlier passage of De causis does refer to “Sclavi” living in the seventh clime,83 there is no indication in the text that northern peoples should appear on the map. Secondly, the unnamed gulf in the far east which divides China and Khurāsān appears to be a double of the Indian Ocean, resulting from a misunderstanding of De causis’ description of a gulf which “is the Indian Sea adjoining China” (est mare Indum continuum cum Sin) as being separate from the Indian Ocean which is continuous with the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. Finally, and more intriguingly, the copies of the map that accompany the text of De causis both mark north Africa “regio barbarorum”. The text of De causis names the opposite side of the Mediterranean “terra Romanorum”, but does not offer a toponym for north Africa. While “regio barbarorum” would no doubt have signified “land of the barbarians” to many Latin readers, it seems likely that a more precise meaning of “land of the Berbers” was intended by whoever added this detail. In sum, then, it appears that in addition to struggling with some aspects of the description given in De causis, copyists of the map at an early stage expanded its geographic reference through the addition of a limited number of toponyms in northern Europe and Africa. A third copy of the map, which appears at the beginning of a fourteenthcentury astronomical miscellany now in Florence, indicates a circulation

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Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. F.5.28, fol. 218v; Milan, Biblioteca Trivulziana, MS 764, fol. 82v. Vodraska, De causis proprietatum et elementorum, 51–57. De causis proprietatum elementorum, 58.

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fig. 1.6 World map from a thirteenth-century Italian copy of De causis proprietatum elementorum. North at top. Milan, Biblioteca Trivulziana MS 764, fol. 82v.

beyond the text of De causis itself (Fig. 1.7).84 This image shares a number of features with the two copies in De causis manuscripts, including the addition of 84

Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Conv. Soppr. J.V.6 (San Marco 189), fol. 1r.

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fig. 1.7 World map extracted from De causis proprietatum elementorum, copied at the beginning of a fourteenth-century astrological miscellany. North at top. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale ­Centrale, MS Conv. Soppr. J.V.6 (San Marco 189), fol. 1r.

“Sclavonia”, and the “regio Barbarorum” in north Africa. However, certain other elements show a greater degree of fidelity to the Latin text. The Florentine map contains a sixth body of water, extending southwards from the far north, and ending with the toponym “Corasem”, clearly reflecting De causis’ description of the extent of the Caspian Sea “ad partem meridiei et terram Corassem”, even if this leads to the doubling of the Caspian. The Florentine map also attempts to show the river Geon in India and its source in mount “Rasim”, which are mentioned in De causis but ignored in other copies of the map, as well as De causis’ identification of the source of the Euphrates as “Mount Armenia”.85 A 85

De causis proprietatum elementorum, 103.

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handful of toponyms omitted in other copies appear uniquely in this exemplar: “alcufati” (al-Kūfa), west of Baghdad; “Berdil”, the name somewhat puzzlingly given in De causis to the gulf “dividing the land of the Romans” (scindens terram Romanorum), in other words the Aegean Sea, Hellespont, and Black Sea; “yrach” (i.e. Iraq, “Yrac” in De causis), wildly misplaced on the west bank of the Nile, beneath Ethiopia. In short, then, although it does not accompany the text of De causis, there is reason to think that this version of the map represents a slightly earlier stage in the copying of the image than the two maps that appear in De causis manuscripts. Undoubtedly the most striking example of the impact of the map, however, is its appearance in the works of Albertus Magnus. At some point in the mid thirteenth century, probably while teaching at Cologne, Albertus wrote a commentary on the Latin text of De causis proprietatum elementorum.86 He reproduced the map at the end of the text, where he added some comments on it. The map, which appears in only one manuscript of Albertus’ commentary, is similar in many respects to the maps that accompany Gerard of Cremona’s translation of De causis (Fig. 1.8). In this example the hydrographic content of the image is arguably brought out more clearly thanks to the near alignment of the Mediterranean (“semi”) with the Persian and Indian seas, and the prominence given to the confluent Tigris and Euphrates.87 It is not clear, however, that Albertus fully comprehended the image he copied. Two obvious errors crept into his comments on the geography presented in De causis. First, he mistook the text’s “terra Romanorum” (land of the Romans) for Italy.88 However the term, which derives from the Arabic “bilād al-Rūm”, was clearly meant to designate both western Europe and the eastern, or Byzantine Empire. Secondly, Albertus seems to have misunderstood De causis’ description of the Caspian Sea (“mare Deilim”, from the Arabic “bahr al-Daylam”) for the North or Baltic Sea, as he describes it “touching England and Denmark and in the region 86

87 88

De causis proprietatum elementorum, in Alberti Magni Opera Omnia, vol. 5.2, ed. Hossfeld, 47–104; Albert the Great, On the Causes of the Properties of the Elements (Liber de causis proprietatum elementorum), trans. Irven M. Resnick (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2010). Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2292, fol. 77ra. De causis proprietatum elementorum, 103, 104: “Et punctum .f. dicam stare pro terra Romanorum sive Italia”. The map that accompanies Albertus’ commentary designates north Africa the “regio Romanorum”, instead of the “regio barbarorum” found in other copies of the image. Rather than any antiquarian impulse, this designation of north African as Roman may derive from a misreading of De causis’ description of the Mediterranean “continuum cum terra Romanorum” (adjoining the land of the Romans), where clearly the northern rather than the southern coast of the sea is intended; alternatively it may represent a simple misreading of “barbarorum” for “Romanorum”.

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fig. 1.8 World map in a mid fourteenth-century manuscript of Albertus Magnus, De causis proprietatum elementorum. North at top. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2292, fol. 77ra.

of Germany heading towards Livonia”.89 Both of these mistakes are entirely understandable. So too are the numerous difficulties scribes experienced with Arabic-derived place names: in the manuscript copies of De causis and Albertus’ commentary thereon, Baghdad, or “Bagded” in the Latin, became variously “bagoei”, “agded”, “agbog”, “Aglog”, and so forth.90 These errors and confusions 89 90

De causis proprietatum elementorum, 103: “gumphus quidam qui vocatur Arabice Deylim . . . et hoc est mare, quod tangit Angliam et Daciam et iuxta Teutoniam venit versus Livoniam . . .”. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Canon Lat. Class. 291, fol. 49v (“agbog”). For the other corruptions see the apparatus to De causis proprietatum elementorum, 103. In the maps the toponym appears as “iagded” (Bodleian Library, MS Auct. F.5.28), and “baged” (Trivulziana MS 764; Österreichische Nationalbibliothek MS 2292).

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underline the difficulty of transmitting geographical material across linguistic barriers. There seems to be no evidence that the map in De causis directly influenced the work of Christian European mapmakers. However, if we look beyond maps per se to scientific geography in scholastic texts it is possible to see De causis within the broader context of medieval European debates about the nature of the earth, and in particular about the relationship between sea and land. One indication of evolving thought in Latin scholarship about the interrelation of elements on the earth’s surface comes from a treatise entitled “Summa philosophiae”. This work, attributed in medieval manuscripts to Robert Grosseteste, but thought by modern scholars to be more likely to be by one of his pupils, is heavily influenced by both Arabic and Greek scientific texts. It includes a section “on the origin of waters” in which the author attempts to describe the relationship between seas in different parts of the world. He asserts on the authority of Plato’s Phaedo (111C) that rivers and seas of the world originate in an abyss or chasm, and cites the book of Genesis (2.10–14) as witness that this source of waters is located in the earthly paradise. He repeats the common dictum that there are two encircling oceans running around the sphere, which divide the world into quadrants: one (“Oceanus”) runs from pole to pole; the other runs along the equator. He notes further, on the authority of Abū Maʿshar (Albumazar) and unspecified Roman histories, that the Indian, and the Persian or Arabian seas make one body of water, and that there is “the briefest of intervals” between them and the Mediterranean.91 This is the same point that is made in De causis and illustrated on its map. We can then begin to discern a context in which the text of De causis and its map had some meaning. This context was that of the debates within Aristotelian-influenced science about the relationship between the four elements, and particularly water and earth, which gathered momentum during the thirteenth century, and continued well into the fourteenth.92 At least one contribution of De causis and its map was to encourage a revised hydrography, in which the Indian Ocean was understood to be continuous with the Red 91

92

“Summa philosophiae Roberto Grosseteste ascripta,” in Die philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, 621–22 (tractatus 18, cap. 5): “Sic et mare Indicum itemque Persicum seu Arabicum, quod vulgariter rubrum dicitur, unum sunt per continuationem teste Albumazar, ut superius declaratum est historiaeque Romanorum attestantur, sed diversa per esse, atque ita mare, quod a Gadibus versus orientem tenditur, Indicumque, quod usque Aegyptum protenditur, brevissimo intervallo ab invicem dirimuntur”. For example, Dante Alighieri, De situ et forma aque et terre, ed. Giorgio Padoan (Florence: Le Monnier, 1968); Jean Buridan, Expositio et Quaestiones in Aristotelis De Caelo, ed. Benoît Patar (Louvain: Éditions Peeters, 1996), 410–17.

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and Arabian Seas, and the Red Sea and the Mediterranean nearly continuous, such that commentators could conceive these seas as effectively forming one body of water. This image differed, for example, from the image of the world in Macrobius maps, in which the Red, Indian, and Caspian Seas derived from the equatorial or the outer oceans, and from the depiction of these seas on mappae mundi, which tended to place a much greater emphasis on the representation of land. At the same time, the difficulties that scribes, and even erudite commentators such as Albertus Magnus, faced in understanding the map and the geography in De causis illustrate some of the obstacles to the transmission of ideas across cultures and languages. The question of the influence and cross-pollination of geographic ideas between Europe and the Islamic world remains very much open, but as we continue to explore it we should be attentive to the failures, as well as the successes, of the translation of ideas. The transmission of texts that described the climata from Arabic into Latin undoubtedly stimulated the deployment of the concept in the Latin West. Similarly, the translation of a relatively obscure treatise such as De causis contributed to the rethinking of the world image, and may have encouraged the notion of contiguity between the Indian, Red, and Arabian Seas, which began to be represented on European maps in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.93 Nevertheless, while real, the extent of “cross-pollination” should not be exaggerated. The climata already existed as a concept within Latin letters; the addition to the scientific corpus of texts from the Islamic and Jewish worlds enriched the concept, encouraged debate about the possibility of equatorial and sub-equatorial inhabitants, tied it the more firmly to the practice of astrology, and in all probability stimulated diagrammatic representation of the seven climata. But it did not overturn or revolutionise existing precepts and practice, since the climata was a shared tradition, derived (as both Latin and Arabic-Islamic worlds readily acknowledged) from ancient Greek science. As the cases of De causis and the fourth epistle of the Brethren of Purity suggest, translation also had its limits: unfamiliar toponyms posed particular problems for translators and scribes.94 Evidence for the movement of ideas about the shape of the world and the climatic divisions of the known world in the opposite direction, from Latin to Arabic texts, is hard to find. If this picture of limited and sometimes ineffectual cross-cultural transmission seems disappointing, it may be worth noting some real and impressive 93 94

Examples include the mappae mundi of Vesconte/Sanudo, and in the fifteenth century world maps of Giovanni Leardo, Andreas Walsperger, and Fra Mauro. Relevant here are the remarks of Christian C. Sahner on the Arabic translation of Orosius’ Historiae: “From Augustine to Islam: Translation and History in the Arabic Orosius,” Speculum 88 (2013): 905–31, at 918–20.

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achievements that it entailed. Twelfth-century scholars working in the Latin West absorbed information about the climata quickly and seemingly without great resistance. By the thirteenth century, Arab authors had become familiar names within Latin letters at the same time as the development of a vigorous anti-Islamic polemic.95 In spite of mistranslations, learned Latin society assimilated new images of the world, or at least different versions of familiar images, derived from Arabic texts. The model of interaction that emerges from these intellectual contacts is far from pacific, neutral, or subservient, but neither is it hostile or mechanical. Instead the reception of the aspects of theoretical geography that entered the Latin West from the crucible of twelfth-century Spain, however limited, was serious and critical. The meeting of two traditions derived from the same root of Greek mathematical geography provided the opportunity to update and reassess the ancient learning.

Appendix: Toponyms on the De causis map

[T] Milan, Biblioteca Trivulziana, MS 764, fol. 82v [B] Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. F.5.28, fol. 218v [F] Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Conv. Soppr. J.V.6 (San Marco 189), fol. 1r [N] Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2292, fol. 77ra [Africa] Regio barbarorum;96 Ethiopia; nilus egipti;97 Alexandria;98 desertum; Yrach99 [Asia] ssemi [i.e. Shām, Syria];100 aliemen [Yemen]; aliges [al-Hijāz];101 basra;102 Alcofati [al-Kūfa];103 mare rubrum;104 tigris; eufrates; baged [Baghdad];105 mare 95 Petrus Alfonsi offers an early example of this phenomenon. 96 N: regio romanorum 97 B: ylus egipti; N: sidus egipti 98 N: om. 99 T, B, N: om. 100 B: enty; F: Seni 101 F: Iliges 102 B: basa 103 T, B, N: om. 104 T: om. 105 B: iagded; F: Bagad

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alibile [Bahr al-Obolla, the Persian Gulf];106 mare persie;107 persia;108 Insula adelici;109 india; Rasim;110 sin [i.e. al-ṣīn, China]; chorascen [Khurāsān];111 adeilem [i.e. Mare Deilim, Caspian Sea]112 [Europe] Yspania;113 Roma; Constantinopolis; Sclauonia;114 Berdil.115 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115

B, F: om. N: mare alebile T, B, N: om. B: persida F: Insula Delici T, B, N: om. B: corasten; F: corascen x 2 B: adeylim; F: Adeylam; N: adeilent B: hyspania B: Selanonia; T: Sclauania T, B, N: om.

CHAPTER 2

Ptolemy’s Geography in the Arabic-Islamic Context Jean-Charles Ducène While Ptolemy’s Geography is often mentioned in Arabic geographical literature, the existence of an Arabic version of the text remains problematic. This is because, within the works of Arab authors, passages can only rarely be securely identified as deriving directly from the Geography. Moreover, the only surviving1 Arabic text of the Geography is a late translation, made in 1465 for Sultan Mehmet II by George Amuritzes of Trabzon and his son. Nevertheless, from the time that an Arabic literature with geographical content emerged, the tutelary figure or the authority of Ptolemy was proclaimed, ample proof of the importance of his scientific legacy. Ptolemy’s astronomical synthesis, the Almagest, was the foundation of the representation of the cosmos, and on its basis medieval astronomers proposed various corrections and amendments. For the representation of the known world, the same role was played by the Geography. 1

Ptolemy and the Geography in Arab Sources

Arab bibliographers certainly knew that Ptolemy had composed a work of geography. In the words of Ibn Juljul, writing in 377/987–988, “he [Ptolemy] wrote a work on the climes [al-aqālīm] the name of which is al-Jughrāfiyā”.2 This knowledge does not appear to have been universal among Arab authors, however. In his detailed description of the works of Ptolemy, al-Yaʿqūbī (end of third/ninth century) says nothing about the Geography,3 while alMubashshir ibn Fātik, writing in Egypt in the fifth/eleventh century, mentions among ­Ptolemy’s works only the Almagest, in emphasising the astronomical 1 In 1845, a German geographer wrote from Tehran that a manuscript of an Arabic translation of the Geography was kept in Mashhad. The online catalogue of the Iranian Library of Mashhad of the Astan Quds Razavi records no such manuscript. Ernst Honigmann, Die sieben Klimata und die poleis episēmoi: eine Untersuchung zur Geschichte der Geographie und Astrologie im Altertum und Mittelalter (Heidelberg: Winter, 1929), 114. 2 Ibn Juljul, Ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ wa-l-ḥukamāʾ, ed. Ayman Fuʾād Sayyid (Cairo: Maṭbaʿa Dār alkutub, 2005), 36. 3 Al-Yaʿqūbī, Tārīkh, 2 vols (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1960), vol. 1, 133–43. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004446038_004

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observations made by the Greek author.4 More positively, the chronicler Ibn al-Athīr (d. 630/1233) specified in the course of his survey of pre-Islamic Egyptian history that among the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt it was necessary to single out Ptolemy, “the author of the Almagest and the Geography [al-Jughrāfiyā]”.5 Ibn al-Athīr’s contemporary, Ibn al-Qifṭī (d. 646/1248), attributed to Ptolemy a book entitled “al-Jughrāfiyā on the inhabited part of the earth”, adding that this book had been translated into Arabic in excellent fashion by Abū Yūsuf al-Kindī (d. 252/866), and that there existed also a Syriac translation.6 Ibn Juljul had for his part attributed to Abū Yūsuf al-Kindī a work having as its title Kitāb al-jughrāfiyā fī maʿrifat al-aqālīm al-maʿmūr wa-ghayrihā (Book of Geography concerning the knowledge of the climes of the inhabited and uninhabited parts of the earth), while the fourth/tenth-century author al-Masʿūdī attributed to al-Kindī a work of geography with the title Kitāb fī rasm al-maʿmūr min al-arḍ (Book on the drawing of the inhabited world), which was in agreement with Ptolemy on the limits of the known world.7 Later, in the fifteenth century, Ibn Ẓāhira (d. 888/1483) remarked that among the scholars who were born in Egypt, it is Ptolemy to whom we owe “A description of nations who people the earth” (Kitāb waṣf al-umam al-ḏīna yaʿmarūna al-arḍ).8 This aspect of the work of Ptolemy was recalled in the seventeenth century by Ḥājjī Khalīfa (d. 1067/1657) when he wrote: . . . the first to compose a book on geography was Ptolemy the Claudian [sic], for he wrote his book called The Geography after he had written the Almagest. He mentions there that the number of cities in his era numbers 4530, and he gives their names. He also says that the number of mountains is more than 200, he specifies their dimensions, and identifies their contents, such as mines or precious stones. He further mentions the seas, islands, animals and their features. He gives the regions of the earth, the appearances and customs of inhabitants, what they eat and drink, [and] what each region possesses on its own in terms of subsistence products, goods, and other produce. This was a foundational book on which those who came after him relied . . . It was translated into Arabic in the era of al-Maʾmūn, but today it is impossible to find the Arabic version.9 4 Al-Mubashshir ibn Fātik, Mukhtār al-ḥikam wa-maḥāsin al-kalim, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Badawī (Madrid: Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos, 1958), 251–52. 5 Ibn al-Athīr, Al-kāmil fī-l-tārīkh, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1867), 326–27. 6 Ibn al-Qifṭī, Kitāb akhbār al-ʿulamāʾ bi-akhbār al-ḥukamāʾ (Cairo: Maktaba al-Mutanabbī, 198-), 69–70. 7 Al-Masʿūdī, Kitāb al-tanbīh wa-l-ishrāf, ed. M.J. de Goeje (Leiden: Brill, 1894), 42. 8 Ibn Ẓāhira, Al-faḍāʾil al-bāhira fī maḥāsin Miṣr wa-l-Qāhira (Cairo: Dār al-kutub, 1969), 86. 9 Ḥājjī Khalīfa, Kashf al-ẓunūn, 7 vols (Beirut: Dār al-kutub, 1992), vol. 1, cols 590–91.

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Ḥājjī Khalīfa relies here on al-Masʿūdī’s description of the Geography of Ptolemy and he gives the work a cosmographical aspect, clearly unaware that he was dealing with a work centred above all on mathematical geography. 2

An Arabic Translation of the Geography?

From as early as the ninth century, certain Arab authors mention the existence of a translation of the Geography into Arabic. Ibn Khurradādhbih,10 writing at the end of third/ninth century, claimed that he himself had made a translation of the work, although this seems unlikely given the absence of any proof of his knowledge of Greek. In 377/987–88, Ibn al-Nadīm11 mentioned no less than three translations of the Geography: a translation, of poor quality, into Arabic made by Abū Yūsuf al-Kindī (d. 252/866); a second, better translation, into Arabic by Thābit ibn Qurra (d. 289/901); and a version in Syriac. Ibn al-Nadīm names this work of Ptolemy Jughrāfiyā fī l-maʿmūr wa ṣīfat al-arḍ (Geography of the inhabited world and description of the earth). However, the existence and precise nature of these translations remain open to question. Were they abridgements of the Geography? Were they translations of the eight books of the Geography without maps, or with maps that were also “translated” into Arabic, or redrawn? The evidence from the period is contradictory. Several remarks of al-Masʿūdī show that maps with Greek toponyms were available. For example, in his Kitāb al-tanbīh wa-l-ishrāf (Book of Admonition and Revision) he describes the forms and colours of the seas but adds that the names of the seas are in Greek, and so unintelligible to him. Al-Masʿūdī specifies that Ptolemy’s Kitāb fī maskūn al-arḍ (Book on the inhabited world) “mentions many cities and towns, with latitudes and longitudes, and so gives to the public an image of the inhabited earth on which he marks the position of countries, seas and rivers in longitude and latitude”.12 In the same period, Ibn Ḥawqal claimed to have seen several copies of the Geography,13 but his 10

11

12 13

Ibn Khurradādhbih, Kitāb al-masālik wa-l-mamālik, ed. M.J. de Goeje (Leiden: Brill, 1889), 3; Florian Mittenhuber und Celal Şengör, “Die Geographie des Ptolemaios in der arabischen Tradition,” in Klaudios Ptolemaios. Handbuch der Geographie, ed. A. Stückelberger and Gerd Graßhoff, 3 vols (Basel: Schwabe, 2006–2009), vol. 3, 336–55, esp. 337–39. Al-Nadīm, Fihrist, ed. Ayman Fuʾād Sayyid, 2 vols (London: Al-Furqān, 2009) vol. 2, 1, 216; Bayard Dodge, The Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadīm (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 640; Paul Kunitzsch, “Die Nachricht über Ptolemäus im Fihrist,” Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 25 (1993): 219–24. Al-Masʿūdī, Kitāb al-tanbīh wa-l-ishrāf, 30 and 127. Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ, ed. J. H. Kramers, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1938–39), 13, 149, 526.

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citations of the work show that the text at his disposal was one only inspired by Ptolemy. For example, when discussing the Caspian Sea, Ibn Ḥawqal writes: “I read in more than one exemplar of Ptolemy’s Geography that this sea is fed by the Mediterranean Sea. God preserve us from admitting that a learned man like Ptolemy could maintain such absurdities or affirm that which is contrary to reality”.14 Ptolemy’s Geography, of course, makes no such claim. 3

The Geography (Ṣūrat al-arḍ) of al-Khwārazmī

While the evidence for the circulation of a close Arabic translation of the Geography remains uncertain and contradictory, the work of Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārazmī (third/ninth century) testifies to the considerable impact of Ptolemy’s text on Arabic-Islamic geographical thought. In the middle of the third/ninth century al-Khwārazmī produced a work of mathematical geography which turns out to be the summary of a map, using both its topographical features as well as the co-ordinates displayed on it. The short title of al-Khwārazmī’s book, Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ, is a literal translation of “Geography”. It seems highly likely that the map used by al-Khwārazmī was the one famously produced for the Caliph al-Maʾmūn (d. 218/833). By its toponomy and the general aspect given to the known world, it is evident that this map was a revision and updating of the world map of Ptolemy, by way of a Syriac adaptation (conceivably a map). The possibility of a Syriac intermediary is strengthened by the presence in Syriac scientific literature of evidence of knowledge of the Geography and of the existence of epitomes of the work. Severus Sebokht of Nisībis (d. 667) clearly knew Book Eight of the Geography, since he gives an epitome of it, mentioning the number of maps planned by Ptolemy for each part of the world; he also made use of Ptolemy’s “Handy Tables”, specifically its list of Famous Cities (πόλεις ὲπίσημοι).15 The author of the Syriac Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah, meanwhile, one of the sources of which is the Ecclesiastical History of Zachariah of Mytilene, incorporates an epitome of Ptolemy’s Geography into the Chronicle’s twelfth book.16 Finally, the Hexaemeron of Jacob 14 15

16

Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ, 13. Severus Sebokht, Traité sur les constellations, trans. Fr. Nau, Revue de l’Orient chrétien 27 (1929–1930): 327–410, and 28 (1931–1932): 85–100, chap. 2.7 (p. 351) (Geography 8); chap. 14.10–11 (pp. 407–8) and chap. 16.1 (p. 89); A. Tihon, Les tables faciles de Ptolémée, vol. 1a: Tables A 1–A2 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Université catholique de Louvain, 2011), 11–12; Honigmann, Die sieben Klimata, 194–208 and 209–24. The Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor: Church and War in Late Antiquity, ed. Geoffrey Greatrex, trans. Robert R. Phenix and Cornelia B. Horn (Liverpool: Liverpool University

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of Edessa (d. 708) shows direct or indirect knowledge of the Geography in its description of land and seas.17 The complete title of al-Khwārazmī’s work is “Book of the Image of the Earth comprising Cities, Mountains, Seas, Islands and Rivers. Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārazmī extracted it (istakhraja-hu) from the Geography (kitāb Jughrāfiyā) written by Ptolemy the Claudian”.18 The book presents itself as a representation of the earth, and notes its filiation to the work of Ptolemy. It is not a descriptive geographical treatise, however. Instead, it is divided into five parts, the first of which enumerates 537 places and gives their geographic coordinates. The second part does the same for 209 mountains, while the third part gives the co-ordinates of the coasts of the five seas in a continuous text. The fourth part gives the co-ordinates of the islands situated in the seas, and the fifth part lists the co-ordinates of the courses of rivers. The phraseology of the author and his discursive expressions show that these places were taken from a map that he had before him, and whose legends and geographical features (rivers, mountains, islands, and so forth) he describes. The hypothesis that arises is that al-Khwārazmī used a map made in the style of Ptolemy, but corrected and brought up to date. This map must have continued to carry both the title of Jughrāfiyā and an attribution to Ptolemy. More than the general appearance of the map in modern reconstructions,19 analysis of toponomy shows that Ptolemy’s Geography was the major source of the map used by al-Khwārazmī. If the toponomy of Muslim territories is medieval, the peripheral territories show place names transcribed from the Greek form used by Ptolemy, without doubt having passed through a Syriac

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18 19

Press, 2011), 431–46; The Syriac Chronicle known as that of Zachariah of Mitylene, trans. E.W. Brooks and F.J. Hamilton (New York: AMS Press, 1979), 325–29; Honigmann, Die sieben Klimata, 115–16. Iacobi Edesseni Hexaemeron, ed. I.-B. Chabot (Louvain: Durbecq, 1953), 94–117; Iacobi Edesseni Hexaemeron, trans. A. Vaschalde (Louvain: Durbecq, 1953), 77–97; A. Hjelt, Études sur l’Hexaméron de Jacques d’Édesse (Helsingfors: Frenckell, 1892), 19–31. Hans von Mžik, “Ptolemaeus und die Karten der arabischen Geographen,” Mitteilungen der kaiserlich-königlichen Geographischen Gesellschaft Wien 58 (1915): 152–76; Jean-Charles Ducène, “La géographie chez les auteurs syriaques, entre hellénisme et Moyen Âge arabe,” in Migrations de langues et d’idées en Asie, ed. Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont, Pierre-Sylvain Filiozat, and Michel Zink (Paris: Académie des incriptions et belles-lettres, 2015), 21–35, Olivier Defaux, “Les textes géographiques en langue syriaque,” in Les sciences en syriaque, ed. Émilie Villey (Paris: Geuthner, 2014), 107–48, esp. 108–13, 119–20 and 127–32. Al-Khwārazmī, Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ, ed. Hans von Mžik (Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1926), 2. R. Jafri, Al-Khwārazmī’s Geographical Map of the World based on the Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ (Dushanbe: Izd-vo “Donish”, 1985).

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intermediary. The comparative study of Hans von Mžik20 used Syriac forms of toponyms given by Jacob of Edessa to prove that a certain number of place names given by al-Khwārazmī are calques of the Syriac [see Table 2.1]. table 2.1  Selected toponyms from Ptolemy’s Geography and later versions

Ptolemy

Syriac version of Jacob of Edessa

Toponym in al-Khwārazmī

Anglicised form

Ἀλουίων Λιβὑη Ἰβερνία Σκυθίας Ἵμαον ὃρος Ἀσπίσια

Alw’ywn Lybw’y Ywb’rnya Sqwty’ ‘Ym’ws “spsy”, var. “sq’sy”

*Alwāyūn Lībūʾī Yūbārniyā ʿAsqūṭiyā ʿAnmāw.s Asqāsiyā21

Albion Lybia Hibernia (Ireland) Scythia

* designates reconstructed form21

All the same, the Ptolemaic origin of many of the toponyms can be confirmed. For Africa, al-Khwārazmī gives an antique nomenclature mixed with medieval cities, the process of updating clearly remaining incomplete [see Table 2.2].

20

21

Hans von Mžik, Afrika nach der arabischen Bearbeitung der Γεωγραφική ὑφήγησις des Claudius Ptolemaeus von Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Ḫwārizmī (Vienna: Hölder, 1916), vi : “Aus der Vergleichung der Namen bei den beiden Arabern mit den syrischen Namensformen bei Jacobus ergibt sich, daß die arabische Wiedergabe der griechischen Namen, wie sie uns handschriftlich vorliegt, sich in vielen Fällen trotz aller Verderbtheit der Überlieferung nur durch das Syrische erklären läßt.” Carlo Nallino took a more nuanced position. Since he recognised that not all the Arabic forms could be understood through Syriac phonetics, he drew the conclusion that the map must have been in Greek: C. Nallino, “Al-Khuwārizmī e il suo rifacimento della Geografia di Tolomeo,” in C. Nallino, Raccolta di scritti editi e inediti, ed. M. Nallino, 6 vols (Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1939–48), vol. 5, 485–87. The Arabic form can only be explained as the result of confusion with the reading of a Syriac toponym, where the qōf is easily confused with the pē; see M. Maróth, “Ptolemaic elements and geographical actuality in Al-Ḫuwārizmī’s Description of Central Asia,” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 28 (1980): 317–52, esp. 336 and 347.

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table 2.2  Selected African toponyms and co-ordinates in Al-Khwārazmī and Ptolemy

Al-Khwārazmī

Ptolemy

Place

longitude

latitude

Place

longitude

latitude

Ṭanja Uwalā Maksūlā Ṭarābulus Barqa

8° 10° 35° 45’ 40°40’ 43°

35°30’ 29° 40’ 32° 32° 0’ 33° 45’

Τίγγις Οὒαλα Μαξοῦλα Ἑῶα Βἁρκη

6° 30’ 8° 30’ 35° 41° 30’ 49° 15’

35° 55’ 28° 15’ 32° 40 31° 40’ 30° 45’

For sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt, medieval peoples and toponyms appear. However, places to the south of the Bāb al-mandab are all Ptolemaic [see Table 2.3]. table 2.3  Toponyms and co-ordinates in Al-Khwārazmī and Ptolemy south of the Bāb ­al-mandab

Al-Khwārazmī

Ptolemy

Place

longitude

latitude

Place

longitude

latitude

Rafāṭā Madīnat al-Ṭīb Adūlī

65° 72° 58° 30’

7° 4° 30’ 13° 30’

Ῥαπτά Ἀρώματα ἐμπόρ Ἀδούλη

71° 83° 67°

7° 6° 11° 40’

It also appears that the coast of the Indian Ocean has been brought back by around twelve degrees towards the west, while its appellation “Green Sea” (baḥr al-Akhḍar) is the Greek denomination πρασώδης θάλασσα (Prasodis Mare), that is, “soft green” or “leek coloured” sea, found in Ptolemy (7.2.1). The few toponyms concerning west Africa, as with all hydronyms and names of mountains, are traceable to Ptolemy [see Table 2.4].22

22

Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, ed. N. Levtzion and J.F.P. Hopkins, trans. J.F.P. Hopkins (Princeton: Wiener, 2000), 7–10.

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Ptolemy’s Geography in the Arabic-Islamic Context table 2.4  Toponyms and co-ordinates in Al-Khwārazmī and Ptolemy in west Africa

Al-Khwārazmī

Ptolemy

Place

longitude

latitude

Place

longitude

latitude

Bārīsā Mūrā Thamtūraqī Taġīrā Lūraḥīs (*Dawkhīs) Anīsīqī (*Inaskhī)

10° 12° 30’ 23° 30’ 25° 30’ 8° 30’ 18° 30’ 24° 40’ 30° 0’

15° 15° 18° 18° 20’ 0° 50’ S. 4° S. 14° 20’ 11° 10’

Ἰάρξειθα Μάγουρα Θαμονδόκανα Νίγειρα Δαῦχις

16° 20’ 12° 30’ 23° 25° 40’ 15°

12° 15’ 15° 17° 17° 40’ 8° 25’ S.

Ἰνέσχι

25°

13° 0’ S.

* designates reconstructed form

Al-Khwārazmī’s image of Europe is dependent on Ptolemy, both in its configuration of coast lines and in its representation of the interior.23 Nevertheless, there are certain modifications, additions, and updatings in al-Khwārazmī’s Europe. Among the more significant additions are two islands of the Amazons to the north of Europe, in the Baltic Sea. With regard to Asia, Reinhard Wieber has commented of al-Khwārazmī’s representation of Mesopotamia that “the map he was using must have had several errors with regard to actual geographical reality and with regard to Ptolemy’s Geography”.24 Wieber emphasises the absence of Khābūr (the Khabur river) and of the Nahr Diyālā (the Diyala river) in al-Khwārazmī, but he also recognises the updating of toponomy in the Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ. All forty-four localities from the Persian Gulf to the Taurus mountains have a medieval name, 23

24

Hans von Mžik, “Osteuropa nach der arabischen Bearbeitung der Γεωγραφικὴ ὑφήγησις des Klaudios Ptolemaios von Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Ḫuwārizmī,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 43 (1936): 161–93; von Mžik, Beiträge zur Kartographie Albaniens nach Orientalischen Quellen, in Geographie und Geologie Nordalbaniens, ed. Franz Nopcsa (Budapest: Institutum Regni Hungariae Geologicum, 1929), 625–49, esp. 631: “Aus den Angaben des Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ ergibt, dass für Albanien wie überhaupt für die ganze Balkanhalbinsel Ptolemaeus die einzige Quelle des Ḫuwārizmī gewesen ist, während dieser bei Asien und Afrika auch nicht-ptolemaeische spätere Quellen zur Verfügung hatte”. Reinhard Wieber, “Das Zweistromland nach Huwārizmī,” Asiatische Studien 56 (2002): 471–514, at 507: “[s]eine rekonstruierbare Karte hat gegenüber den tatsächlichen geographischen Gegebenheiten und auch gegenüber der Geographie des Ptolemaeus mehrere Fehler”.

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including those with an ancient foundation and an appearance in Ptolemy’s Geography, such as al-Ruhā (Ἔδεσσα/Edessa) and Naṣībīn (Νίσιβις/Nisibis). Mountains are treated only slightly differently, either receiving a new name – such as the jabal al-Lukkām, which replaces Ptolemy’s Ἄμανον ὄρος (Amanon oros) – or becoming anonymous. Wieber moreover identified a correction of the co-ordinates given to places, notably a correction of longitudes of between seven and ten degrees, with a westward displacement. Beyond Mesopotamia, of the seventy-five localities in Iran, the great majority have been given a medieval name.25 The configuration of Central Asia reveals fewer Ptolemaic elements than medieval ones, and those of the former that are present are almost entirely limited to the names of mountains.26 Apart from the city of Uṭṭurāqārā (’Οττοροκόρρα/Ottorokora), all localities are medieval. Among the mountains that derive from Ptolemy, the most notable is the so-called Burj ḥijarat (tower of stone), which corresponds to the Geography’s Λίθινος πύργος (Lithinos purgos). Al-Khwārazmī’s China contains medieval cities alongside those, such as Qaṭṭīġūrā (Καττίγαρα/Kattigara) and Asfīṯrā (Ἀσπίθρα/Aspithra), that were inherited from Ptolemy.27 To the south-east, the Indian Ocean in the Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ is no longer the closed sea that it is in Ptolemy, since the extension of Africa towards the east does not reach China, allowing a strait to form to the south.28 Nevertheless the basic form of the coastlines in the region can still be traced to Ptolemy, and its toponomy also derives from the Geography, with only a tentative updating. Sri Lanka thus receives its classical “Arab” name of Sarandīb, in place of a transcription of the Greek (i.e. Ṭabrūbanā for Taprobane), but the island is also vast (it extends across 8°50 of longitude and 17°20 of latitude) and carries a Ptolemaic toponomy. The city of Aġnā (“city of the moon”) is none other than Ptolemy’s Δάγανα πόλις ἱερὰ Σελήνης (Dagana city sacred to Selēne) (Geog. 7.4.5). South-east Asia has a series of anonymous islands, sometimes grouped into archipelagos, which go back to Ptolemy,29 along with three new non-Ptolemaic islands.30 The configuration of the Far East is similarly somewhat new by comparison with its depiction in Ptolemy. 25

Maria Gabriela Schmidt, Die Nebenüberlieferung des 6. Buchs der Geographie des Ptolemaios. Griechische, lateinische, syrische, armenische und arabische Texte (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1999), 134–46. 26 Maróth, “Ptolemaic elements and geographical actuality,” 317–52. 27 Hubert Daunicht, Der Osten nach der Erdkarte al-Ḫuwārizmīs. Beiträge zur Historischen Geographie und Geschichte Asiens, 5 vols (Bonn: Schwarzbold, 1968–1970), vol. 1, 166; vol. 3, 390. 28 Gerald Tibbetts, A Study of the Arabic Texts Containing Material on South-East Asia ­(Leiden: Brill, 1979), 77–81. 29 Schmidt, Die Nebenüberliefurung, 169–71. 30 Hans von Mžik, “Parageographische Elemente in den Berichten der arabischen Geographen über Südostasien,” in Beiträge zur historischen Geographie, Kulturgeographie,

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Al-Khwārazmī’s “Asiatic” coast stops at latitude 10° North, and forms a peninsula to allow an arm of the sea to pass. An island to the west of this peninsula and another small peninsula to the east are both called “the island of silver” (jazīrat al-fiḍḍa). Further to the east, there are two new peninsulas : “the island of the luminous citadel” (al-qalʿa al-muḍiʿa), and “the island of the ruby” (al-yāqūt), also called the “island of the jewel” (al-Jawhar). One can then conclude that, in composing his Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ, al-Khwārazmī certainly used a map which must have displayed a representation of the known world as conceived of by Ptolemy. However, the author or authors of this map had clearly updated the regions better known to Muslims of the ninth century. This, then, cannot have been a translation of Ptolemy in the strict sense of the word. 4

The Nominal Authority of Ptolemy

It is clear that, while circulating and exerting its own influence, the Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ or Jughrāfiyā of al-Khwārazmī was sometimes confused with its model, Ptolemy’s Geography. In the Murūj al-dhahab (The Meadows of Gold), al-Masʿūdī describes a book entitled Jughrāfiyā which contains 4530 cities, all described according to the clime (iqlīm) in which they appear.31 In fact the work of al-Khwārazmī contains the co-ordinates of only 530 cities, but the proximity of the two numbers suggests that al-Masʿūdī had al-Khwārazmī’s Jughrāfiyā in mind.32 At the end of the tenth century, the anonymous Persian treatise entitled Ḥudūd al-ʿālam (The Regions of the World) cites Ptolemy twice as an authority on the islands of the western Ocean.33 These references do not correspond to the text of the Geography, and Ptolemy here seems to function as a vague geographical authority; elsewhere, however, the use of the expression Asia Major (Āsiyat al-kubrā) in the Ḥudūd al-ʿālam corresponds exactly to Ptolemy’s ή μεγάλη Ἀσία (Geog. 5, 7, and 8.3). For his part, Ibn al-Haytham (d. c. 431/1040) evokes Ptolemy’s Geography in his Maqāla fī hayʾat al-ʿālam

31 32

33

­Ethnographie und Kartographie, ed. Hans von Mžik (Leipzig and Vienna: Deuticke, 1929), 172–202; Gerald Tibbetts, A Study of the Arabic Texts, 67–68. Al-Masʿūdī, Les prairies d’or, ed. and trans. C. Barbier de Meynard and Pavet de Courteille, rev. Charles Pellat, 3 vols (Paris: Société Asiatique, 1962–1971), vol. 1, 76–77. The connection was made by both Honigmann and Sezgin: Honigmann, Die sieben Klimata, 156; Fuat Sezgin, Mathematical Geography and Cartography in Islam and their Continuation in the Occident, trans. Guy Moore and Geoff Sammon, 3 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science, 2000–2007), vol. 1, 81. Ḥudūd al-ʿālam: “The Regions of the World”, ed. and trans. Vladimir Minorsky (London: Luzac, 1937), 7–8, 56, 58.

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(Essay on the Form of the Earth) with regard to the extent of the known world and the determination of the climes. Again, though, the use of the Geography is clearly indirect, since Ibn al-Haytham does not cite Ptolemy’s work literally, but rather a Kitāb fī l-maʿmūr (Book on the inhabited world).34 In the Maghrib, in the first half of the fifth/eleventh century, Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Abī l-Rijāl35 (d. after 426/1034–35) mentions Ptolemy’s description of the climes in his astrological work, Al-bāriʿ fī aḥkām al-nujūm (The One Skilled in the Rules of the Stars). Ptolemy is also cited as an authority on the influence of the planets on different regions of the earth, which is a reference to the Tetrabiblos rather than to the Geography. The Bāriʿ fī aḥkām al-nujūm’s enumeration of diverse cities of the seven climes does derive from the ­Geography, but only indirectly, by way of a work of astronomy, the Zīj of al-Ḥabash. In fact, the examination of toponyms and co-ordinates in the Bāriʿ fī aḥkām al-nujūm shows that this material derives from al-Khwārazmī. We find, for example, the “island of the jewel” (al-Jawhar) or the co-ordinates of Mosul (longitude 69° and latitude 35°), just as they appear in al-Khwārazmī. The commentary of ʿAlī ibn Riḍwān36 (d. 460/1068) on the Bāriʿ fī aḥkām al-nujūm shows an understanding of the differences between the Almagest, the Geography, and the Tetrabiblos, but here too knowledge of the Geography is indirect, with citations concerning the position of the seas apparently deriving from al-Khwārazmī. In al-Andalus, al-Bakrī (c. 403–487/1010–1094) on several occasions cites the authority of Ptolemy, sometimes expressly mentioned as the author of the Almagest, on general notions such as the proportions of the known world, the number of cities, or the islands of the Indian Ocean.37 Around the same time, the treatise on the astrolabe of Ibn al-Ṣaffār (d. 426/1035), preserved in two Latin translations,38 offers evidence of general awareness of Ptolemy’s Geography as a work of mathematical geography, equipped with co-ordinates allowing positions to be fixed. However, neither author demonstrates a real knowledge of the Geography. To the confusion surrounding Arabic versions 34

Ibn al-Haytham, On the Configuration of the World, ed. and trans. Y. Tzvi Langermann (New York: Garland, 1990), 19/83; Patrick Gautier Dalché, La Géographie de Ptolémée en Occident (IVe–XVIe siècle) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 99 and 111–12. 35 ʿAlī ibn Abī l-Rijāl, Al-bāriʿ fī aḥkām al-nujūm, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2590, fols 349v-351r; Hongimann, Die sieben Klimata, 179; Gautier Dalché, La Géographie de Ptolémée en Occident, 112–13. 36 Hongimann, Die sieben Klimata, 114; Gautier Dalché, La Géographie de Ptolémée en Occident, 113–16. ʿAlī ibn Riḍwān’s commentary survives only in a Latin version, the Arabic version having been lost. 37 Al-Bakrī, Kitāb al-masālik wa-l-mamālik, ed. A.P. Van Leeuwen and A. Ferre, 2 vols (Tunis: Al-Dār al-ʿArabīya lil-Kitāb, 1992), vol. 2, 181, 188, 192 and 217. 38 Gautier Dalché, La Géographie de Ptolémée en Occident, 103–6.

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of Ptolemy’s Geography can be added the influences and actual citations from the geographical part of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos. Such influences and citations appear from the ninth century in the work of Ibn Khurradādhbih, who borrows the Tetrabiblos’ division of the world into four parts (Europe, Libya, Ethiopia and Scythia), and above all in the Ṣifat jazīrat al-ʿArab (Description of the Arabian Peninsula) of al-Hamdānī (d. 334/945).39 Surveying this evidence, one might be tempted to believe that, after the ninth century, all apparent citations or descriptions of Ptolemy’s Geography in Arabic and Persian geographical literature derive from al-Khwārazmī. However, the lists of co-ordinates mentioned by al-Battānī and Yāqūt, on the one hand, and the citations of the Geography by al-Bīrūnī on the other, reveal that the situation was not so clear. In his treatise on astronomy, al-Battānī (d. 317/929) gives a list of 273 places with co-ordinates which clearly comes from Ptolemy, or more precisely from the abridgement that terminates the work in certain Greek manuscripts of the Geography (Geog. 8.29.1–29).40 According to the hypothesis of Hans von Mžik,41 al-Battānī would have had access to the map of al-Khwārazmī, and even to Thābit ibn Qurra’s translation of the Geography, assuming that the latter actually existed. For his part, in his Muʿjam al-buldān (Dictionary of Lands), Yāqūt (d. 626/1229) often cites geographical co-ordinates from an enigmatic Kitāb al-malḥama (Book of the Epic) which are in fact identical to those contained in Ptolemy.42 However, since this list in its entirety includes medieval Muslim localities,43 one can conclude that it was based on Ptolemaic material, but that Yāqūt was not using a direct translation of the Geography. Traces of Ptolemy’s Geography were, nonetheless, undeniably present in Arabic geographical literature, even if direct quotations of the work are lacking. In his Kitāb taḥdīd nihāyat al-amākin li-taṣḥīḥ masāfat al-masākin (The determination of the co-ordinates of positions for the correction of distances 39 40

41 42 43

Ibn Khurradādhbih, Kitāb al-masālik wa-l-mamālik, 155; Al-Hamdānī, Ṣifat jazīrat al-ʿArab (Ṣanʿāʾ: Maktabat al-irshād, 1990), 45–81; André Miquel, La géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu’au milieu du 11e siècle, 3 vols (Paris: Mouton, 1967–80), vol. 2, 34–48. E.S. and M.H. Kennedy, Geographical Coordinates of Localities from Islamic Sources (Frankfurt am Main: Institut für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, 1987), xxviii-xxix; Al-Battānī sive Albatanii opus astronomicum, ed. C. Nallino (Milan: Hoepli, 1899–1907), 33–54; Honigmann, Die sieben Klimata, 126–31. Hans von Mžik, Afrika nach der arabischen Bearbeitung der Γεωγραφική ύφήγησις, 1–93, esp. viii. Al-Battānī . . . opus astronomicum, ed. Nallino, vol. 2, 35–54 and 209–20; E.S. and M.H. ­Kennedy, Geographical Coordinates of Localities from Islamic Sources, 395–98; Honigmann, Die sieben Klimata, 126–31. Fuat Sezgin, Mathematical Geography and Cartography, vol. 1, 75.

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between cities), al-Bīrūnī (d. c. 442/1050) refers to the Geography on numerous occasions. He clearly knew Ptolemy’s methods for calculating co-ordinates: “Once, I had the intention to glean the information provided by the method of Ptolemy, in his book, the Geography”;44 “[m]ost of the terrestrial longitudes and latitudes mentioned in (Ptolemy’s) book (called) the Geography were derived on the basis of the reported distances between the various localities on the surface of the earth”.45 Al-Bīrūnī also was able to compare contemporary topography with that contained in Ptolemy. He observes that the course of the Amu Darya (the Oxus) has changed over time: “Ptolemy relates in his book, the Geography, that the mouth of the Oxus is at the sea of Hyrcania, i.e. Jurjān. The time that has elapsed since the days of Ptolemy is about eight hundred years, and in those days the Oxus ran through the region, which is now a complete desert between the town of Zamm and Āmūya up to Balkhān …”.46 Ptolemy does indeed situate the outlet of the Oxus in the Hyrcanian sea (Geog. 6.9). Again, in relation to historical geography, Al-Bīrūnī opines that “at the present day, hearsay evidence about the amounts of distances is more accurate and trustworthy. For in the book (called) the Geography, we often find places which are located to the east of others, but actually they are to the west, and vice versa”.47 Finally, a notable passage from the Kitāb taḥdīd nihāyāt al-amākin on the calculation of latitude is clearly a summary of the third chapter of the first book of the Geography.48 Despite the presence of elements of the Geography in his work, however, it remains difficult to believe that al-Bīrūnī had access to a complete translation of Ptolemy’s work. If he had enjoyed such access, he would surely have used more of the Geography’s co-ordinates for his own work. Subsequent centuries saw a continuation of the indirect influence of Ptolemy’s Geography in the Arab world. In the first half of the eleventh century, in Egypt, the anonymous author of the Book of Curiosities (Kitāb gharāʾib al-funūn) cited the Geography of Ptolemy on two occasions.49 However, the 44

45 46 47 48 49

Al-Bīrūnī, The Determination of the Coordinates of Positions for the Correction of Distances between Cities, trans. Jamil Ali (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1967), 14; Al-Bīrūnī, Kitāb taḥdīd nihāyāt al-amākin, ed. P. Bulgakov (Cairo: Majallat maʿhad al-makhtūtāt, 1962), 38. See Ptolemy, Geography, 1.12 and 1.13. Al-Bīrūnī, Determination of the Coordinates, 190, Al-Bīrūnī, Kitāb taḥdīd nihāyāt al-amākin, 225. Al-Bīrūnī, Determination of the Coordinates, 19; Al-Bīrūnī, Kitāb taḥdīd nihāyāt al-amākin, 45. Al-Bīrūnī, Determination of the Coordinates, 191; Al-Bīrūnī, Kitāb taḥdīd nihāyāt al-amākin, 225. Al-Bīrūnī, Determination of the Coordinates, 183; Al-Bīrūnī, Kitāb taḥdīd nihāyāt al-amākin, 218. An Eleventh-Century Egyptian Guide to the Universe: The Book of Curiosities, ed. and trans. Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 414 and 442.

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vague manner of citation suggests that the Geography itself was not directly available. Also in Egypt, a document emanating from the Genizah collection (Cambridge, T-S AR 30 221) mentions Ptolemy and the climes, but the presence in this text of a toponym derived from al-Khwārazmī reveals that the here too the Geography was not in direct use. In the sixth/twelfth century, al-Idrīsī referred to “Ptolemy the Claudian” (Baṭlamyūs al-Aqlūdī) as one of the sources of his two geographical works, and the main body of al-Idrīsī’s Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq contains f­urther references.50 Al-Idrīsī clearly knew that Ptolemy’s Geography was a foundational work that had given its name to the discipline of describing the earth. He was aware that for Ptolemy the prime meridian of longitude ran through the “Eternal Isles” (the Canaries), and that the Geography located 1026 islands in the western Ocean. Al-Idrīsī mentions Ptolemy with regard to the sources of the Nile but, significantly, he also cites the Greek author as an authority on Gog and Magog, stating that he knows little about the region where these peoples are found, other than what Ptolemy says on the subject. Ptolemy, in fact, says nothing on the subject of Gog and Magog, a shared tradition within Jewish, Christian, and finally Muslim apocalyptic thought. Instead, careful study of the works of al-Idrīsī shows that, rather than the text of the Geography, he had among his sources the map of al-Khwārazmī, or one analogous to it. This point is confirmed by the re-appearance of the islands of the Amazons in the Baltic Sea, and above all by a large number of toponyms in the regions peripheral to the Mediterranean. While these toponyms are Greek in origin, the Arabic forms of them given by al-Idrīsī are close to their forms in al-Khwārazmī. For example, in west Africa, the place name “Mūna” or “Mūra” is a deformation of the Ptolemaic toponym “Μαγούρα πόλις” (Magura polis).51 In east Africa, the port of “Bāqaṭā” or “Rāqaṭā” on the Red Sea is a corruption of Ptolemy’s “Ῥαπτα μητρόπολις” (Rhapta metropolis), known by al-Khwārazmī as “Rāfṭā”.52 The port of “Manqūba” is Ptolemy’s “Κοβὴ ἐμπόρίoν” (the emporium of Kobe).53 The situation is identical in the north-east of Europe: as Irina Konovalova has shown, several of al-Idrīsī’s toponyms in this region derive from Ptolemy, but as mediated through al-Khwārazmī. For example, “Asqāqiyā” corresponds to “Ἀσπίσια” (Aspisia), “Ṭirma” to “Τυράμβη” (Tyrambe), and “Asqasqa” 50

51 52 53

Al-Idrīsī, Opus geographicum sive “Liber ad eorum delectationem qui terras peragrare studeant”, ed. E. Cerulli et al. (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, 1970–84), pp. 6, 7, 17, 43, 103, 221 and 939 (hereafter “Nuzhat al-mushtāq”); Jean-Charles Ducène, L’Afrique dans le Uns al-muhaǧ wa-rawḍ al-furaǧ d’al-Idrīsī (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), xxxviii. Al-Idrīsī, Nuzhat al-mushtāq, p. 17; Ducène, L’Afrique dans le Uns al-muhaǧ, 87. Al-Idrīsī, Nuzhat al-mushtāq, p. 43; Ducène, L’Afrique dans le Uns al-muhaǧ, 102. Al-Idrīsī, Nuzhat al-mushtāq, p. 43, where the reading should be “Manqūba” not “Manqūna”; Ducène, L’Afrique dans le Uns al-muhaǧ, p. 102.

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to “Άσκατάκα” (Askataka).54 These indications that the Geography of Ptolemy that al-Idrīsī cites as one of his sources was actually either the map used by al-Khwārazmī, or the work of al-Khwārazmī itself, rather than Ptolemy’s work, are reinforced by the fact that on the regional maps of al-Idrīsī, though not in his texts, a number of mountains that appear both in Ptolemy’s Geography and in al-Khwārazmī are given the form used in the latter.55 A handful of scattered references in subsequent works suggest that the Geography remained a text known at best at second hand. In the seventh/thirteenth century, Abū l-Fidāʾ attributed to Ptolemy a work with the title of Kitāb rasm al-rubʿ al-maʿmūr (Drawing of the inhabited quarter of the earth),56 and stated that it had been translated into Arabic for al-Maʾmūn. However, in the description of the northern ocean, Abū l-Fidāʾ specifies that the isle of Thule has a longitude of 10° 5’ and a latitude of 53°, and adds that he ­follows the Rasm al-arḍ of al-Khwārazmī. This citation of Ptolemy could, then, be understood as proof of an Arabic redaction of an abridgement of the Geography (perhaps Book Eight). Yet the allusion to al-Khwārazmī indicates rather the confusion of the later author for Ptolemy. On that note, the Irshad al-qāṣid ilā asnā al-maqāṣid (Guide to the seeker of the most sublime designs)57 of Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ṣāʿid ibn al-Akfānī al-Anṣārī (d. 749/1349), mentions Ptolemy’s Geography as a work that the author knows, but whose transposition of names into Arabic is incomprehensible. Finally, the Jughrāfiyā of Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū58 mentions Ptolemy on three occasions, but only to evoke the sources of the Nile and the use of the Canaries for the calculation of longitudes, once again making the likelihood of first-hand usage of the Geography appear highly questionable. As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the only Arabic text of the Geography to have been preserved is a late translation,59 produced in 1465 by the father and son Amuritzes of Trabzon for Mehmet II. During the summer of 54 55 56 57 58 59

Al-Idrīsī, Nuzhat al-mushtāq, pp. 921–22 and 928; I. Konovalova, Ал-Идриси о странах и народах восточной Европы (Moscow: Vostochnaia literatura RAN, 2006), 217, 247 and 253–56. von Mžik, Afrika nach der arabischen Bearbeitung der Γεωγραφική ύφήγησις, esp. 22–23. Abū l-Fidāʾ, Taqwīm al-buldān (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1840), 22 and 74; E.S. and M.H. Kennedy, Geographical Coordinates of Localities from Islamic Sources, xxii-xiii and xxx. J.H. Witkam, De egyptische arts Ibn al-Akfānī (gest. 749/1348). En zijn indeling van de wetenschappen (Leiden: Ter Lugt Pers, 1989). Ḥāfiẓ-i Abū, Jughrāfiyā, ed. Ṣ. Sajjād, 3 vols (Tehran: Daftar-i Nashr-i Mīrās-i Maktūb, 1997), vol. 1, 125, 138 and 279. Claudius Ptolemy, Geography: Arabic Translation (1465 A.D.). Reprint of the Facsimile Edition of the Ms Ayasofya 2610, ed. Fuat Sezgin (Frankfurt am Main: Institut für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, 1987).

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1465, Mehmet II had the opportunity to see a Greek manuscript of the Geography (Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum Library, G.I., 27). The Sultan then asked George Amuritzes to construct a world map from the assembly of all Ptolemy’s regional maps.60 The result has not survived, but it was clearly impressive, for it prompted Mehmet to request a translation of the Greek text by Amuritzes and his son. This text, which does not seem to have exerted any influence, survives in two versions. The first is contained in Istanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Ayasofya MS 2610, and is accompanied by a world map and regional maps, under the title Sūrat al-arḍ al-maʿmūra al-maʿlūma (Geography of the Known Inhabited World). It is incomplete, lacking chapters six and seven of Book Seven and chapters three to twenty-eight, and thirty of Book Eight. The second version, in Istanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Ayasofya MS 2596, lacks any maps and is unfinished. 5 Conclusion It would appear then that, while Ptolemy’s Geography is mentioned in medieval Arab sources, knowledge of the work was indirect. There is nothing to prove that a complete translation of the work was available to Arabic-Islamic scholars, or that they had direct access to the Greek text. In certain cases, the work of al-Khwārazmī was taken for that of Ptolemy. Both the Almagest and the Tetrabiblos were, of course, well known and much cited, and since the Tetrabiblos furnished a description of the known world, some authors confused it with the Geography. All the same, a certain number of geographical co-ordinates conserved in astronomical or geographical tables from different centuries manifestly derive from Ptolemy’s Geography. As these co-ordinates testify, some parts of the Geography did pass into Arabic, and were used independently thereafter. Unfortunately, while it is possible that they emerge from an abridgement of the Geography, perhaps Book Eight circulating alone, the exact origins of these co-ordinates remain unknown. This indirect knowledge of Ptolemy’s Geography in the medieval Arab world would be transmitted in part to Latin Europe through the translation of certain Arabic scientific works from the twelfth century onwards. Direct engagement 60

Ahmet T. Karamustafa, “Military, Administrative, and Scholarly Maps and Plans,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 2, book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, ed. J. Brian Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 209–27, esp. 210; A. Taşkın, ed., Before and after Pîrî Reis: Maps at Topkapı Palace (Istanbul: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanligi, 2013), 67; I. Ekmeleddin, Osmanlı coğrafya literatürü tarihi, 2 vols (Istanbul: İslâm Tarih, Sanat ve Kültür Araştırma Merkezi IRCICA, 2000), vol. 1, 12–13.

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with the Geography in the Latin West occurred later, and by other means. In the final analysis, one can conclude that Ptolemy’s Geography indirectly inspired Arab geographers to elaborate their image of the world, but that it exerted no influence on Latin geography as a result.

Translated by Alfred Hiatt

CHAPTER 3

The Transmission of Celestial Cartography from the Arabic-Islamic World to Europe: The Celestial Maps in MS Schoenberg ljs 057 Elly Dekker The assimilation of astronomical knowledge transmitted from the ArabicIslamic world to Europe is manifest in many works. As is well known, the most popular Arabic astronomical instrument, the astrolabe, became a standard device for time measurement in the Latin West, with an abundant accompanying literature.1 The most famous medieval handbook on mathematical astronomy, the Alfonsine Tables, derives from the now lost Castilian Alfonsine Tables, a work written in Toledo around 1270, composed by Isaac Ben Sid and Judah ben Moses ha-Cohen, using Arabic material.2 Yet the question of the transmission of celestial cartography from the Arabic-Islamic world to Christian Europe is far from clear-cut. Part of the problem lies in the lack of evidence from the Arabic-Islamic side. Not one medieval celestial map is currently known to have been made in the Islamic world, and only two eleventhcentury Arabic celestial globes made in Muslim Spain survive. Against this background, the pair of celestial hemispheres in Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania MS Schoenberg ljs 057, a compendium of Hebrew astronomical and astrological treatises, deserves special attention for what it has to tell us about the possible transmission of celestial maps between the ArabicIslamic world and Christian Europe. Before describing and analysing these maps for their evidence of cross-cultural transmission, however, it is necessary to ­highlight certain traditions and developments in medieval celestial cartography.

1 A review of the extensive literature can be found in Arianna Borrelli, Aspects of the Astrolabe: “architectonica ratio” in tenth- and eleventh-century Europe (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2008). 2 See José Chabás and Bernard R. Goldstein, The Alfonsine Tables of Toledo (Dordrecht: ­Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003).

© koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446038_005

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Traditions in Celestial Cartography

For centuries students in the medieval Latin West learned about the celestial sphere from illustrated astronomical manuscripts in which the stars were not fixed by mathematical co-ordinates but instead were localized by descriptions of their positions inside constellations. This descriptive tradition rests on a now lost account of the celestial sphere by the Greek astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidos (400–347 BCE). His work survives today in the Phaenomena, a didactic poem written by the Greek poet Aratus of Soli (c. 310–240/239 BCE) during his stay at the court of the Macedonian king Antigonus II Gonatas. Latin translations of the Phaenomena by Cicero (106–43 BCE), Germanicus (15 BCE– 19 CE), and Avienus (fourth century CE) played a prominent part in Roman education. These various Latin works became available in Christian Europe from the end of eighth century. In order to show readers how the constellations described in the poem are related in space, medieval manuscripts often included maps. The celestial maps in this Greco-Roman tradition can be grouped into two categories: pairs of hemispheres and planispheres. The Greco-Roman hemispheres present a view of half of the heavens as depicted on a celestial globe, bounded by the equinoctial colures, one hemisphere being centred on the summer and the other on the winter solstitial colure. The planispheres present a view of the whole sky, with the north pole in the centre and the everinvisible circle as its outer boundary. Extant copies date from the early ninth to the fifteenth centuries.3 In addition to these Greco-Roman maps, there are two other pairs of hemispheres, which again present views of half of the heavens as depicted on a celestial globe, but in this version both hemispheres are bounded by the equator, one hemisphere being centred on the north and the other on the south equatorial pole. These maps are without ancient counterpart and may be related to the efforts of Gerbert of Aurillac (946–1003) to make a celestial globe.4 In contrast to the Christian student, medieval Arabic scholars had from the third/ninth century onwards access to Arabic translations of Greek treatises on mathematical astronomy, such as Ptolemy’s Syntaxis Mathematica (or Almagest), a mathematical handbook devoted to the motions of the heavenly bodies. This book includes a star catalogue fixing the positions of 1025 stars by mathematical coordinates, valid for the epoch 137 CE, the beginning of the reign of Antoninus (20 July 137 CE). Two Arabic translations of the Syntaxis 3 Elly Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena: Celestial Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 126–92. 4 Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena, 192–207.

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made before the fourth/tenth century have survived, one by al-Ḥajjāj, completed in 212/827–28, and another by Isḥāq, which was revised by Thābit ibn Qurra (d. 288/901).5 The contact with Greek science brought about new genres in Arabic astronomy, many of which were directed to solve complicated mathematical problems, such as finding prayer times, the direction to Mecca (the qibla) and, for example, the mundane houses at the time of birth for astrological applications. This flourishing of astronomy is attested by the development of two instruments, the astrolabe and the celestial globe, which came to dominate the field of celestial cartography in the Arab world. The astrolabe is a flat device imitating the daily motion of the sun and the stars above the local horizon. The instrument consists essentially of two disks with data in stereographic projection: a plate with lines of constant altitude for a specific geographical latitude or climate, and a movable rete with a selection of important stars.6 The oldest dated astrolabe, dating from 315/927–28, was made in Baghdad.7 From the third/ninth century onwards, many treatises were written on how to use the astrolabe for solving time-related astronomical problems, which otherwise could only be solved with the help of astronomical tables. An early example is the treatise On the astrolabe written by the third/ ninth-century astronomer and mathematician al-Farghānī (d. after 247/861), known as Alfraganus in the Latin West.8 The celestial globe served to solve more or less the same problems as the astrolabe. The globe’s sphericity gave it an advantage over the abstraction of the astrolabe, but of course it could not be easily carried around. Early records suggest that Arabic globes were made already in the Middle East in the third/ ninth century.9 At that time also the first treatise with instructions on the use of the globe for problem solving, Book on the Sphere and its Use, was written by 5 A review of all Arabic translations is in Paul Kunitzsch, Der Almagest. Die Syntaxis Mathematica des Claudius Ptolemäus in arabisch-lateinischer Überlieferung (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1974), 15–82. An edition of the extant Arabic versions of the Ptolemaic star catalogue is in Paul Kunitzsch, ed., Claudius Ptolemäus: Der Sternkatalog des Almagest. Die arabischmittelalterliche Tradition. I: Die arabischen Übersetzungen (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1986). 6 A short description of the astrolabe can be found in David Proctor, “The construction and use of the astrolabe,” in Astrolabes at Greenwich: A Catalogue of the Astrolabes in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, ed. Koenraad van Cleempoel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 15–22. 7 David King, “Early Islamic Astronomical Instruments in Kuwaiti Collections,” in Kuwait Arts and Architecture: A Collection of Essays, ed. Arlene Fullerton and Géza Fehérvári (Kuwait: Oriental Press, 1995), 76–96, esp. 83. 8 Al-Farghānī, On the Astrolabe, ed. and trans. Richard Lorch (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005). 9 Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena, 278.

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Ḥabash al-Ḥāsib (mid third/ninth century).10 The earliest extant globe made in the Middle East dates from 540/1145–46. This globe and all others made in the Middle East before the tenth/sixteenth century show the impact of the Kitāb ṣuwar al-kawākib al-thābita (Book on the Constellations of the Fixed Stars), which the Persian astronomer ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī (291–376/902– 986) wrote for his patron ʿAḍud al-Dawla.11 Al-Ṣūfī’s work comprises an Arabic translation of the Ptolemaic star catalogue, corrected for precession to al-Ṣūfī’s epoch 353 (964 CE), by adding 12º 42’ to the corresponding Ptolemaic longitudes. Precession is a phenomenon that causes the ecliptic longitudes of the stars to increase slowly in time. As a consequence, a star catalogue presents the positions of the stars correct only for one particular year, called its epoch. The illustrated copies of al-Ṣūfī’s work usually include two drawings of each constellation, one as seen in the sky, and another as seen on the sphere, the one being the mirror image of the other. For a long time the copy in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Marsh 144, was cited as the oldest extant version of al-Ṣūfī’s book. Recent research indicates that the colophon, which mentions a date of 400/1009–10, is a later addition. The manuscript is now thought to date from the late twelfth century. However that may be, the illustrations in this version of al-Ṣūfī’s work are from an astronomical point of view of an outstanding quality.12 The astrolabe and the celestial globe are often described as analogue computers because their main function is to solve astronomical problems, as the many treatises on the use of these instruments attest. As Emilie Savage-Smith has pointed out, the preoccupation with practicalities of problem solving may have been the main reason that medieval Arabic astronomers were not interested in making celestial maps, although the knowledge to do so was not lacking.13 Whatever the reason, no medieval Arabic celestial maps are known 10

Richard Lorch and Paul Kunitzsch, “Ḥabash al Ḥāsib’s Book on the Sphere and its Use,” Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften 2 (1985): 68–98. 11 Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena, 323–336. For al-Ṣūfī, see H.C.F.C. Schjellerup’s translation of the Kitāb ṣuwar al kawākib by al-Sūfī: Description des étoiles fixes (St. Petersburg: Commissionnaires de l’Académie Impériale des sciences, 1874). Paul Kunitzsch, “The astronomer Abu ’l-Ḥusayn al-Ṣūfī and his Book on the Constellations,” Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften 3 (1986): 56–81. 12 Emilie Savage-Smith, “The Stars in the Bright Sky: The Most Authoritative Copy of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī’s Tenth-century Guide to the Constellations,” in God is Beautiful and Loves Beauty: The Object in Islamic Art and Culture, ed. Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 122–55. The copy of al-Ṣūfī’s book in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Marsh 144 can be accessed at http://bodley30.bodley.ox.ac.uk:8180/. 13 J. L. Berggren, “Al-Bīrūnī on Plane Maps of the Sphere,” Journal for the History of Arabic Science 6 (1982): 47–81.

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today. The few Islamic celestial maps that exist are copies of seventeenth-century European maps.14 With the expansion of Islam, many Arabic books and mathematical instruments arrived in the Iberian peninsula. The arrival of instruments triggered their production in the Latin West. About a dozen Islamic astrolabes, made in Muslim Spain in the tenth and eleventh centuries, have been preserved,15 along with two Islamic celestial globes, dated to c. 473/1080, which were also produced there.16 The star positions on these globes derive from the Ptolemaic star catalogue belonging to the Maghrib branch of the translation by al-Ḥajjāj. In contrast, the iconography of the constellations engraved on them reflects an early tradition in globe making in the Middle East, predating al-Ṣūfī’s uranography. Arabic-Islamic learning opened a completely new world to Christian scholars. Around 1175 CE, Ptolemy’s Syntaxis Mathematica was translated into Latin from the Arabic versions circulating in Muslim Spain by Gerard of Cremona, a translation which became known in the Latin West as the Almagest.17 Gerard’s translation included the star catalogue, which would dominate celestial cartography in the mathematical tradition until a fifteenth-century Latin translation made by George of Trebizond (Trapezuntius) directly from Greek became available in print in 1528.18 Al-Ṣūfī’s Book on the Constellations of the Fixed Stars was not translated into Latin, but its impact is manifest through the star catalogue in the Libros del saber, a prestigious astronomical work written in Castilian in the second half of the thirteenth century, under the patronage of Alfonso 14

15 16

17 18

E. Savage-Smith, “Celestial mapping,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 2, book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, ed. J. Brian Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 12–70. A late sixteenth-century reference to a celestial map is discussed by Paul Kunitzsch, “Joseph Scaliger’s Mappa ­Turcica,” Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften 19 (2010– 2011): 227–33. For the astrolabes, see the lists in David A. King, Astrolabes from Medieval Europe (­Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), chapter 12. The two globes are described in Elly Dekker and Paul Kunitzsch, “An Early Islamic Tradition in Globe Making,” Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften 18 (2008–2009): 155–211. One of these globes is in the Museo Galileo (Museo di Storia della Scienza), Inv. no. 2712 in Florence (hereafter referred to as the Florence globe) and the other in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Inv. no. Ge A 325 Rés (hereafter referred to as the Paris globe). Paul Kunitzsch, Claudius Ptolemäus: Der Sternkatalog des Almagest. Die arabisch-mittelalterliche Tradition. II: Die lateinische Übersetzung Gerhards von Cremona (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1990). Elly Dekker, “Caspar Vopel’s Ventures in Sixteenth-Century Celestial Cartography,” Imago Mundi 62 (2010): 161–90.

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X.19 The longitudes of the stars are adjusted to the Alfonsine epoch 1252 CE and its images are adaptations of al-Ṣūfī’s drawings. The Libros del saber was translated into Italian in Seville in the middle of the fourteenth century and reached England at the end of that century.20 Al-Ṣūfī’s iconography entered the Latin West predominantly along another route, through the illustrations of constellations in works belonging to the Ṣūfī Latinus corpus. These treatises consist of Gerard’s Latin translation of the Ptolemaic star catalogue, adjusted to al-Ṣūfī’s epoch 353/964, with drawings taken from a copy of al-Ṣūfī’s work.21 The oldest extant copy (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 1036) dates from the first half of the thirteenth century but its archetype is believed to be older and to have originated in Sicily. Interest in Islamic celestial globes seems to have been lacking in the Latin West. The astrolabe apparently answered the basic need for monastic time keeping, and all scholarly efforts were directed towards improving an understanding of the planetary theories described in the Almagest, so vital for the growing interest in astrology. The suggestion that Gerbert of Aurillac made a celestial globe after an Islamic model can be dismissed. The celestial globe he designed has all the characteristics of the Greco-Roman descriptive tradition.22 The earliest extant mathematical celestial globe produced in Christian Europe is Cusanus’s precession globe, dated around 1325, the construction of which follows Ptolemy’s instructions for globe making.23 This enigmatic instrument is completely isolated from the major developments in celestial cartography. The first signs of interest in globe making in the Latin West are translations of Qusṭā ibn Lūqā’s Book concerning the Globe, a treatise in sixty-five chapters with detailed instructions on the use the globe for solving astronomical 19

Julio Samsó, “Qusṭā ibn Lūqā and Alfonso X on the celestial globe,” Suhayl 5 (2005): 63–79, esp. 66–79. Julio Samsó and Mercè Comes, “Al-Ṣūfī and Alfonso X,” Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences 38 (1988): 67–76. 20 Most of the illustrations in the original manuscript of the Libros del saber, Madrid, Universidad Complutense, MS 156, have been cut out. For that reason I use those in the Italian translation in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 8174, which are a close copy of the original illustrations. A description of Vat. Lat. 8174 is in Pierre Knecht, I Libri astronomici di Alfonso X in una versione fiorentina del Trecento (Zaragoza: Libreria general, 1965). The arrival of the Italian translation in England is attested by a manuscript now in Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, 83. MO.136 (MS Ludwig XII 7); see Anton von Euw and Joachim M. Plotzek, “XII 7 Sammelhandschrift,” in Die Handschriften der Sammlung Ludwig, vol. 3 (Cologne: Schnütgen-Museum, 1982), 176–82. 21 Kunitzsch, “The astronomer Abu ’l-Ḥusayn al-Ṣūfī,” 66–77. 22 Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena, 194–207. 23 Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena, 343–57. Together with an astrolabe and a torquetum, this globe was purchased in 1444 by Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa or Nicolaus Cusanus (1401–64), the famous German polymath.

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problems. Already in the thirteenth century, a Castilian version of this book had been made by Judah ben Moses ha-Cohen and Johan Daspa as part of the collection of treatises in the Libros del saber.24 Like the other books in this collection, it was translated in 1341 into Italian. Qusṭā ibn Lūqā’s globe treatise was also directly translated from the Arabic into Latin and Hebrew. The Hebrew translation by Jacob ben Makhir ibn Tibbon (c. 1236–c. 1305) was in turn translated into Latin by Stephanus Arlandi of Barcelona in 1301.25 Another Latin text on the construction and the use of a celestial globe, Tractatus de sphaera solida, written in 1303, may have been composed by using an as yet unidentified Arabic text.26 However, it cannot be a straightforward copy of an Arabic text, because it includes elements that are not found in Arabic globe treatises or on Islamic globes.27 In any case, the Tractatus de sphaera solida appears to have been most influential in medieval Europe.28 The earliest extant maps based on the Ptolemaic star catalogue made in the Latin West is a set of celestial maps, preserved in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Pal. lat. 1368, fols 63r–64v.29 These Dyffenbach maps, so called because the part of the codex with the maps was written by Conrad of Dyffenbach around 1426, are unfinished, in contrast to the pair of hemispheres included in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 5415, fol. 168r and fol. 170r, of c. 1435, a codex written by Reinardus Gensfelder (c.1385–1457?).30 This pair of hemispheres is part of the treatise Tractatus de sphaera solida describing the construction of a celestial globe, which shows how after plotting the stars, according to their Ptolemaic longitudes and latitudes, the constellations are to be drawn on the sphere.31 The coordinate grids of the Vienna hemispheres are in keeping with those used on the globe. They extend from 24 25

Samsó, “Qusṭā ibn Lūqā and Alfonso X,” 66–69. Richard Lorch and José Martínez Gázquez, “Qusta ben Luca: De sphera uolubili,” Suhayl 5 (2005): 9–62. 26 Richard Lorch, “The sphera solida and related instruments,” Centaurus 24 (1980): 153–61. Kathrin Chlench, Johannes von Gmunden deutsch. Der Wiener Codex 3055. Deutsche Texte des Corpus astronomicum aus dem Umkreis von Johannes von Gmunden (Vienna: Fassbaender, 2007). 27 Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena, 343. 28 Chlench, Johannes von Gmunden deutsch, 53–57, lists 28 manuscripts. 29 Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena, 357–67. 30 For this codex, see K. Hranitzky, V. Pirker-Aurenhammer, S. Rischpler, M. Roland, M. Schuller-Juckes, eds, “Mitteleuropäische Schulen V (ca. 1410–1450), Wien und Niederösterreich,” in Die illuminierten Handschriften und Inkunabeln der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, vol. 14 (Vienna: Verlag der Ö sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2012), 19–28. 31 Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena, 367–78. Chlench, Johannes von Gmunden deutsch, 96: “Et post hec oportet te inscibere imagines celi.”

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the north and south ecliptic poles, respectively, to the ecliptic, and there is a set of twelve lines of constant longitude, emanating from the poles and corresponding with the division of the ecliptic into the twelve zodiacal signs. Such a coordinate grid is well suited to plot the ecliptic longitudes and latitudes of the stars, recorded in the Ptolemaic star catalogue, and is typical for mappings in the mathematical tradition. In a way, the Vienna codex signals the starting point of celestial cartography in the mathematical tradition in ­Christian Europe. In the light of these developments, the pair of celestial hemispheres in the Hebrew Codex MS Schoenberg ljs 057, pp. 116–144, dated to c. 1400 and of Spanish provenance, raises a number of interesting questions. Do these Schoenberg maps exemplify a previously unknown Hebrew tradition or are they part of the Arabic tradition in celestial cartography? Their relevance to the later European developments in map and globe making is also significant. In the late 1920s, Fritz Saxl suggested that the above mentioned Vienna pair of hemispheres was a precise copy of an “oriental” model. He thought that Arabic star maps were first copied in Spain, and then migrated via Italy to Northern Europe.32 Thus another important question is whether these Hebrew celestial maps could be related to Saxl’s alleged Arabic model, and the later Vienna pair. The detailed examination of these Hebrew maps below aims to provide an answer to these questions. 2

The Schoenberg Maps

The compendium that is MS Schoenberg ljs 057 consists of Hebrew astronomical and astrological treatises by the well-known Jewish astronomers Abraham bar Ḥiyya (1070–1136), Abraham ibn Ezra (1089-c.1167), and Jacob ben David Poʿel (also known as Jacob ben David Bonjorn), who flourished in the fourteenth century. The Schoenberg maps (Fig. 3.1) precede a rare, illustrated Hebrew translation of the Ptolemaic star catalogue, with stellar longitudes adapted to the epoch 1391.33 The codex is rather worn. The text in the star catalogue, for example, is hard to read and there has been a certain amount of reworking of the drawings. Contours have been added around the constellation 32 33

Fritz Saxl, Verzeichnis astrologischer und mythologischer illustrierter Handschriften des lateinischen Mittelalters. II. Die Handschriften der National-Bibliothek in Wien (Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1927), 25 and 38. A facsimile of MS Schoenberg ljs 057 has been made available online by the University of Pennsylvania: http://sdbm.library.upenn.edu. A description of the codex is in Karl A.F. Fischer, Paul Kunitzsch, and Y. Tzvi Langermann, “The Hebrew Astronomical Codex MS. Sassoon 823,” The Jewish Quarterly Review n.s. 78 (1988): 253–92.

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fig. 3.1a Northern celestial hemisphere. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, MS ­Schoenberg ljs 057, p. 112. fig. 3.1b Southern celestial hemisphere. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, MS ­Schoenberg ljs 057, p. 113.

figures. The stars, marked on the figures, are generally coloured brown inside a red circle, but black circles have been added in places. External stars outside constellations are marked sometimes by a different colour, most often grey. A fragment of this Hebrew catalogue, preserved in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS Heb. 132, fols 64v-68r, is in much better shape.34 The Schoenberg pair of hemispheres also shows signs of wear, to the extent that, for example, it is impossible to make out what the image for the constellation Lyra represents. The pair of hemispheres in MS Schoenberg ljs 057, pp. 112–13, was probably added to the codex as an illustration to the star catalogue. The images of individual constellations in the catalogue itself do not demonstrate the spatial relations of the constellations, whereas those depicted on the hemispheres do. In this sense the pair of hemispheres and the catalogue illustrations complement each other. But there the affiliation of the hemispheres with the catalogue seems to end. 34

Arthur Zacharias Schwarz, Die hebräischen Handschriften der Nationalbibliothek in Wien (Vienna: Strache, 1925), 208–11.

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fig. 3.2 Images of Bootes in the star catalogue in MS Schoenberg ljs 057 (left) and on the northern celestial hemisphere (right). Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, MS Schoenberg ljs 057, p. 119 and p. 112, respectively.

There are a number of striking differences between the constellations depicted on the hemispheres and the catalogue illustrations. For example, the style of the constellations differs. In Fig. 3.2 the images of Bootes, the ox-driver, in the catalogue and on the northern hemisphere are set side by side. In the catalogue Bootes wears a coat with long, wide sleeves. In his right hand he holds a lance, and a straight sword is attached to his belt. However, on the hemisphere Bootes is dressed as a farmer holding a stick in his left hand. This comparison also illustrates another distinction. There are no stars indicated on the constellations drawn on the hemispheres, whereas, as already noted above, stars are marked on the catalogue illustrations. The absence of stars on the hemispheres may mislead a casual observer to think that the maps belong to the descriptive tradition current in medieval Christian Europe. However, there are good reasons to exclude this possibility. First of all, the pair of hemispheres is part of a codex with mathematical works, in which texts related to the Aratean poem are lacking. More importantly, the coordinate grid used for the present hemispheres is not part of the Greco-Roman descriptive tradition that dominated celestial cartography in Christian Europe. Although the coordinate grids of the Hebrew hemispheres are the same as used on the Vienna pair of hemispheres (in Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 5415),

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there the stars are prominently positioned. For less scientifically-oriented minds constellations are of greater interest than stars. This explains why copyists sometimes ignore the stars and reproduce only the constellations, as happened, for example, in a copy of the Vienna pair made around 1450.35 The same reason could explain the absence of stars on the Hebrew hemispheres, implying that this pair is in fact a copy of a model in the mathematical tradition. If this thesis is correct, it would be of interest to know its epoch since that would be equal to the epoch of the model.36 3

Precession Correction

Since there are no stars marked on the hemispheres, their epoch can be determined only indirectly by making use of the descriptive part of the Ptolemaic star catalogue, which connects the ecliptic coordinates to locations in constellations. For example, the westernmost star in Andromeda (α And) is described by Ptolemy as the first star in the constellation Pegasus: “the star in the navel [of Pegasus], which is common to the head of Andromeda”.37 On the section of the northern hemisphere shown in Fig. 3.3 the line of zero constant longitude passes through the head of Andromeda, close to the Horse’s navel.38 The longitude of α And was in Ptolemy’s days around 348º (Psc 17º 50’ to be precise). For this star to be on or near the line of constant zero longitude, a precession correction of about 12º is needed. To verify this preliminary hypothesis, I analysed 47 similar features, all of which are close to one of the twelve lines of constant longitudes, and determined the mean value and standard deviation of the precession corrections associated with them. In Table 3.1 the precession correction obtained in this way is compared with those of a number of sources.

35 Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena, 378–81, and Figs. 5.20–5.22. 36 For the sake of completeness, a short remark on the projection used in constructing the present hemispheres has to be made. The sections of circles drawn on them, representing the parts of the equator above or below the ecliptic, can, in principle, help to decide whether the maps are based on equidistant or stereographic projection. Unfortunately, these sections are not drawn very accurately. On both hemispheres the points of intersection between the sections of circles representing the equator and the solstitial colure are at a distance of about 0.80 from the ecliptic pole, when expressed as a fraction of the diameter of the equator. This value is closer to the ratio predicted by equidistant (0.74) than to that predicted by stereographic projection (0.66). 37 G. J. Toomer, Ptolemy’s Almagest (London: Duckworth, 1984), 358. 38 Zero longitude is by definition set at the vernal equinox, fixed by one of the intersections of the ecliptic and the equator.

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fig. 3.3 Lines of constant longitude marked on a section of the northern celestial hemisphere in MS Schoenberg ljs 057. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, MS Schoenberg ljs 057, p. 112. table 3.1  Precession corrections used in the Schoenberg hemispheres and other sources

Source

Precession correction Epoch CE

Pair of hemispheres in MS Schoenberg ljs 057 Al-Ṣūfī’s star catalogue Florence globe (Museo Galileo, Inv. no. 2712) Paris globe (BnF, Inv. no. Ge A 325 Rés) Catalogue in the Libros del saber (Alfonso X ) Catalogue in MS Schoenberg ljs 057 Catalogue in Vienna MS 5415 Pair of hemispheres in Vienna MS 5415

12º 12º 14º 14º 17º 18º 18º 18º

23’ 42’ 5’ 3’ 8’ 28’ 56’ 53’

964 1067 1067 1252 1391 1424 1424

What we conclude from the data in Table 3.1 is, first of all, that the precession correction of the Hebrew hemispheres (12° 23’) differs substantially from that applied to the Hebrew star catalogue (18° 28’), which confirms the earlier

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impression that the pair of hemispheres and its model are not related to this catalogue. It is equally interesting, and surprising, that the precession correction is closest to that of al-Ṣūfī’s star catalogue (12° 42’). This latter result suggests strongly that the present Western-looking pair of hemispheres is in fact a copy of an Arabic-Islamic model based on al-Ṣūfī’s work. But how are we to demonstrate this? In the absence of any texts, such as constellation and star names, the iconography of the constellation images is the only means to answer this question. 4 Iconography The source material for an iconographical analysis can be divided into the cultural spheres of influence of the Arabic-Islamic world and the Latin West. Among the Arabic sources we have: IA. Illustrated star catalogues in treatises of al-Ṣūfī’s work, adjusted to the epoch 353/964.39 IB. The Florence and Paris globes of c. 473/1080 made in Muslim Spain, with an iconography predating al-Ṣūfī’s. IC. East-Islamic celestial globes made before the tenth/sixteenth century, based on al-Ṣūfī’s iconography.40 Among the Latin/Castilian sources are: IIA. Treatises belonging to the Ṣūfī Latinus corpus. IIB. The illustrated star catalogue in the Libros del saber. IIC. Illustrated copies of the Latin version of the Ptolemaic star catalogue, an example of which is in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 5415, adjusted to the epoch 1424 CE.41 39

A study of the iconography of the images in al-Ṣūfī’s Book of the Fixed Stars was started by Emmy Wellesz, “An early al-Sūfī manuscript in the Bodleian Library in Oxford: A Study in Islamic Constellation Images,” Ars Orientalis 3 (1959): 1–26. It was extended by Moya Catherine Carey, Painting the Stars in a Century of Change: A Thirteenth-Century Copy of Al-Sūfī’s Treatise on the Fixed Stars (British Library Or. 5323) (PhD thesis, University of London, 2001). There are still dozens of copies of al-Ṣūfī’s book which have not yet been studied in detail. 40 Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena, 327–36. 41 Kristen Lippincott, “The astrological vault of the Camera di Griselda from Roccabianca,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 48 (1985): 43–70, esp. 67–70. Dieter Blume, Mechthild Haffner, Wolfgang Metzger, with the cooperation of Katharina Glanz,

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IID. Cusanus’s globe of c. 1325 CE. IIE. The pair of celestial hemispheres in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 5415, adjusted to the epoch 1424 CE. Using the above source material, I have analysed the iconography of the constellations drawn on the Hebrew hemispheres and in the Hebrew star catalogue. I have selected the constellations Auriga and Corona Borealis to illustrate the result of this analysis. In the copy of al-Ṣūfī’s book contained in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Marsh 144, Auriga, the rein-holder, appears dressed in an Eastern fashion.42 Typical features of al-Ṣūfī’s iconography, as seen in this manuscript, are the whip in one hand and a piece of folded cloth (perhaps intended to represent reins) held before him, in a characteristic position in his other hand. These features are not explicitly described in the Ptolemaic star catalogue but are part of a pictorial tradition. Most copies of al-Ṣūfī’s work show both characteristics of Auriga but occasionally the piece of folded cloth is missing.43 The images of Auriga “as seen on the sphere” on Eastern Islamic globes show the whip and a piece of folded cloth or ribbons in keeping with the generally accepted opinion that the iconography on these globes is based on al-Ṣūfī’s work.44 The illustration of Auriga in treatises of the Ṣūfī Latinus corpus also show these characteristic features. However, the images of Auriga on the Florence and Paris globes lack al-Ṣūfī’s key features.45 The images of Auriga on the northern hemisphere and in the star catalogue in the Schoenberg manuscript also show Auriga’s characteristics in the sense that both display the whip and the characteristic position of the hand in front of the body. The figure on the hemisphere holds the end of a belt instead of a piece of folded cloth (Fig. 3.4). In the Libros del saber, exemplified by Vatican S­ ternbilder des Mittelalters und der Renaissance: Der gemalte Himmel zwischen Wissenschaft und Phantasie, vol. 2 (1200–1500) (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2016). 42 For the images of Auriga “as seen on the sphere” and “as seen in the sky”, see https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/. 43 The piece of folded cloth is included on the images in Istanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, MS Fatih 3422 (519 H [1125/26]); and in Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum Library, MS Ahmet III 3493 (525 H [12 January 1131]); see the Iconographic database of the Warburg Institute: https://iconographic.warburg.sas.ac.uk/. It is also depicted in the image in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Huntington 212 (566 H [1170/71]); see Carey, Painting the Stars, 133–34. The piece of folded cloth is absent in MS 2.1998 (519 H [April 1125]) in the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha (Emilie Savage-Smith, private communication). It is also missing in the copy in the British Library, MS Or. 5323 [1260–1280?]; see Carey, Painting the Stars, 133. 44 Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena, 329, Fig. 423a, and 332, Fig. 424a. 45 Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena, 324, Fig. 421c, and 326, Fig. 422a.

fig. 3.4 Images of Auriga in the star catalogue in MS Schoenberg ljs 057 (left) and on the northern celestial hemisphere (right). Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, MS Schoenberg ljs 057, p. 144 and p. 112, respectively

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fig. 3.5 Images of Auriga on Cusanus’s globe in Bernkastel-Kues, St Nicolas Hospital (left) and on the northern celestial hemisphere (right), in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 5415, fol. 168r.

City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 8174, Auriga holds narrow bands in both hands but the stick is gone; in Latin star catalogues with stellar longitudes adjusted for precession by the Alfonsine epoch, such as Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 3099, the whip is replaced by a pair of tongs and the reins are gone, although the characteristic position of the hand in front of the body is reminiscent of al-Ṣūfī’s iconography. Looking now at Auriga’s images on Cusanus’s globe and the northern hemisphere in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 5415 (Fig. 3.5) it is clear that neither of these two sources display the basic elements of al-Ṣūfī’s iconography. On Cusanus’s globe, Auriga is in front view with a goat and a kid on his right shoulder and arm, respectively. On the Vienna hemisphere, Auriga is seen from behind and carries a goat on his left shoulder, as described in the Ptolemaic star catalogue, exemplifying the later Western tradition. Indeed, goats are conspicuously absent in Arabic iconography. In copies of al-Ṣūfī’s work two distinct shapes of Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown, occur. In one version, Corona Borealis is presented as a circle or ring (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Marsh 144) and in others (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 5036) as a bowl.46 According to al-Ṣūfī, 46

Many of the images mentioned here and below are available in the Iconographic database of the Warburg Institute: https://iconographic.warburg.sas.ac.uk/.

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fig. 3.6 Corona Borealis on the Arabic globe in Florence, Museo Galileo, 2712 (left), on the northern celestial hemisphere in Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, MS Schoenberg ljs 057, p. 112 (centre), and on the Arabic globe in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ge A 325 Rés (right).

there is a gap or a break in the circle and for that reason it was popularly called “the bowl of the poor”.47 Corona Borealis is presented in this way on the Florence and Paris globes (Fig. 3.6). Most sources represent Corona Borealis as a ring (for example, the Ṣūfī Latinus in Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 1036) or as an interrupted circle (the Libros del saber in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 8174), reflecting the break in the ring mentioned by al-Ṣūfī. The illustration in the Hebrew star catalogue in the Schoenberg manuscript shows Corona Borealis as a ring, as in Oxford, MS Marsh 144, but here it is elaborated as a westernised crown.48 Of greater interest is the image of Corona Borealis on the northern hemisphere in MS Schoenberg ljs 057, close to the head of Bootes (Fig. 3.1 and 3.6). It is shaped as a horseshoe, a form that recalls the images of “the bowl of the poor” on the Florence and Paris globes. The artist of the Hebrew hemispheres may not have recognized the bowl and ended up with the shape of a horseshoe. The Hebrew hemispheres also display a number of features that are not part of al-Ṣūfī’s iconography. For example, on the southern hemisphere Corona ­Australis is part of a Western iconographic tradition.49 The most interest47 48 49

Paul Kunitzsch, private communication, 25 May 2014. For al-Ṣūfī’s book, see Schjellerup, Description des étoiles fixes, 69. The image in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS Heb. 132 is in better condition than that in the star catalogue in MS Schoenberg ljs 057, which has been manipulated, presumably by a later hand. Examples are the pictures of Corona Australis in the star catalogues in Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, MS 10117–26, in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 5415, and on the Vienna hemispheres of 1424. In copies of al-Ṣūfī’s work, the image of Corona Australis is shaped as some sort of leaf or teardrop, which is reproduced, for

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ing deviation from al-Ṣūfī’s iconography for the present analysis is the curious flowery image with four leaves above Leo on the northern hemisphere (Fig. 3.1). It is connected to three external stars belonging to the nebulous mass known today as Berenice’s Hair (Coma Berenices). Ptolemy’s description of the last of these stars mentions that they are shaped as an ivy leaf, but in illustrated catalogues these stars are never presented as part of an image.50 It is clearly not part of al-Ṣūfī’s iconography. So where did it come from? Celestial cartographers seem to have been inspired by the group of stars above Leo. Pictures of an ivy leaf are found in summer and winter hemispheres belonging to the descriptive tradition, and on the celestial hemisphere drawn on the inner sphere of the cupola of the bath house in a country residence in Quṣayr ʿAmra, built in the first half of the second/eighth century.51 The ivy leaf is also engraved above the tail of Leo on the Paris globe (Fig. 3.7, left). On later East-Islamic globes the stars are placed in a kind of flower held by Virgo in her northern hand (Fig. 3.7, right). Thus, on Arabic-Islamic globes there is a pictorial tradition connected with the external stars above Leo, which does not have a counterpart in star catalogues. The particular shape of the flowery image in the Schoenberg manuscript’s northern hemisphere may ultimately be connected to the Latin translation of the text of the star Leo 8e in the Ptolemaic star catalogue: “Sequens earum et est in figura simili rose fusus et est species uolubilis” (the following one of them, it is in a figure similar to a rose [called] fusus, that is a kind of climbing plant).52 On the planisphere published by Peter Apian in 1536 the asterism is drawn in the form of a rose.53 The corresponding text of the star Leo 8e in the Hebrew catalogue in MS Schoenberg ljs 057 is: “ha-nimshakh aḥaraw domeh [le]-shoshannah” (the one following after it which is like a lily/rose). example, in treatises of Ṣūfī Latinus (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 1036) and in the Libros del saber (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 8174). In other sources the image of Corona Australis is identical to that of Corona Borealis. 50 Toomer, Ptolemy’s Almagest, 368. 51 Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena, 140–42 and 260–78. 52 Kunitzsch, Sternkatalog des Almagest II: Die lateinische Übersetzung Gerhards von Cremona, 102–3. The translation is by Paul Kunitzsch, private communication. The corrupted Latin phrase “rose fusus” is based on 1. the Arabic word warda for rose, miswritten in Gerard’s sources for the Arabic word waraqa, which means leaf. 2. fusus stems from the Arabic word qisūs, which was misread as fusūs. The Arabic word qisūs is a transcription of the Greek word κισσός meaning ivy. In al-Ṣūfī’s book (Schjellerup, Description des étoiles fixes, 158) the description of the external star Leo 8e is as in a figure resembling an ivy leaf, that is a kind of creeper (climbing plant). 53 Paul Kunitzsch, Peter Apian und Azophi: Arabische Sternbilder in Ingolstadt im frühen 16. Jahrhundert (Munich: Beck, 1986), Fig. 1. The more familiar Western image for Coma Berenices was first introduced on a globe of 1536 by Caspar Vopel, see Dekker, “Caspar Vopel’s Ventures,” 175.

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fig. 3.7 Ivy leaf on the Arabic globe in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ge A 325 Rés (left) and the flower on the Arabic globe in Dresden, Staatlicher Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon, E II 1 (right).

The Hebrew term shoshannah usually means “lily” but Bernard R. Goldstein presumes that it here corresponds to the Latin rosa.54 Summing up the evidence of the iconography, we can confirm that the images of the constellations in both the Hebrew star catalogue and on the Hebrew hemispheres in the Schoenberg manuscript stem chiefly, although not exclusively, from al-Ṣūfī’s iconography. However, it is also clear that the constellation figures on the hemispheres could not have been copied from the Hebrew star catalogue or any other Latin or Castilian star catalogue mirroring al-Ṣūfī’s iconography. 5 Orientations A further difference between the catalogue illustrations and the constellation figures on the pair of hemispheres in MS Schoenberg ljs 057 has to do with orientations. In the Hebrew star catalogue some constellations are presented “as seen in the sky” and others “as seen on the sphere”. The copyist of the Schoenberg manuscript selected only one of the two drawings from al-Ṣūfī’s book with the result that a mixture of the two types of presentations is seen in the illustrated catalogue. Had the artist copying the illustrations been interested in making maps or globes, his selection of the manner of presentation would have been more consistent. Table 3.2 summarizes the results of an examination of the orientations of the constellations in manuscripts of the Ṣūfī Latinus corpus, in the Libros del 54

The translation is from Bernard R. Goldstein, University of Pittsburgh, “The Names in Arabic, Latin, and Hebrew of Star 496 in Ptolemy’s Star Catalogue,” Private communication, 8 November 2013.

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saber (represented by Vat. lat. 8174), in the Hebrew star catalogue and on the Hebrew hemispheres in the Schoenberg manuscript. These data show that, as far as orientations are concerned, each of the sources differs from the others. In the Hebrew catalogue and in treatises of the Ṣūfī Latinus the majority of the constellations are drawn “as seen in the sky”. This overall agreement disappears when the details are considered. For example, in the Hebrew catalogue, Bootes, Hercules, and Perseus, to name only a few, are drawn “as seen in the sky”, whereas these constellations are presented “as seen on the sphere” in treatises of the Ṣūfī Latinus. In the Libros del Saber a substantial number of the constellations, but not all, are drawn “as seen on the sphere”. The only source with consistent orientations is the pair of hemispheres in MS Schoenberg ljs 057. In the absence of stars, the orientations of a number of constellations could not be determined. However, none are drawn “as seen in the sky”. This property is shared with the orientations of constellations depicted on Arabic celestial globes. table 3.2  Orientations of the constellations in the Schoenberg manuscript and other sources

Source

S

G

?

Ṣūfī Latinus Libros del Saber (Vat. lat. 8174)a Catalogue in MS Schoenberg ljs 057 Pair of hemispheres in MS Schoenberg ljs 057

32 10 33 -

16 31 7 41

5 8 7

S = the constellation is presented “as seen in the sky” G = the constellation is presented “as seen on the sphere” ? = the orientation cannot be determined a The images of the constellations Taurus and Sagittarius are missing

6 Conclusions While it is possible that the Schoenberg pair of hemispheres stems from a now lost Arabic pair, constructed from first principles using a copy of al-Ṣūfī’s book, the preference of Arabs for celestial globes over maps makes such a scenario unlikely. As mentioned previously, not one medieval celestial map is currently known to have been made in the Arabic-Islamic world. A more likely option is that a tenth-century Arabic-Islamic globe based on al-Ṣūfī’s iconography reached Muslim Spain and served as the model for the Hebrew pair of hemispheres. There are a number of features, such as the image of Coma Berenices and the orientations of the constellations, which are typical of an

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Arabic-Islamic globe. Whether such a globe was first turned into a pair of hemispheres, subsequently copied and westernized, or vice versa is immaterial. The assimilation of Arabic-Islamic celestial globes is poorly documented. According to Julio Samsó, “the celestial globe seems to have been known in alAndalus and in the Christian Kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula in the tenth century, although the evidence of it is scarce”.55 The iconography of the Florence and Paris globes bears witness that East Islamic globes were circulating in Spain in the eleventh century, but the iconography of these globes predates that of al-Ṣūfī. The Schoenberg maps attest that early eastern globes based on al-Ṣūfī’s tradition circulated in Spain. The Schoenberg codex also attests to the assimilation of Arabic astronomy in Hebrew circles. The illustrations in the Hebrew star catalogue are independent from those in manuscripts of the Ṣūfī Latinus corpus, and in the Libros del saber (Vat. lat. 8174). They must have been taken directly from an Arabic copy of al-Ṣūfī’s book. A number of other sources show Jewish interest in globes. A now lost Hebrew book on globes, written by the tenth-century Jewish philosopher, physician and astronomer Dunāsh, was sent to Ḥasdāy (905–75 CE), the head of the Andalusian Jewish community and a person of consequence during the caliphate of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III (r. 317–50/929–61).56 As already mentioned, Jewish astronomers translated Qusṭā ibn Lūqā’s Book concerning the Globe from the Arabic into Castilian and Hebrew. Ptolemy’s Syntaxis Mathematica was translated from the Arabic into Hebrew in the thirteenth century by Jacob Anatoli. The frequently quoted Libros del saber is exemplary of Jewish interest in instruments. A number of Hebrew astrolabes have survived.57 Jacob ben Makhir ibn Tibbon, whose translation of Qusṭā ibn Lūqā’s globe treatise has been mentioned above, also invented a new instrument, the quadrans novus.58 Although these astronomical activities cannot be linked to the present pair of 55 56

57

58

Samsó, “Qusṭā ibn Lūqā and Alfonso X,” 63. Marco Zuccato, “Gerbert of Aurillac and a Tenth-Century Jewish Channel for the Transmission of Arabic Science to the West,” Speculum 80 (2005): 742–63, esp. 762–3. ­Zuccato used Dunāsh’s work to argue in favour of an alleged Arabic impact on the globes made by Gerbert of Aurillac, but Gerbert’s globes are deeply rooted in the Greco-Roman descriptive tradition; see Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena, 192–207. For Ḥasdāy, see M. Perlmann, “Ḥasdāy b. Shaprūṭ,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., ed. P. Bearman et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2007): http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_2782. [con� sulted 17 August 2016] On Hebrew astrolabes, see Bernard R. Goldstein, “The Hebrew Astrolabe in the Adler Planetarium,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 35 (1976): 251–60. Bernard R. Goldstein and George Saliba, “A Hispano-Arabic Astrolabe with Hebrew Star Names,” Annali dell’Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze 8 (1983): 19–29. Elly Dekker, “An Unrecorded Medieval Astrolabe Quadrant, c. 1300,” Annals of Science 52 (1995): 1–47.

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hemispheres, they bear witness to a continued interest in celestial cartography in Jewish scientific communities. As Gad Freundenthal has noted: “The assimilation of Arabic learning by Jews under Islam was a natural consequence of their adoption of Arabic as their vernacular”.59 Through their command of the language, Jewish scholars had easy access to books written in Arabic and to Islamic mathematical instruments. It is therefore quite likely that the construction of the Hebrew pair of hemispheres, or an earlier version thereof, was initiated in Jewish circles in Spain. The above analysis has also made it clear that the Hebrew celestial maps are not the link that connects map making in the Arabic-Islamic world to the Latin West. Saxl supported his thesis of an Arabic exemplar for the Vienna maps by citing the characteristics of Hercules and Perseus, which are typical of al-Ṣūfī’s iconography. Unfortunately, he did not discuss others, such as Auriga, which do not fit into al-Ṣūfī’s tradition. One can explain the presence of one or two orientalised constellation images without the thesis of an Arabic exemplar for the Vienna pair of hemispheres.60 Arabic pictorial elements in celestial cartography were transmitted mostly by way of treatises belonging to the Ṣūfī Latinus corpus. However, the main reason for rejecting Saxl’s thesis of an Arabic exemplar for the Vienna hemispheres is that an Arabic tradition cannot explain presentations of the constellations in rear view, typical of the Vienna hemispheres (compare Auriga in Fig. 3.5).61 The Schoenberg maps show what an Arabic star map would have looked like had it ever existed, and it has none of the properties of the Vienna hemispheres. One can safely conclude, then, that the Hebrew pair of celestial hemispheres in Schoenberg MS ljs 057 has no link with map-making in the Latin world. The impact of Arabic-Islamic science on western celestial cartography came indirectly through the nomenclature of the astrolabe stars and the Arabic-Latin version of the Ptolemaic star catalogue, as well as, to a lesser extent, the illustrations of the Ṣūfī Latinus corpus. However, the hemispheres in Schoenberg MS ljs 057 do clearly attest to the circulation of Islamic globes in Muslim Spain, and, more broadly, to the deep levels of interaction between Muslim and Jewish scholarship in that part of Europe. 59

60 61

Gad Freudenthal, ed., Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 13. On Jewish scientific communities, see the many studies cited in Bernard R. Goldstein, “Astronomy among Jews in the Middle Ages,” in Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures, ed. Gad Freudenthal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 136–46. Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena, 374. Elly Dekker, “Construction and Copy: Aspects of the Early History of Celestial Maps,” Acta Historica Astronomiae 58 (2016): 47–93. Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena, 373.

CHAPTER 4

Geography at the Crossroads: The Nuzhat ­ al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq of al-Idrīsī Alfred Hiatt Few medieval geographers have achieved the renown of the author known as al-Idrīsī. His major work, unprecedented in its range and detail, stands as a landmark in the history of geography. Always a staple of the historical survey, and even accorded a major role in a twentieth-century opera,1 al-Idrīsī has in recent years become something of a beacon for inter-faith co-operation. That status derives not only from the richness of the oeuvre, but crucially from al-Idrīsī’s position at the court of the Norman King Roger II of Sicily. Written in Palermo, at the meeting point of Latin, Greek, and Arabic learning and administration, al-Idrīsī’s description of the world has seemed to some observers to represent an all too fleeting example of the exchange of knowledge across religious and linguistic boundaries.2 In a geography that incorporated ancient and contemporary description, and that extended from the sources of the Nile to Finmark, from the Atlantic to China, al-Idrīsī reached beyond the borders of any single ruler or faith. To put it simply, the possibilities of an encounter between Christian and Islamic geographical learning seem to have reached their fullest expression in the figure and the work of al-Idrīsī. Despite his pre-eminence, however, and notwithstanding much outstanding recent scholarship, many questions about al-Idrīsī and his work remain unanswered. Details of his life are sketchy; the number and titles of his writings unclear; and the precise nature of his role at Roger’s court uncertain. While the edition of his magnum opus, the Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq 1 Karol Szymanowski’s Król Roger, with libretto by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, was first performed in Warsaw, in July, 1926. Edrisi, an “Arabian sage”, is a tenor role. Perhaps his most striking twenty-first-century reincarnation to date is as the protagonist of Tariq Ali’s novel, A Sultan in Palermo (London: Verso, 2005). 2 See Jerry Brotton, A History of the World in Twelve Maps (London: Allen Lane, 2012), 54–81; Patricia Seed, The Oxford Map Companion: One Hundred Sources in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 66–67; Zayde Antrim, Routes and Realms: The Power of Place in the Early Islamic World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 145, notes the “vigorously universalist” nature of al-Idrīsī’s project. Similar views of al-Idrīsī can be found in older scholarship: see the emphasis on convivencia in al-Andalus in César E. Dubler, “Idrisiana Hispanica I. Probables itinerarios de Idrīsī por al-Andalus,” Al-Andalus 30 (1965): 89–137. © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446038_006

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(Promenade for the one eager to penetrate distant horizons), also known as the “Book of Roger”, represented an enormous step forward for scholarship,3 the seventy sectional maps that are integral to the work’s formulation await editing. Similarly, only selected parts of al-Idrīsī’s neglected “second” geographical work, the Uns al-muhaj wa-rawḍ al-furaj (The Entertainment of hearts and the meadows of contemplation), have received an edition and translation, albeit one of excellent quality.4 More broadly, scholarship on al-Idrīsī has tended to concentrate on portions of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq relevant to the particular expertise or interest of the investigator, rather than on the work as a whole. The result of this approach has been a preponderance of studies and partial editions focussed on European regions (Finmark and Russia; Poland; Germany and Austria; France; al-Andalus and Spain; Italy; Sicily; the British Isles; the Balkans),5 3 Al-Idrīsī, Opus geographicum sive “Liber ad eorum delectationem qui terras peragrare studeant”, ed. E. Cerulli et al. (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, 1970–84). All references to the text of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq are to this edition. The only complete translation of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq into a European vernacular remains Amédée Jaubert’s Géographie d’Édrisi, 2 vols (Paris, 1836–40), partially revised by Annliese Nef as La première géographie de l’Occident (Paris: Flammarion, 1999). I have consulted Jaubert’s translation (where possible in Nef’s revision) alongside the Arabic text in preparing this chapter. My thanks to Samir Jabal for assistance with translations from the Arabic; all errors that remain are my own. 4 Jean-Charles Ducène, L’Afrique dans le Uns al-muhağ wa-rawḍ al-furağ d’al-Idrīsī (Leuven: Peeters, 2010); a facsimile of the manuscripts Istanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Hekimoǧlu 688 and Hasan Hüsnü 1289 appeared as The Entertainment of Hearts and Meadows of Contemplation: Uns al-muhaj wa-rawḍ al-furaj, ed. Fuat Sezgin (Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science, 1984). 5 Jean-Charles Ducène, L’Europe et les géographes arabes du Moyen Âge (IXe-XVe siècle) (Paris: CNRS, 2018), 200–38, provides a detailed overview of al-Idrīsī’s coverage of Europe in its entirety. Studies focussed on a particular region include: Idrīsī, La Finlande et les autres pays baltiques orientaux, ed. O.J. Tallgren-Tuulio and A.M. Tallgren (Helsinki: Societas Orientalis Fennica, 1930); O.J. Tuulio, Du nouveau sur Idrīsī (Helsinki: Societas Orientalis F­ ennica, 1936); T. Lewicki, La Pologne et les pays voisins dans le Livre de Roger, 2 vols (Krakow, 1945 and Warsaw, 1954); Wilhelm Hoenerbach, Deutschland und seine Nachbarländer nach der großen Geographie des Idrīsī, gest. 1162 (Sektionen V-2 und VI-2) (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1938); Herbert Eisenstein, “Kärnten in al-Idrisi’s Geographie (1154),” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 83 (1993): 83–100; Jean-Charles Ducène, “La France et les territoires avoisinants dans le Uns al-muhağ wa-rawḍ al-furağ d’al-Idrīsī,” Journal Asiatique 300 (2012): 87–138; Ducène, “France in the Two Geographical Works of Al-Idrīsī (Sicily, Twelfth Century),” in Space in the Medieval West: Places, Territories, and Imagined Geographies, ed. Meredith Cohen and Fanny Madeline (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 175–95; Dubler, “Probables itinerarios,” 89–137; Jesús Zanón, “La geografía de al-Idrīsī: ¿un arma para el poder? Consideraciones sobre la estructura, contenidos y objetivos presentes en una obra importante de la época almohade,” in Los Almohades: Problemas y Perspectivas, ed. Patrice Cressier, ­Maribel Fierro, and Luis Molina, 2 vols (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones ­Científicas, 2005), vol. 2, 633–49; Emmanuelle Tixier, “La description d’al-Andalus par al-Idrīsī,” in

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with some attention given to Africa and Egypt,6 India and the Indian Ocean,7 and recently to al-Idrīsī’s conception of the Mediterranean.8 Work that has attempted to address the Nuzhat al-mushtāq in its entirety has, understandably, struggled to account for its inherent complexities and instabilities, chief among which are the nature of the connections between map and written text, al-Idrīsī’s use of source material, and ultimately his relationship to medieval Arabic-Islamic geographical thought and his influence, or lack thereof, in the Latin West. Given this position in the face of a major work of impressive dimensions, incompletely edited, partially studied, yet of obvious importance, the following pages do not initially attempt anything more ambitious than a summation of what is currently known about al-Idrīsī and the Nuzhat al-mushtāq. From that basis, however, it is possible to offer some fresh thoughts about the status ­ hrétiens, juifs et musulmans dans la Méditerranée médiévale, ed. Benoît Grévin, Annliese C Nef, and Emmanuelle Tixier (Paris: De Boccard, 2008), 75–88; Emmanuelle Tixier du Mesnil, Géographes d’al-Andalus: De l’inventaire d’un territoire à la construction d’une mémoire (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2014), 350–78; M. Amari and C. Schiaparelli, L’Italia descritta nel “Libro del Re Ruggero” compilato da Edrisi (Rome: Coi Tipi del Salviucci, 1883); Leonard C. Chiarelli, “Al-Idrīsī’s Description of Sicily: A Critical Survey,” Scripta Mediterranea 1 (1980): 29–43; David Abulafia, “Local trade networks in medieval Sicily: the evidence of Idrisi,” in Shipping, Trade and Crusade in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. Ruthy Gertwagen and Elizabeth Jeffreys (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 157–66; A.F.L. Beeston, “Idrisi’s Account of the British Isles,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 13 (1950): 265–80; D.M. Dunlop, “The British Isles according to medieval Arabic authors,” Islamic Quarterly 4 (1957): 11–28, at 20–23; Stoyanka Kenderova and Boyan Besevliev, La Péninsule balkanique représentée sur les cartes d’al-Idrisi (Sofia: Narodna Biblioteka “Kiril i Metodii,” 1990). 6 César E. Dubler, “Der Afro-indomalaische Raum bei Idrīsī,” Asiatische Studien 10 (1956): 19–59, esp. 38–53; J. Spencer Trimingham, “The Arab geographers and the East African coast,” in East Africa and the Orient: Cultural Syntheses in Pre-Colonial Times, ed. H.N. Chittick and Robert I. Rotberg (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1975), 115–46, esp. 137–46; Hussain Monés, “Description of Egypt by Idrīsī,” Studi Magrebini 16 (1984): 1–53; Hussain Monés, “Commentary on the chapters on Egypt of Nuzhat al-Mushtāḳ by al-Sharīf al-Idrīsī,” Studi Magrebini 18 (1986): 13–60; 20 (1988): 45–112. 7 India and the Neighbouring Territories in the Kitāb Nuzhat al-Mushtāq fi’khtirāq al-āfāq of al-Sharīf al-Idrīsī, trans. S. Maqbul Ahmad (Leiden: Brill, 1960); François Viré, “L’océan Indien d’après le géographe Abû Abd-Allah Muḥammad Ibn Idrîs al-Hammûdî al-Ḥasanî dit Al-Šarîf al-Idrīsī (493–560 H./1100–1166). Extraits traduits et annotés du ‘Livre de Roger’,” in Études sur l’Océan indien, ed. Paul Ottino (St Denis de la Réunion: Université de la Réunion, 1979), 13–45. 8 Gabriel Martinez-Gros, “La division du monde selon Idrīsī,” in Le Partage du monde: Échanges et colonisation dans la Méditerranée médiévale, ed. Michel Balard and Alain Ducellier (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1998), 315–34; Tarek Kahlaoui, Creating the Mediterranean: Maps and the Islamic Imagination (Leiden: Brill, 2018), esp. 142–78; Christophe Picard, Sea of the Caliphs: The Mediterranean in the Medieval Islamic World, trans. Nicholas Elliott (­Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2018), 31–33.

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of the man and his work as a meeting point of European and Arabic-Islamic traditions. In particular, I will suggest that al-Idrīsī’s Nuzhat al-mushtāq can be seen not so much as a combination of traditions, but more precisely as a magisterial elaboration of Arabic-Islamic geography in the service of a Christian prince, directed to a broad Arabophone community, rather than a cosmopolitan Sicilian audience. 1

Al-Idrīsī and the Nuzhat al-mushtāq

The main sources for the life and works of al-Idrīsī are his own statements in the Nuzhat al-mushtāq and the Uns al-muhaj, along with some brief accounts given by later Arab biographers.9 His full name (Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad al-Idrīsī al-Qurṭubī bin Muḥammad bin ʿAbdallāh bin Idrīs bin Yaḥyā al-ʿĀlī bi-Amrillāh bin ʿAlī bin Ḥammūd al-ʿĀlī) reveals that “the Idrīsī” was a descendant of Idrīs, the second/eighth-century founder of the Idrīsid dynasty in the Maghrib who was a direct descendant of ʿAlī, son-in-law of the Prophet. Hence al-Idrīsī is often referred to as al-Sharīf, the noble. More immediately, the name indicates that al-Idrīsī was a scion of the Ḥammūdid dynasty of al-Andalus that ruled Málaga from 407 to 448/1016 to 1057, before being forced from power. Al-Idrīsī’s place and date of birth are uncertain.10 One of his nisbas (a name generally denoting relation to a place, person, group, or thing), al-Qurṭubī, may indicate that he studied in Cordoba, rather than any other connection to the city (his great-great-grandfather had briefly held the caliphate of Cordoba in 411/1021). Still, al-Idrīsī claims in the Nuzhat al-mushtāq to have been in Loja, al-Andalus, in 510H (1116 CE), and he seems to have had first-hand knowledge of the region, which he elsewhere refers to as “our country”.11 How and when 9

10

11

For summation see Jean-Charles Ducène, “al-Idrīsī, Abū ʿAbdallāh,” Encyclopedia of Islam Three, fasc. 3 (2018), 91–99; Allaoua Amara and Annliese Nef, “Al-Idrīsī et les Ḥammūdides de Sicile. Nouvelles données biographiques sur l’auteur du Livre de Roger,” Arabica 48 (2001): 121–27; Annliese Nef, “Al-Idrīsī: un complément d’enquête biographique,” in Géographes et voyageurs au Moyen Âge, ed. Henri Bresc and Emmanuelle Tixier du Mesnil (Nanterre: Presses universitaires de Paris ouest, 2010), 53–66. The tradition that al-Idrīsī was born in Ceuta around 1100 (see for example S. Maqbul Ahmad, “Cartography of al-Sharīf al-Idrīsī,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 2, book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, ed. J. Brian Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 156–74: 156) derives from the unsupported assertions of the eighteenth-century historian, Miguel Casiri: Ducène, “al-Idrīsī,” 91. Nuzhat al-mushtāq, V.4.40 (803). References are to the number of the clime in Roman numerals and the subsection of the clime in Arabic numerals, followed by paragraph

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al-Idrīsī came to Sicily is a matter of ongoing debate. The claim of a fourteenthcentury biographer, Ṣalāh al-Dīn al-Ṣafadī, that al-Idrīsī’s father was given refuge by Roger I of Sicily, has opened the possibility that al-Idrīsī may have been born in Sicily.12 On the other hand, the statement of al-Ṣafadī in his biography of Roger II that al-Idrīsī was summoned by the Norman king “from the coast” (min al-ʿudwa) implies that, at the time he joined the court, al-Idrīsī was resident in the Maghrib (or less plausibly Calabria) rather than in Sicily.13 At any event, the preface to the Nuzhat al-mushtāq furnishes the one certain date in al-Idrīsī’s life, namely that in January, 1154, he received instructions from Roger as to the title and content of his book. It has often, wrongly, been assumed that January, 1154, marks the date of the completion of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq.14 In fact, al-Idrīsī’s words in the preface can be read as a statement that the work commenced at that date, and some material in the text itself indicates that al-Idrīsī was still working on the Nuzhat al-mushtāq as late as 1157–58.15 Nevertheless, there is good reason to continue to associate the Nuzhat al-mushtāq with Roger and with the period of the 1140s and early 1150s. Al-Idrīsī’s preface claims that the royal project that led to the book had been in progress for fifteen years; the Nuzhat al-mushtāq contains relatively few references to events after 1154; and it lavishes exuberant praise on Roger II, without mentioning his son and successor, William I. At some point after Roger’s death in February, 1154, perhaps in the 1160s, al-Idrīsī revised and rewrote the Nuzhat al-mushtāq to form the Uns al-muhaj, a work with an almost identical structure to its precursor, but with an eighth clime added, beneath the equator, and historical, ethnographic and other discursive matter stripped away, leaving a rather dry if still detail-rich collection of itineraries, along with a map of the climes and up to seventy-five sectional maps. Al-Idrīsī’s other works include a botanical treatise, which survives in three manuscripts, and an anthology of poems dedicated to William I, for the most part lost.16

12 13 14 15

16

number and (in parentheses) page number in the edition of Cerulli et al. Ducène, “al-Idrīsī,” 92; Ducène, L’Afrique dans le Uns al-muhağ, xx-xxi; cf. Nef, “Al-Idrīsī: un complément d’enquête biographique,” 56. Amara and Nef, “Al-Idrīsī.” See the remarks of Jeremy Johns, Arabic Administration in Norman Sicily: The Royal Dīwān (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 236 n101; Nef, “Al-Idrīsī: un complément d’enquête biographique,” 57–58. E.g. Maqbul Ahmad, “Cartography of al-Sharīf al-Idrīsī,” 156. La première géographie de l’Occident, ed. Bresc and Nef, 18; Ducène, “La France et les territoires avoisinants,” 97. Al-Idrīsī’s statement that the prince of the Germans (i.e. Frederick Barbarossa) resides in Burgundy was not true before 1157, and his description of Bohemia may imply a date in the late 1150s. See Ducène, “al-Idrīsī,” 97.

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Various dates and places have been given for al-Idrīsī’s death, none verifiable, but a date in the 1170s seems plausible.17 To flesh out the bare bones of this account, it is necessary to consider in more detail the narrative of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq’s genesis given in al-Idrīsī’s preface, before discussing the content of the work in some detail. According to al-Idrīsī, Roger’s geographical project emerged from his desire to know the lands he ruled over in detail. This remark alludes to the series of conquests Roger had made in North Africa between 1135 and 1153 with the result that he controlled much of the coast from Tunis to Tripoli, and it encompasses his holdings in southern Italy, as well as his Sicilian heartland.18 But Roger’s geographical interests extended beyond the places and peoples he had come to rule, to include all of the seven climes. He therefore, in al-Idrīsī’s account, turned to written texts devoted to the art (fan) and science (ʿilm) of describing the climes. Finding these works unsatisfactory, he summoned experts, but found that they could tell him no more than the books. His next step was to resort to travellers. These men were interviewed by an intermediary (the Arabic term, wāsiṭa, may indicate a court official, possibly al-Idrīsī himself) and by Roger in person.19 The Uns al-muhaj specifies that Roger was able to supply information on European regions, as well as on Russia, Cumania (that is, the land of the Cumans, a Turkish tribal confederation who crossed the Dniepr in the eleventh century and settled to the west of the river), and the land of another Turkish group, the Kimaks, with the implication that such data came from missions sent out to various lands.20 According to the Nuzhat al-mushtāq, this information-gathering continued for a period of fifteen years, during which time the results of Roger’s researches were recorded on a lawh al-tarsīm, a term that literally means a drawing board, but probably with the extended meaning of a map.21 The exact mix of information – the proportion derived from books, scholars, and travellers – is unclear from al-Idrīsī’s description, but some kind of synthesis is indicated. Roger then ordered that the image 17 18 19 20

21

Ducène, “al-Idrīsī,” 92; Nef, “Al-Idrīsī: un complément d’enquête biographique,” 65. For overview see Hubert Houben, Roger II of Sicily: A Ruler Between East and West, trans. Graham A. Loud and Diane Milburn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 76–86. Nuzhat al-mushtāq, Preface.4–5 (5–6). L’Afrique dans le Uns al-muhağ, ed. Ducène, 4 (pp. 2–3/50–51). This point was amplified by al-Ṣafadī, who claimed Roger sent men to the east, west, south and north, accompanied by scribes/illustrators to record that which they observed: in Biblioteca Arabo-Sicula, ed. Michele Amari, 2 vols (Turin: Loescher, 1880–89), vol. 2, 565. There is no contemporary evidence of such a mission. Al-Idrīsī was the first Arab geographer to describe the Cumans: Ducène, L’Europe et les géographes arabes, 223–24. Nuzhat al-mushtāq, Preface.5 (6).

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of the world on the “drawing board” should be engraved on a dāira made of pure silver, accompanied by a book which would record not only topographical information about the seven climes, but also “a record of the conditions of their people, their lives, customs, doctrines, costumes and clothing, and their languages”. This book he ordered, in January 1154, to be entitled the Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq.22 Obvious questions emerge from this narrative, which must be taken with some grains of salt. The first question is what exactly the silver dāira was. At its most basic level the term simply means a circle, and has usually been taken to refer to a disc or planisphere, but also a sphere and even a terrestrial globe.23 While the latter is unlikely, the nature of the object cannot be certainly known. If, as seems probable, the “drawing board” was rectangular, then its data underwent a change of form when applied to the circular dāira, and it is tempting to imagine an image similar to the circular world map that appears in six manuscripts of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq (Fig. 4.1).24 It should be noted, however, that there is no confirmation that Roger’s commission of the silver object was actually fulfilled. Al-Idrīsī is precise about the weight (400 Roman “riṭl”) and cost (each “riṭl” worth 112 dirrhams) of the dāira, lending credence

22 23

24

Nuzhat al-mushtāq, Preface.6 (6–7). Maqbul Ahmad, “Cartography of al-Sharīf al-Idrīsī,” 159 (“disk”); T. Lewicki, “À propos de la genèse du ‘Nuzhat al-mushtāq fi ’khtirāq al-āfāq’ d’al-Idrīsī,” Studi Magrebini 1 (1966): 41–55: 51 (“plaque” or “disc”); Ducène, “al-Idrīsī,” 92 (disc, planisphere). La première géographie de l’Occident, trans. Jaubert, rev. Nef, 61 (“une sphère”). Karla Mallette, The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100–1250: A Literary History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 30 (“a globe”). Konrad Miller, Mappae Arabicae: Arabische Welt- und Länderkarten des 9. – 13. Jahrhunderts, 6 vols (Stuttgart, 1926–31), vol. 1, 38–39 understands the object as a flat oblong surface of around three millimetres’ thickness (“Scheibenkarte”, “Silberplatte”). The term can also be used to refer to a clime, as a substitute for iqlīm: Al-Hamdānī’s Geographie der Arabischen Halbinsel, ed. David Heinrich Müller (Leiden: Brill, 1884), 10–21. The circular world map appears in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2221; Cairo, Dār al-Kutub, Jugrāfiyā 150; Istanbul, Köprülü Kütüphanesi, MS 955; Sofia, Cyril and Methodius National Library, MS Or. 3198; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Greaves 42; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Pococke 375. It also appears in a manuscript of the eleventh-century Fatimid Book of Curiosities, raising questions about whether it can in fact be thought of as original to al-Idrīsī. However, in neither the Nuzhat al-mushtāq nor the Book of Curiosities does it appear as an integral part of the text, and it could have been added to the Book of Curiosities when the manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arab. c.90) was compiled, around the end of the twelfth century. For contrasting views see Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith, Lost Maps of the Caliphs: Drawing the World in Eleventh-Century Cairo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 24–27; Kahlaoui, Creating the Mediterranean, 177; and Chapter Five in this volume.

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to its existence. But there is no other witness, and the often-repeated25 claim that it was destroyed in an uprising of 1161 is in fact no more than a conjecture of the learned nineteenth-century historian, Michele Amari.26 Further grains of salt concern the level of detail recorded on the board, and the role of Roger as orchestrator. Firstly, the conventional nature of al-Idrīsī’s praise of the sovereign, and more particularly of the sovereign as initiator of the geographical survey – a tradition in both Arabic-Islamic and Latin literature –27 suggests that not everything al-Idrīsī reports of Roger’s involvement in the project should be taken at face value. Certainly the lack of any records in Latin or other sources which confirm that Roger sent voyagers to different parts of the world to gather geographical information means that this notion should be regarded with caution.28 There are good reasons to believe that a mixture of information, including both written and oral reports, went into the Nuzhat al-mushtāq, and whatever appeared on the lawh al-tarsim and the silver dāira. But al-Idrīsī may well have exaggerated the sophistication of the latter, and precise correspondence between the “drawing board” and the Nuzhat al-mushtāq’s maps and especially its text cannot be assumed. Was the Nuzhat al-mushtāq the culmination and crowning glory of Roger’s project, or an adjunct designed to memorialize the magnificent silver dāira? Such a question is not susceptible to a simple or a certain answer, but it prompts reflection on the far from straightforward relationship between maps and text in the Nuzhat al-mushtāq. Al-Idrīsī structured his work according 25 Miller, Mappae Arabicae, vol. 1, 39; Tallgren-Tuulio and Tallgren, La Finlande, 6 n1; Ducène, “al-Idrīsī,” 92; cf. Tixier, “La description d’al-Andalus par al-Idrīsī,” 78 n13. 26 Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia, 3 vols (Florence: Le Monnier, 1854–72), vol. 3, 680: “nel sacco della reggia . . . è cosa molto verosimile che sia andato a male il gran planisfero d’argento.” Amari’s speculation was elaborated slightly in Antonio Palomes, La storia di li Nurmanni ’n Sicilia, 4 vols (Palermo: Frati Puglisi, 1882–87), vol. 2, 179, which is cited as Konrad Miller’s source. 27 For Latin literature see Claude Nicolet and Patrick Gautier Dalché, “Les ‘Quatre Sages’ de Jules César et la ‘Mesure du Monde’ selon Julius Honorius: réalité antique et tradition médiévale,” Journal des savants (1986): 157–218. For Arabic-Islamic literature, the widely reproduced account of the caliph al-Maʾmūn’s survey, c. 830, designed to establish the size of the earth through precise measurement and arithmetical calculation, bears some resemblance to al-Idrīsī’s narrative of Roger’s commission. The earliest version of al-Maʾmūn’s survey appears in Ḥabash al-Ḥāsib’s account: Y. Tzvi Langermann, “The book of Bodies and Distances of Ḥabash al-Ḥāsib,” Centaurus 28 (1985): 108–28; for a later description of the survey, with bibliography, see An Eleventh-Century Egyptian Guide to the Universe: The Book of Curiosities, ed. and trans. Yossef Rapoport and Emilie SavageSmith (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 417–18. 28 Jean-Charles Ducène, “Poland and Central Europe in the Uns al-muhadj by al-Idrīsī,” ­Rocznik Orientalistyczny 61 (2009): 5–30, at 9; Patrick Gautier Dalché, “Géographie arabe et géographie latine au XIIe siècle,” Medieval Encounters 19 (2013): 408–33, at 424–25.

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fig. 4.1 World map in a c. 1300 manuscript of al-Idrīsī, Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq. South at top. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2221, fols 3v-4r.

to the seven climes, each of which – unconventionally – he divided into ten subsections. The divisions of the climes are not regular, with the more central climes smaller, but much richer in detail, than the outer climes. Several of the subsections in the seventh clime, for example, consist of a single sentence and a sparsely decorated map, while the text devoted to the subsections in the third and fourth climes can extend across many manuscript pages. Each of the subsections is illustrated with a map (or, alternatively, each map is supported by an elaborate commentary), with the result that at least in theory a full manuscript of the work should contain up to seventy regional maps (ten for each clime, although most manuscripts lack the tenth section of the seventh clime,

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which is said to consist only of ocean and to lack any construction).29 Priority between map and text is not easy to establish. Typically the sectional map precedes the relevant text, but as several observers have noted there is not always exact correspondence between text and map: each contains toponyms and detail not found in the other, for example.30 In the absence of a systematic study of the relationship between the maps in the different manuscripts of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq, as well as their relationship to the different but related set of maps in the Uns al-muhaj, categorical statements are unwise. However, it is clear that the maps as we have them contain quite a number of scribal errors and uncertainties due to the difficulties of transmitting large numbers of foreign or lightly Arabicized names, and that some maps are likely to preserve better readings than others.31 Another avenue into the same question is to consider the nature of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq’s sources. In his preface al-Idrīsī lists twelve works which he claims Roger consulted in his search for information.32 A very similar list prefaces the Uns al-muhaj. Of these works, only two originate from outside the Arabic-Islamic world: Ptolemy’s Geography, and Paulus Orosius’ Historiae adversus paganos. Even in these cases, al-Idrīsī would have used the Arabic versions of the texts in the form of al-Khwārazmī’s adaptation of Ptolemy,33 29

Nuzhat al-mushtāq, 7.10.1 (963). Manuscripts with a complete, or near-complete set of maps: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2221 (world map and 68 regional maps) (1300 CE); Istanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi Ayasofya 3502 + St Petersburg, State Library, Cod. Ar. 4.1.64 (66 regional maps) (first half of the fourteenth century); Istanbul, Köprülü Kütüphanesi MS 955 (world map and 70 regional maps) (1469 CE); Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Pococke 375 (world map and 69 regional maps) (1553 CE); Sofia, Cyril and Methodius National Library, MS Or. 3198 (world map and 69 regional maps) (1556 CE). Manuscripts with a limited set of maps: Cairo, Dār al-Kutub, Jugrāfiyā 150 (world map and 19 regional maps, climes one and two) (1348 CE); Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Greaves 42 (world map and 30 regional maps, first three climes) (fourteenth century?). Manuscripts with no maps: London, British Library, India Office MS Loth 722 (Ar. 617) (1325 CE; partial text only); Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2222 (1344 CE). 30 Tuulio, Du nouveau sur Idrīsī, 51–2, 59–60; Kenderova and Besevliev, La Péninsule balkanique, 195; Kahlaoui, Creating the Mediterranean, 166–67. 31 In general the set of maps in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS 2221, the earliest extant copy of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq, would seem the most likely to be closest to the originals constructed by al-Idrīsī, but the matter requires more investigation. Certain differences between the maps in BnF MS 2221 and other manuscripts with a full or nearly full set of maps have been noted: see Kenderova and Besevliev, La Péninsule balkanique, 195–97; Jean-Charles Ducène, “Les coordonnés géographiques de la carte manuscrite d’alIdrīsī (Paris, Bnf ar. 2221),” Der Islam 86 (2009): 271–85. 32 Nuzhat al-mushtāq, Preface.4 (5–6). For the list in the Uns al-muhaj see L’Afrique dans le Uns al-muhağ, ed. Ducène, 4 (p. 2/50). 33 See further Chapter Two in this volume.

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and the Kitāb Hurūshiūsh, a third-fourth/ninth-tenth-century translation of Orosius. In fact, the influence of the latter in the Nuzhat al-mushtāq is minimal.34 Among the remaining sources, the third/ninth-century Kitāb al-masālik wa-al-mamālik of Ibn Khurradādhbih and the fourth/tenth-century Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ of Ibn Ḥawqal are mentioned repeatedly in the text of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq, particularly in regard to central and eastern Asia.35 Al-Idrīsī also drew often on the ʿajāʾib or wonders tradition (in the preface he attributes a Kitāb al-ʿajāʾib, perhaps inaccurately, to the fourth/tenth-century author al-Masʿūdī).36 Less often cited, but also mentioned in the preface, are the geographical works of al-Yaʿqūbī (third/ninth century); al-Jayhānī (fourth/tenth century); al-ʿUdhrī (fifth/eleventh century); al-Kīmākī (a Turkic author used for information on the Kimaks of western Siberia); Qudāma al-Basrī (identified as a fourth/tenth-century author, and perhaps a source of administrative geography); the unknown Mūsā al-Qurdī; and the work of al-Hasayn al-Munajjim (“the astronomer”).37 Medical works and histories crop up from time to time in the body of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq, while non-written sources cited in the text include, variously, a “trustworthy traveller”, “the people of this area”, “an expert” (khabīr) (with regard to the site of ancient Carthage), “Turks who have traversed these lands” (with regard to Tibet), “our own eyes” (with regard to ­al-Andalus), voyagers on the Pontus, and those who have ascended the mountain range enclosing the land of Gog and Magog in north-east Asia.38 Further work on al-Idrīsī’s use of source material is much needed, but even a relatively cursory glance at the evidence makes it hard to sustain the notion that the Nuzhat al-mushtāq represents a meeting of Arabic-Islamic and Latin geographical traditions. Rather, al-Idrīsī’s work operates overwhelmingly within the tradition of Arabic-Islamic geography, but in so doing 34

35

36 37 38

Perhaps limited to the description of al-Andalus as triangular, a schematization already present in al-Rāzī and al-Bakrī, where it is explicitly associated with Orosius: César E. D ­ ubler, “Los caminos a Compostela en la obra de Idrīsī,” Al-Andalus 14 (1949): 59–122, at 80. Explicit references to these authors (as opposed to unacknowledged borrowings) can be found for Ibn Ḥawqal at Nuzhat al-mushtāq, I.4.12 (40); II.7.65 (177); III.1.8 (226); III.4.8 (323), III.4.80 (343–44); III.6.38 (395); III.8.20 (476), III.8.41 (486); IV.6.69 (680); V.6.22 (829); V.7.2 (831); VI.6.19 (917), VI.6.24 (918); for Ibn Khurradādhbih see Nuzhat al-mushtāq, I.10.18 (99); II.7.104 (183), II.7.109 (184); III.10.8 (518); IV.6.41 (672); VI.9.2 (934). Nuzhat al-mushtāq, Preface.4 (5). On the ʿajāʾib tradition generally, and al-Idrīsī’s relationship to it, see Travis Zadeh, Mapping Frontiers across Medieval Islam: Geography, Translation, and the ʿAbbasid Empire (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), esp. 1–12, 101–2, 123. Nuzhat al-mushtāq, Preface.4 (5–6); see the clear outline in Ducène, “al-Idrīsī,” 93–94. Nuzhat al-mushtāq, respectively II.1.12 (108); II.4.3 (122); III.2.24 (288); III.9.6 (511); IV.1.3 (527); VI.6.36 (921); V.9.12 (847).

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it makes several innovations. The Nuzhat al-mushtāq brings together distinct ­genres: the astronomical and mathematical geography derived from Ptolemy; the “ways and realms” tradition of Ibn Khurradādhbih and Ibn Ḥawqal; and the literature of wonders. This combination of genres is particularly evident at the level of the map. Regional maps were a standard feature of the “ways and realms” (or “Islam Atlas”) genre, while representation of the seven climes was fundamental to astronomical geography in the Ptolemaic mode. The union of the two allowed al-Idrīsī to construct a series of regional maps extending well beyond the Islamic world, into southern Africa, central and northern Europe, and furthest Asia [see Table 4.1]. Clearly, additional information, beyond that contained in written sources, was needed to support some areas of this expansion, and here the role of oral informants is certainly plausible.39 Historians who have studied individual sections of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq have conjured a colourful cast of voyagers at Roger’s court, including a Swedish-speaking resident of Estonia, a Slav, a French-speaking shipman familiar with parts of the English coastline, a Gascon from Bayonne or environs, refugees from the Ḥammūdid court, as well as pilgrims, monks, merchants, and even St Bernard himself.40 There is a natural tendency evident here to inflate the number of sources at al-Idrīsī’s disposal, but it is nevertheless clear that the Nuzhat al-mushtāq introduced a considerable amount of information not previously available to Arabic-Islamic geographers, and that oral reports are likely to have played a significant role in the consolidation of this information. It is primarily in that regard – the expansion of knowledge of the non-Islamic world, and particularly the Christian European world, in a work of Arabic-Islamic geography written for an Arabophone audience – that the Nuzhat al-mushtāq can be understood as a meeting point of traditions.

39

40

Use of sea charts or written portolans by al-Idrīsī can be ruled out: Patrick Gautier Dalché, Carte marine et portulan au XIIe siècle: Le Liber de existencia riveriarum et forma maris nostri Mediterranei (Pise, circa 1200) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1995), 51–52; the question of the use of oral sailing directions in some parts of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq’s description of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean remains open: see Kahlaoui, Creating the Mediterranean, 164–66, for overview. Tallgren-Tuulio and Tallgren, La Finlande, 92–3, Tuulio, Du nouveau sur Idrīsī, 205 (Swedish-speaking Estonian); Kenderova and Besevliev, La Péninsule balkanique, 196 (Slav); Beeston, “Idrisi’s Account of the British Isles,” 280 (Francophone shipman); ­Dubler, “Los caminos a Compostela,” 118 (Gascon); Nef, “Al-Idrīsī: un complément d’enquête biographique,” 61–62 (Ḥammūdid refugees); Ducène, “La France,” 96 (pilgrims); Lewicki, “À propos de la genèse,” 48 (St. Bernard).

4

3

2

1st section

Western Ocean; Fortunate Isles; western Maghrib

Northern Ghana; desert territories

Waddān; nomads

Upper Egypt

Ghana

Kūkū; Nubia

Nubia; Mountains of the Moon; Nile; Ethiopia (al-ḥabasha)

2nd clime

Sudān; Western Nile

1st clime

Lower Egypt (Alexandria; Fustat)

Desert regions; Arab and Berber tribes

North African coast (Sfax; Tunis; Carthage; Mahdiyya; Ṭarāblus)

Western Maghrib (Marrakesh); Berbers

3rd clime

Islands (Crete)

Southern Italy; islands

al-Andalus (Toledo, Cordoba); Northwestern Maghrib Sardinia; Corsica; Sicily (Palermo)

4th clime

table 4.1  Extent of each clime, west to east, based on the text of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq

Slavonia; Byzantium (Constantinople; Ephesus)

Calabria; Dalmatia; Italian littoral

Provence; Burgundy; North Italy (Rome)

Northern Spain; land of Franks

5th clime

Macedonia; Poland; Russia

Anjou; Normandy; Burgundy; (Paris); Flanders; Germany; Bohemia; Carinthia; southern English coast Poland; Bohemia; Hungary

Brittany

6th clime

North Sea littoral; Denmark; Norway Finmark; Russia

England; Scotland; Ireland

Sea of Darkness

7th clime

Geography at the Crossroads

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10

9

8

7

6

5

Indian Ocean; islands (incl. Wāqwāq) China Sea

China (al-Ṣīn)

Sind; alKirmān Manṣūra; Multan (Hormuz); Khurāsān; Sijistan; Turks India (al-Hind); Ghūr (Merw); Kashmir; Khurāsān; Kandahār; Kābul Jayḥūn river; land of the Turks (Balkh) India (al-Hind) Turkistan; Tibet

Indian Ocean; land of the Zanj

Indian Ocean; Sarandīb (Sri Lanka)

al-Ḥijāz; Yemen; Oman; Persian Gulf

Indian Ocean; Yemen; Socotra; Sanʿaā

China; Turks

Red Sea; Palestine (Jerusalem); Syria (Damascus) Iraq (Basra); Khūzistan; Fārs (Shiraz; Iṣṭakhr); Kurds

Red Sea; al-Ḥijāz (Jedda, Mecca, Medina)

Ethiopia (al-ḥabasha); Indian Ocean

3rd clime

2nd clime

1st clime

Kimakia

Khurāsān; Khwarazm; Soghd (Samarkand); Ghozz tribes; Farghana Khazan; nomadic Turks

Azerbaijan; Jurjān; Khurāsān

Iraq (Baghdad); Kurds; Armenia; Azerbaijan; Jibāl

Cyprus; Northern Syria

4th clime

table 4.1  Extent of each clime, west to east, based on the text of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq (cont.)

land of Gog and Magog

land of Adhkash

land of the Ghozz tribes

Caspian Sea; land of the Khazars

Armenia; Azerbaijan; Caucasus; Caspian Sea

Cappadocia; Armenia

5th clime

land of Gog and Magog

border of land of Gog and Magog

Fetid Lands; Turkish peoples

Black Sea (Trebizond); land of Alans; Cumania; Bulgars; Russians; Khazars Desert lands; land of Bashkirs

Black Sea littoral; Byzantium; Bulgaria; Russia

6th clime

land of Gog and Magog; eastern ocean Sea of Darkness

Fetid lands

Northern Fetid lands; land of Petchenegs

Cumania; Bulgaria

Northern Russia; Cumania

7th clime

126 Hiatt

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2 The Nuzhat al-mushtāq at the Crossroads This final point raises a delicate question: to what extent did al-Idrīsī intend the Nuzhat al-mushtāq to serve the interests of the Islamic community that must have constituted at least one of the work’s intended audiences, and to what extent was he writing in the interests of Roger II and his dynasty? The most sophisticated recent scholarship has tended to give an equivocal answer. Al-Idrīsī, it is suggested, acknowledged the Christian advance in Spain, and the push of Christian rulers such as Roger into north Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. However, while paying lip service to Roger’s power, al-Idrīsī claimed for Islam the universalising discourse of geographical description: his studied neutrality of tone was a means of dissociating geography from power. In one formulation, the Nuzhat al-mushtāq represented “perhaps the last attempt to re-establish the equilibrium of forces in favour of Islam, in appropriating through scientific discourse the monopoly of description of the other”;41 in another, the work constituted a “Mediterranean Islamic experiment” distinct from Roger’s aims.42 Without discounting these views of al-Idrīsī, in what remains of this chapter I would like to advance a simpler reading of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq. That is, that instead of seeing al-Idrīsī as a Muslim subtly working against Christian interests while ostensibly working for them, or at least working for science in preference to religion and politics, or writing in a spirit of ecumenical neutrality, we should consider the possibility that the Nuzhat al-mushtāq is more or less what it says it is: the work of a Muslim writing in support of a Christian monarch. The case for this reading can be made through a consideration of three aspects of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq: the representation of Spain; al-Idrīsī’s remarks about Arabs and the history of Muslim conquest in north Africa; and his description of Palestine, and particularly Jerusalem. First, however, it should be noted that al-Idrīsī extravagantly praises Roger, and accords Sicily a position of particular importance in the fourth clime. The majority of the second section of the fourth clime is taken up with a description of the island. Its conquest by Roger I is represented as a triumph over tyranny, resulting in the establishment of just government, and the protection of the religion, legal rights and goods of the island’s inhabitants. Roger II has since exalted the realm’s magnificence: “the prestige, altitude, pride, and the dignity of his 41

Tixier, “La description d’al-Andalus par al-Idrīsī,” 88; Géographes d’al-Andalus, 378: “­peut-être l’ultime tentative de rétablir l’équilibre des forces en faveur de l’Islam, en s’appropriant par le biais du discours scientifique le monopole de la description de l’autre.” 42 Kahlaoui, Creating the Mediterranean, 157.

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fig. 4.2 Sectional map 4.1 (fourth clime, first section) in al-Idrīsī, Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq. South at top. Southern and western coast of the Iberian peninsula, with al-Andalus divided between east (left page) and west (right). Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2221, fols 184v-185r.

reign have increased day by day up to the time we composed this book”.43 The level of prince-pleasing flattery here is not surprising; moreover, the location of Sicily allows al-Idrīsī to invoke the traditionally positive associations of the fourth clime, its association with legitimate power, moderation, cultivation, and wisdom, usually connected with Baghdad.44 Certain aspects of the representation of al-Andalus (Fig. 4.2) are less expected. Al-Idrīsī makes a point of noting the name “Ishbānīā” as an alternative, and older, name for the region.45 He acknowledges the Christian presence there prior to Muslim invasion and conquest. Perhaps most strikingly, al-Idrīsī identifies Christian Toledo as the centre of the region, apparently side-lining

43 44

45

Nuzhat al-mushtāq, IV.2.35 (590). See e.g. El “Ḍikr al-aqālīm” de Isḥāq ibn al-Ḥasan al-Zayyāt, ed. Francisco Castelló ­(Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona, 1989), 99; cf. Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, On Geography, ed. and trans. Ignacio Sánchez and James Montgomery (Oxford: Oxford ­University Press, 2014), 69–70, and see the discussion in Chapter One of this volume. Nuzhat al-mushtāq, IV.1.1 (525). Cf. al-Bakrī, who notes the name “Ishbānīā,” among others: Kitāb al-masālik wa-l-mamālik, ed. A.P. Van Leeuwen and A. Ferre, 2 vols (Tunis: Al-Dār al-ʿArabīya lil-Kitāb, 1992), 1487 (vol. 2, 890).

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Cordoba, seat of the caliph, in the process.46 The Christian reconquista of Spain – which was gathering momentum at the time al-Idrīsī wrote – is not handled uncritically, but nor is it presented in overtly hostile terms. The city of Saltès has been overcome by Normans (al-majūsh) repeatedly; Coria is now in the power of Christians, as are the former Muslim strongholds of Madrid and Toledo.47 The only clear criticism of Christian advance comes in the description of Alméria, whose fall to Christian hands has led to the imprisonment of its population and the destruction of its beauties.48 (The city had been taken by a combined Christian army in 1147; its recapture by Almohad forces in 1157 is not noted in the Nuzhat al-mushtāq). The splendours and illustrious history of Cordoba are given due weight, but far from a site of resistance to Christian power, it is “ground under the mill of division” and greatly reduced in population.49 The theme of perennial conflict and the need for firm governance in the region is established at the beginning of this section (the first of the fourth clime) by an unusual narrative of Alexander the Great. This story, rarely noted by scholars and seemingly unattested in earlier manifestations of the Alexander legend,50 explains that the Mediterranean was once an inland sea. However, the inhabitants of Spain, besieged by invaders from the south, begged Alexander to relieve them. The king applied himself with characteristic zeal, and through the construction of two dams he and a team of engineers managed to flood the land bridge, in the process severing the link between the two sides of the sea and reducing the threat of invasion.51 Al-Idrīsī’s reluctance to criticise the reconquista at any length is of course explicable by his position at a Christian court. More striking, though, is his criticism of Arab conquests and general behaviour in the second and third climes. We are told that Dalās on the east bank of the Nile was heavily built 46 47 48 49 50

51

Nuzhat al-mushtāq, IV.1.40 (536); see the comments of Tixier du Mesnil, Géographes d­ ’al-Andalus, 367–68, 377. Nuzhat al-mushtāq, IV.1.64 (542) (Saltès/Shalṭīsh); IV.1.74 (547) (Coria/Qūrīa); IV.1.82 (553) (Toledo/Ṭ.līṭ.la; Madrid/Majrīṭ). Nuzhat al-mushtāq, IV.1.98 (563). Nuzhat al-mushtāq, IV.1.119 (579). Roberto Rubinacci, “Il Mediterraneo nella Geografia di al-Idrīsī,” in Gli interscambi culturali e socio-economici fra l’Africa settentrionale e l’Europa mediterranea, ed. Luigi Serra, 2 vols (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1986), vol. 2, 659–63: 660–61. Intriguingly, the popular romance Sīrat al-Iskandar contains the inverse of the story in the Nuzhat al-mushtāq: here Alexander commands the construction of a bridge across the strait between al-Andalus and Africa. See the summary in Faustina Doufikar-Aerts, Alexander Magnus Arabicus: A Survey of the Alexander Tradition through Seven Centuries: from Pseudo-Callisthenes to Ṣūrī, trans. Ania Lentz-Michaelis (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 307. Nuzhat al-mushtāq, IV.1.2 (526).

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up in the time of the ancient Egyptians, but now is depleted since Berbers and Arabs took control of the surrounding areas and ruined them.52 The Arabs of the sixth section of the second clime (the Persian Gulf) live in a state of war and constant fighting, making travel difficult.53 The Arab invasion of Tunisia caused the destruction of a vast enclosure containing gardens and orchards west of Zawīla; a series of calamities befell Kairouan, mother of metropolises, after God made it fall into the hands of the Arabs – its seat of government is totally ruined and devoid of inhabitants.54 Ṭabarqa is surrounded by “good for nothing” Arab nomads; the deserts of the third section of the third clime are frequented by Arabs who attack their neighbours.55 In fact, “all the places that we noted on this route [between Qābis and Ṭarāblus (Tripoli)] are empty wasteland, for the Arabs destroyed their buildings and wiped out any remaining traces, ruined their peoples and annihilated their resources, so that there is now no friendly inhabitant there nor any ally”.56 This hostility to Arabs is clearly linked to an abhorrence of nomadism, associated with the less temperate climes. It is notable that the level of criticism, and the theme of ruination, reduces markedly in the description of Egypt in the fourth section of the third clime. Emmanuelle Tixier du Mesnil has suggested a connection with al-Bakrī, the possibly Shiʿite author of a Kitāb al-masālik wa-al-mamālik (1068), who insists on the brutality of the conquerors of North Africa, shows interest in the Berbers, and who acknowledges the Roman/Rūman origins of Spain.57 While it may be that in these regards al-Idrīsī’s work reflects something of an Andalusian tradition, his remarks are consistent with a general trend, discernable from the tenth century onwards within Arabic writings, to conflate Arab and Bedouin identities, and to dissociate the identities of literate urban elites from those of “Arabs”.58 Nevertheless, the disparaging account of Arab behaviour in north Africa is also intricately linked to Roger’s own conquests and ambitions in the region. In the very same sections that he deplores Arab barbarism, al-Idrīsī records Roger’s capture in 543H of Sfax and Mahdiyya, described as an emporium for merchants from east, west, al-Andalus and Christian countries, albeit reduced 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

Nuzhat al-mushtāq, II.4.32 (131). Nuzhat al-mushtāq, II.6.18 (159). Nuzhat al-mushtāq, III.2.19 (283) (Zawīla); III.2.21 (284) (Kairouan/Qaīrūān). Nuzhat al-mushtāq, III.2.27 (289) (Ṭabarqa); III.3.1 (310). Martinez-Gros, “La division du monde,” 332 n62, notes a Qurʾānic quotation in the description of Ṭabarqa. Nuzhat al-mushtāq, III.2.63 (297). Géographes d’al-Andalus, 346–53. See Peter Webb, Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam (Edinburgh: ­Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 324–59, esp. 336.

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fig. 4.3 Sectional map 3.2 (third clime, second section) in al-Idrīsī, Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq. South at top. North African coast from Būna to Tripoli (Tarāblus), including the islands of Kerkenna and Djerba. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2221, fols 107v-108r.

from its former glories under the Fatimid dynasty.59 He also notes the great Roger’s installation of an agent in Būna (Annaba), his conquest of the Mediterranean islands of Kerkenna and Djerba (529/1135), the subsequent rebellion (548/1153) and recapture of the latter, and his conquest of Tripoli (540/1145) (Fig. 4.3).60 The last two instances show Roger in a particularly forceful mode. He is said to have enslaved the women of Tripoli and “eliminated” (afna) its men, while when Djerba was brought to heel its population was reduced to slavery and transported to Palermo.61 These records of Roger’s cruelty as conqueror could be read as criticism of the monarch, but they may equally be intended to show his fearsome qualities as a warlord, and the unhappy consequences of resistance. Less obviously, al-Idrīsī’s anti-Arab commentary is connected to his persistent interest in, and exaltation of, the Roman empire. He notes Roman ruins 59 60 61

Nuzhat al-mushtāq, III.2.18 (281) (Sfax/Sfāqs); III.2.19 (281–83) (Mahdiyya). Nuzhat al-mushtāq, III.2.32 (291) (Bône); III.2.101 (304) (Kerkenna); III.2.104 (305) (Djerba); III.2.65 (297) (Tripoli). Nuzhat al-mushtāq, III.2.65 (297); III.2.104 (305).

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in Constantine, including a theatre whose remains resemble those of Termini in Sicily; he gives a lengthy description of the ruins at Carthage, where the aqueducts are among the world’s most remarkable sights; he records the city of Nabeul, prosperous under the Romans but fallen into Muslim hands at the beginning of Islam so that scarcely a vestige of its former glories remains.62 On Sicily al-Idrīsī mentions the Roman ruins at Taormina, and in the near east the Roman walls at Manbij (Hierapolis).63 Overall, the vestiges of the (original) Roman empire seem to be viewed by al-Idrīsī as signs of great power and achievement, in sad contrast to the qualities of contemporary rulers, Roger apart. That positive view of the ancient Romans (“the first Romans”, as al-Idrīsī terms them), seems to inform the description of Rome itself in the Nuzhat al-mushtāq. The city is depicted as physically impressive, filled with churches and baths, its splendour beyond description; al-Idrīsī emphasises the power of the pope over all Christian kings.64 His account of Constantinople is by ­contrast muted, while any comparison with the great cities of the Islamic world such as Baghdad and Cordoba, and the power of the caliph, appears to work strongly in Rome’s favour. Traces of his appreciation of the Roman empire can be discerned in al-Idrīsī’s account of Palestine in the fifth section of the third clime. Here too names are significant. Al-Idrīsī describes the conquest of Ascalon in 548/1153 by the Christian governor of Jerusalem, using the expression “ṣāhib al-quds”, and it is as “al-quds” that the city is marked on the map that illustrates the section (Fig. 4.4).65 But the text goes on to state that Jerusalem – “illustrious, ancient, full of antique monuments” – used to carry the name Ilia;66 that is, its old Roman name, Aelia capitolina. Al-Idrīsī again in this instance appears consistent with, rather than divergent from, previous Arabic-Islamic geographers: the tenth-century Andalusian author al-Rāzī, for example, had used “Ilia” when noting connections between Mérida and Jerusalem.67 But the usage is indicative of the layered and nuanced nature of the description of Jerusalem in the Nuzhat al-mushtāq. Al-Idrīsī provides significant amounts of detail from 62 63 64

65 66 67

Nuzhat al-mushtāq, III.1.98–100 (265–66) (Constantine); III.2.24–25 (286–88) (Carthage); III.2.86 (302) (Nabeul). Nuzhat al-mushtāq, IV.2.59 (596) (Taormina); IV.5.19 (651) (Manbij). Nuzhat al-mushtāq, V.2.47–54. See Ducène, L’Europe et les géographes arabes, 201, who notes the traditional nature of al-Idrīsī’s description of Rome, and Daniel König, ArabicIslamic Views of the Latin West: Tracing the Emergence of Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 243–44 who observes that “al-Idrīsī merged traditional ­Arabic-Islamic material on the city of Rome with a Christian definition of the papacy”. Nuzhat al-mushtāq, III.5.60 (357). Nuzhat al-mushtāq, III.5.63 (358). E. Lévi-Provençal, “La ‘Description de l’Espagne’ d’Aḥmad al-Rāzī,” Al-Andalus 18 (1953): 51–108, at 85 (section 45).

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fig. 4.4 Sectional map 3.5 (third clime, fifth section) in al-Idrīsī, Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq. South at top. Eastern Mediterranean coast and Red Sea. Paris, ­Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2221, fols 130v-131r.

the perspective of Christian pilgrims.68 He also notes, briefly, the Jewish rule of Jerusalem prior to the Muslim conquests, before describing in detail the splendours of the al-Aqṣā mosque.69 The reader is left in little doubt of the Christian control of the city – Christians have, we are told, seized a chapel of the mosque used by Muslims, and converted it into a Templar convent –70 and Christian sites are given priority over Muslim or Jewish ones. The length of the description of Jerusalem far exceeds that of Mecca and Medina; in fact, al-Idrīsī devotes more space to an account of pearl fishing in the Persian Gulf than to the holy cities of Islam. Al-Idrīsī was clearly writing for a Muslim audience. The Nuzhat al-mushtāq is peppered with references to places where the khuṭba (Friday sermon) can be heard, and not only mosques (such as the great mosques at Cordoba and Damascus), but also important Shīʿite shrines are described.71 Al-Idrīsī also draws attention to the shared religious history of the three faiths through pious 68 69 70 71

Nuzhat al-mushtāq, III.5.63 (358–59). Nuzhat al-mushtāq, III.5.64 (359–60). Nuzhat al-mushtāq, III.5.64 (360–61). Nuzhat al-mushtāq, III.5.86 (367–68) (mosque of Damascus); IV.1.114–18 (575–79) (mosque of Cordoba); III.6.7 (381–82) (shrine of ʿAlī bin Abī Ṭālib near Kūfa); IV.6.31 (668) (shrine of al-Ḥusayn bin ʿAlī at Karbalāʾ); IV.7.26 (692) (shrine of ʿAlī bin Mūsā al-Riḍā at Nūqān ­[Mashhad]). Al-Idrīsī’s affiliations within Islām require further consideration.

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references to figures such as Abraham, David, and Moses. His work is far from polemical in this regard. However, one further aspect of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq seems relevant here: al-Idrīsī’s generous praise of the French/Franks. The Franks are endowed with irresistible force and bravery; the Burgundian kings are the greatest of all; their holdings extend to parts of the Adriatic, such as Rovigno and Durazzo.72 Some of this praise may be related to the traditional association of northern climes with physical hardiness and bravery. But in the context of Crusader aggression in the Mediterranean, and the generally good relations between Roger and the French crown,73 it seems consistent with the Nuzhat al-mushtāq’s readiness to promote the interests and renown of Christian monarchs. Roger II may well have entertained the passion for geography described by al-Idrīsī, and he may have initiated the project described in the Nuzhat al-mushtāq. At the same time, he is known to have drawn heavily on Fatimid administrative techniques, and to have taken pains to style himself in word and image in the manner of an Islamic potentate.74 He invested, in other words, in the cultural and political capital recognised on both sides of the Mediterranean in the middle of the twelfth century. This concern to project an image to Muslims within and beyond Sicily may well have been a motivating factor for the Nuzhat al-mushtāq. It would be too crass to call al-Idrīsī a Christian propagandist, but his praise of Roger, and the Franks, his criticism of Arabs, his apparent lack of regret for the loss of Sicily and parts of Spain, his recognition of prior Christian claims to both lands, and his lack of criticism of the Christian occupation of Palestine all suggest that he was not writing a neutral account, but one biased towards his Christian master(s). He did not dissociate geographical writing from the service of power, but on the contrary continued its service of power – not a Muslim power, however, but that of the mighty king of Sicily, who was also styling himself a king of Ifrīqiya, with the precedent of Roman Africa in mind.75 This reading of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq has the merit of explaining why al-Idrīsī writes in Arabic: he expected to be read in al-Andalus, in the Maghrib, and in Syria, Iraq and Egypt, and he aimed to explain to that audience the might and justice of Christian rulers, the failings 72 Nuzhat al-mushtāq, V.2.19 (744); V.3.27 (767), V.3.39 (769). 73 Houben, Roger II, 86–97. 74 Johns, Arabic Administration, esp. 257–83; Jeremy Johns, “The Norman Kings of Sicily and the Fatimid Caliphate,” Anglo-Norman Studies 15 (1993): 133–59. Brian A. Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c. 1050–1614 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 103–112. 75 Jeremy Johns, “Malik Ifrīqiya: The Norman Kingdom of Africa and the Fāṭimids,” Libyan Studies 18 (1987): 89–101; Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, 103.

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of Islamic polities, and their retreat from the lands of conquest. This is in some ways a less palatable, and less nuanced portrait than that of a lettered Muslim caught between faiths, trying to maintain the notion of the dār al-Islām in the face of Christian advance, working for the enemy (or, alternatively, working for an enlightened and cosmopolitan monarch) while also working on behalf of science and his own faith. Yet scholarship seems to have adopted the position of overlooking the obvious in favour of the contorted. Do the sectional maps in the Nuzhat al-mushtāq support this reading of its text? Some preliminary observations can be advanced here, pending more detailed studies of the relationship between the sectional maps and the text provided by al-Idrīsī. First, it is striking that the maps appear to reflect virtually none of the narrative elements contained in the text. For example, the centrality of Toledo within Spain, emphasised in the text, is not represented on the sectional map (fourth clime, section one) since this shows al-Andalus, with Toledo in the far north (Fig. 4.2). Could this be a sign that al-Idrīsī wished to subvert the prominence given to Toledo in his text by downplaying the city on his map, subtly re-asserting Muslim claims to the entire region? Perhaps, but it is hard to argue that particular prominence is given to any city on al-Idrīsī’s sectional maps. Those cities (such as Alexandria, Cordoba, Palermo, Jerusalem, Rome, Damascus) described at length in the text certainly appear on the maps but with no greater centrality or size than other, less significant, cities. This point is indicative of the fact that the depth of historical representation evident in the text of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq does not find expression on the maps. It is of course possible to imagine a reading of the sectional maps that was deeply informed by the text – a reading that, for example, would view the north coast of Africa (Fig. 4.3) with Roger II’s conquests, and both the earlier Roman presence, and the expansion of Islam there, in mind – but there is nothing explicitly on the maps to encourage or support such a reading. It should be emphasized that the maps do broadly correspond to the text in terms of their extent, and that the most important toponyms in the text can (usually) be found on the maps. Yet leaving aside the question of the extent to which al-Idrīsī’s maps are his own compositions, copies, or adaptations of earlier models, it seems safest to say that the maps complement the Nuzhat al-mushtāq’s text, and perhaps offer a concise visual summation of its verbal coverage of territory, while retaining a significant distance from its main emphases. At this point it is not possible to say whether this distance represents a deliberate strategy on the part of al-Idrīsī or is more the function of the way the Nuzhat al-mushtāq was compiled. But it is worth noting that, in many ways, this relation between maps and text accords with what al-Idrīsī himself says in the prologue to the work: the map compiled by Roger and his agents

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performed one act of representation, while the text Roger commissioned was supposed to supply another, including details about the lands of the seven climes that the map, presumably, was ill-suited to convey. The history of the transmission of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq suggests that it was indeed read widely within the Arabic-Islamic world, and valued for its comprehensive nature.76 There is, it should be emphasised, little to suggest that any aspects of it were problematic for its readers. It may also be significant that the Uns al-muhaj, al-Idrīsī’s revision of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq, tended to exclude historical and political commentary, perhaps in tune with the less expansionist, more troubled reign of Roger’s successor, William I. Ultimately, then, it is probably futile to search for the actual views and feelings of al-Idrīsī. The purpose of this chapter has instead been to reconceive him as a representative figure of the interaction of Latin Christian and Arabic-Islamic learning. If I have tended to draw attention to the contingent nature of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq, and of al-Idrīsī as its author, I have not meant to detract from the remarkable achievement of the work, its scope and its detail. Al-Idrīsī certainly does stand at the meeting point of west and east, and just as much, of north and south. Rather than an equal blending of traditions, however, he produced a geography that was in its foundations essentially Arabic-Islamic, but which included copious detail of lands beyond the Islamic world. Conversely, I have argued, it is worth at least considering the possibility that al-Idrīsī’s Nuzhat al-mushtāq was unambiguously designed not only to serve, but also to promote, the interests of its Christian patron. 76

Jean-Charles Ducène, “Les œuvres géographiques d’al-Idrīsī et leur diffusion,” J­ ournal ­ siatique 305 (2017): 33–41. Perhaps the most notable later medieval reader of the A work was Ibn Khaldūn, whose Muqaddimah includes a copy of the circular world map (in three surviving manuscripts) and a detailed description of the world, based on the sectional maps of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq. See Ibn Khaldūn, The Muqaddimah: an Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal, 3 vols (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), vol. 1, 94–166; Tarek Kahlaoui, “Towards reconstructing the Muqaddimah following Ibn Khaldūn’s reading of the Idrīsīan text and maps,” Journal of North African Studies 13 (2008): 293–307; Ducène, “Les œuvres géographiques d’al-Idrīsī,” 35.

CHAPTER 5

“Transitional” or “Transcultural” Maps? The Function and Impact of Arabic-Islamic Elements in Latin Christian Cartography of the Early Fourteenth Century Stefan Schröder The1 24th of September, 1321, was probably the most important day in the career of the Venetian merchant Marino Sanudo (c. 1270–c. 1340). After years of writing and editing, Sanudo had an opportunity to present his proposal for a new crusade, entitled Liber secretorum fidelium crucis (Book of the Secrets of the Faithful of the Cross), to Pope John XXII (1244–1334) in person at the papal court in Avignon. According to Sanudo, the Pope was very impressed by the detailed plan to recover the Holy Land, which included calculations of payments for soldiers, ships, weapons and supplies. The Pope decided that the Liber secretorum should be evaluated in detail by a commission of experts and granted Sanudo money and cloth to finance his fifteen-month stay in Avignon.2 It is quite possible that the Pope’s gracious response to Sanudo’s proposal was influenced by the set of maps added to the Liber secretorum. With one exception, the Liber secretorum was the only crusade proposal written in the aftermath of the loss of Acre in 1291 that provided a map, and it was the only one to provide a series of maps.3 These remarkable and detailed maps were produced by the mapmaker Pietro Vesconte (d. after 1347) seemingly with the 1 In memory of Heikki Martti Räisänen (1941–2015) for always having time to listen, read and comment on my work despite how preliminary and unformed my thoughts have been. 2 Marino Sanudo, Liber secretorum fidelium crucis super Terrae sanctae recuperatione et conservatione, ed. Jacques de Bongars, vol. 2 of Gesta dei per Francos (Hanover, 1611; repr. Jerusalem: Massada Press, 1972), 1–2. For an English translation see Marino Sanudo, The Book of the Secrets of the Faithful of the Cross. Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis, trans. Peter Lock (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). For the gratification and the stay at Avignon see Bernhard Degenhart and Annegrit Schmitt, “Marino Sanudo und Paolino Veneto. Zwei Literaten des 14. Jahrhunderts und ihre Wirkung auf Buchillustrierung und Kartographie in Venedig, Avignon und Neapel,” Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 14 (1973): 1–137: 6; Frank Frankfort, “Marino Sanudo Torsello: A Social Biography” (PhD thesis, University of Cincinnati, 1974), 106–13. 3 The treatise of Fidenzio de Padua contains a small sketch mapping the Eastern Mediterranean and the Holy Land. See Patrick Gautier Dalché, “Cartes, réflexion stratégique et projets © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446038_007

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express purpose of presentation in Avignon. With some changes in composition and sequence, they form part of later manuscript copies of the Liber secretorum produced by Sanudo.4 The round world map, called by Sanudo “the map of the seas and countries”, was particularly unusual (Fig. 5.1). In addition to the manuscript that Sanudo presented to the pope, which is still preserved in the Vatican Library, the map is included in seven out of eleven illustrated copies of the Liber secretorum.5 A similar map forms part of an atlas which Vesconte produced around 1320–21, most likely as a sample for Sanudo.6 The map’s conception of space is very different in comparison, for instance, to the mappae mundi of Ebstorf or Hereford, which are only a few years older. Neither images of the earthly paradise and Jerusalem and other biblical events, nor monstrous peoples, are depicted, although in a short inscription the mapmaker refers to Gog and Magog as symbols of the Apocalypse at the end of time. The close relation between the history of salvation and space is thus to a large extent disintegrated. Instead, the map shows several topographic innovations: it focuses on the Indian Ocean and south-east Asia and offers new information on the Mongols and Prester John. Several of its innovations seem to derive from Arabic-Islamic maps. Some place names like the island camar in the Indian Ocean or habesse in southern Africa are clearly related to Arabic denotations. For the first time in the history of Latin cartography the Caspian Sea is depicted as an inland lake, a feature commonly found on maps produced in the Islamic world. Finally, in the centre of Africa, the Mountains of the Moon compose the source of the river Nile – again a feature that accords with the traditions of Arabic-Islamic cartography. In view of these differences, scholars have labelled Vesconte and Sanudo’s world map and similar late medieval depictions as “transitional maps”, de croisade à la fin du XIIIe et au début du XIVe siècle. Une initiative franciscaine?,” Francia 37 (2010): 77–95, at 86. 4 Following Kretschmer, Vesconte has to be given credit for producing most, if not all of the maps. Yet Sanudo might have participated in the process by instructing and commenting on the design. Therefore, I prefer to speak of the world map of Vesconte and Sanudo and not of Vesconte’s world map. Konrad Kretschmer, “Marino Sanudo der Ältere und die Karten des Petrus Vesconte,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin 26 (1891): 352–70. 5 For a comprehensive list see Evelyn Edson, “Reviving the crusade: Sanudo’s schemes and Vesconte’s maps,” in Eastward Bound. Travel and travellers, 1050–1550, ed. Rosamund Allen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 131–55. The copy presented to the Pope is preserved in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 2972, fols 112v–113r. For a transcription of the legends see Konrad Miller, Mappaemundi. Die ältesten Weltkarten, 6 vols (Stuttgart: Jos. Roth’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1895–1898), vol. 3, 132–36. 6 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Pal. lat. 1362a, fols 1v–2r.

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fig. 5.1 World map in the Liber secretorum of Marino Sanudo, c. 1321. East at top. Vatican City, ­Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 2972, fols 112v-113r.

implying thus a significant change in the history of cartographical representations.7 Yet the term “transitional maps” might be not fully appropriate. As Marianne O’Doherty has noted,8 it implies a dichotomy between the mappae mundi, seen as maps representing traditional medieval thought on the one 7 David Woodward, “Medieval Mappaemundi,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 1: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. J. Brian Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 286–370, esp. 296–98 and 314. 8 See Marianne O’Doherty, “A peripheral matter? Oceans in the East in late-medieval thought, report, and cartography,” Bulletin of International Medieval Research 16 (2010): 14–59, at 42–44.

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hand, and the somewhat innovative, more accurate “transitional maps” on the other. Seen from this perspective, the “transitional maps” seem to open a new chapter in the history of mapmaking that leads more or less directly to the mathematically-oriented mapping of early modern times. However, the term “transitional” fails to cover the multiple functions of these maps and the complexity of their conception of space. The dissimilarities to world maps like Ebstorf and Hereford indicate indeed a different use of cartographic methods and of cultural knowledge, but the aim of pre-modern cartographers such as Vesconte was not only to achieve a more realistic representation of the world. Rather, they used the map as a medium to produce space, and to produce spatial knowledge. That is, by selecting and defining visual and verbal signs, the mapmakers generated the means by which physical geography could be understood. They transmitted worldviews, cultural values and, not least, displayed their erudition.9 In accordance with this notion of cartography, I will take a closer look at Vesconte and Sanudo’s world map and ask how, and for what purposes, it was produced. After some remarks on the relation of the map to potential ArabicIslamic models, I will focus on elements in the map probably derived from Arabic sources: the depiction of the Mountains of the Moon and of the Caspian Sea, as well as several place names in Africa and Asia,10 before analysing the relationship between the map and the Liber secretorum and its possible functions for Sanudo’s planned crusade. Studying these elements will help to examine how transcultural knowledge was adapted and combined with Latin Christian spatial conceptions. In addition to features taken from sea (or portolan) charts, at the time still a relatively new map genre, these elements constitute a significant portion of the “transitional” character of the map. Moreover, they give us an insight into the transfer of cultural knowledge between the Arabic-Islamic and Latin Christian worlds of the fourteenth century. Since the twelfth century in particular, the value of Islamic sciences – above all in the disciplines of philosophy, astronomy, mathematics and medicine – was 9

10

For further references on the “spatial” and “cartographical turn” see Jörg Dünne, Die kartographische Imagination. Erinnern, Erzählen und Fingieren in der Frühen Neuzeit (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2011); Christian Jacob, The Sovereign Map. Theoretical Approaches in Cartography throughout History, trans. Tom Conley (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Gyula Papáy, “Kartographie,” in Raumwissenschaften, ed. Stephan Günzel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2009), 175–90. Due to lack of space I have to omit other elements such as the Atlas Mountains in North Africa, the shape of Africa in general, and the image of the Indian Ocean with its islands. For a more detailed analysis see my forthcoming study, with the working title WeltWissen und kartographische Repräsentation. Transkulturelle Verflechtungen zwischen der ­arabisch-islamischen und lateinisch-christlichen Kartographie im Mittelalter.

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increasingly recognized in the Latin West.11 However, with regard to cartographical representations, the extent of the influence and the process of integrating knowledge derived from Arabic-Islamic sources have not yet been fully explored. Research on Latin Christian authors who translated and made available multiple Arabic treatises, moreover, has firstly shown that religious differences were not necessarily an obstacle.12 Secondly, their motives and their methods of adapting and transforming the newly available knowledge for their own purposes differed widely. Consequently, the cultural transfer that emerged was neither systematic nor can it be imagined as a linear process that led inevitably to a more modern understanding of science. It seems more fruitful, then, to interpret Vesconte and Sanudo’s hybrid world map by taking into account the multidimensional, multidirectional and sometimes unintentional structures of knowledge transfer.13 1 Vesconte and Sanudo’s World Map and Its Arabic-Islamic Counterpart The suggestion that graphic and verbal information in Vesconte and Sanudo’s world map derived from an Arabic-Islamic source dates from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Joachim Lelewel and Konrad Miller, the first European researchers who examined historical Arabic-Islamic maps in a systematic way, saw the world map accompanying the mid-twelfth-century Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq (“The Book of Pleasant Journeys into Faraway Lands”, also known as “The Book of Roger”) of al-Idrīsī as a model for the Vesconte-Sanudo map (see Fig. 4.1).14 Al-Idrīsī’s world map is part of a monumental geographical treatise equipped with seventy sectional maps, which the Arab scholar produced following a commission from the Norman 11 12 13

14

See the Introduction to this volume for bibliographical references. See Bernard R. Goldstein, “Astronomy as ‘Neutral Zone’: Interreligious Cooperation in Medieval Spain,” Medieval Encounters 15 (2009): 159–74. See further Michael Borgolte, Julia Dücker, Marcel Müllerburg, and Bernd Schneidmüller, eds, Integration und Desintegration von Kulturen im europäischen Mittelalter (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2011); Margit Mersch, “Transkulturalität, Verflechtung, Hybridisierung – ‘neue’ epistemologische Modelle in der Mittelalterforschung,” in Transkulturelle Verflechtungsprozesse in der Vormoderne, ed. Wolfram Drews and Christian Scholl (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 239–51; Georg Christ et al., Transkulturelle Verflechtungen. Mediävistische Perspektiven (Göttingen: Universitätsverlag, 2016). Joachim Lelewel, Géographie du Moyen Âge, vol. 2 (Breslau, 1852; repr. Amsterdam: Meridian Publishing, 1966), 19–35; Konrad Miller, Mappae Arabicae: Arabische Welt- und Länderkarten des 9. – 13. Jahrhunderts, 6 vols (Stuttgart, 1926–31), vol. 2, 51.

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king Roger II of Sicily.15 The case for al-Idrīsī’s influence has been accepted by some scholars. Tadeusz Lewicki in particular argued in the 1970s for a close connection between al-Idrīsī’s work and the Vesconte-Sanudo map.16 His views were more or less supported by Carsten Drecoll and especially by Fuat Sezgin, who has promoted the idea that the whole development of Western mapping is unthinkable without the massive impact of Islamic cartography.17 On the other hand, scholars such as Evelyn Edson have been more cautious about affirming a direct line from al-Idrīsī to Vesconte and Sanudo.18 There are indeed several reasons to question the conclusion that VesconteSanudo must have worked with al-Idrīsī’s world map. As will be discussed below, some of Lewicki’s arguments, especially those regarding place names, are not convincing. And his suggestion that Sanudo could have acquired a copy of al-Idrīsī’s map during his merchant travels in the eastern Mediterranean are in the end not confirmable. Leaving the world map aside, there is very little evidence that Vesconte and Sanudo used al-Idrīsī’s sectional maps or any part of his text. If Vesconte and Sanudo truly had had access to a manuscript copy of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq, one might ask why they used only such a small part of it? And why did it only inform their world map? The sectional maps and the detailed descriptions contained in al-Idrīsī’s work would have provided them with much additional and useful information for planning a crusade. Even though al-Idrīsī worked for many years at a Christian court, the Nuzhat al-mushtāq seems to have been unknown in Europe before it was printed and translated in the seventeenth century.19 That a round world map was an integral part of al-Idrīsī’s work is moreover not certain at all, since he refers nowhere in his text to such a map.20 Although a world map is part of the oldest extant manuscript of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq, dated around 1300 (Paris, 15 16 17

18 19

20

On al-Idrīsī see further Chapter Four in this volume. Tadeusz Lewicki, “Marino Sanudos Mappa mundi (1321) und die runde Weltkarte von Idrīsī,” Rocznik Orientalistyczny 38 (1976): 169–95. Carsten Drecoll, Idrísí aus Sizilien. Der Einfluß eines arabischen Wissenschaftlers auf die Entwicklung der europäischen Geographie (Egelsbach: Hänsel-Hohenhausen, 2000); Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums X–XIII: Mathematische Geographie und Kartographie im Islam und ihr Fortleben im Abendland, 4 vols (Frankfurt: Institut für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften, 2000–2007), vol. 1, 293–94, 484–85 and 504; vol. 3, 24–25. See the Introduction to this volume for discussion of this thesis. Edson, “Reviving the crusade,” 68–69. See with further references Stefan Schröder, “Wissenstransfer beim Kartieren von Herrschaft? Zum Verhältnis von Wissen und Macht bei al-Idrīsī und Marino Sanudo,” in Herrschaft verorten. Politische Kartographie in Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Ingrid Baumgärtner and Martina Stercken (Zürich: Chronos, 2012), 313–33. S. Maqbul Ahmad, “Cartography of al-Sharif al-Idrīsī,” The History of Cartography, vol. 2, book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, ed. J. Brian H ­ arley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 156–74: 160; Tarek

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fig. 5.2 Circular world map in the the Kitāb Gharāʾib al-funūn (“Book of Curiosities”), c. 1200. South at top. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arab. c. 90, fols 27v-28r.

Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2221, fols 3v-4r), not all existing copies include a world map and the images that do survive vary considerably.21 The discovery of the Gharāʾib al-funūn wa-mulaḥ al-ʿuyūn (“The Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes”) has complicated the situation even further. This cosmological work, probably written in Egypt in the eleventh century and preserved in a copy from the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century, includes a world map that, apart from some slight differences, is very similar to the map of the world in the Nuzhat al-mushtāq (Fig. 5.2). It seems that this map may not have been part of the original manuscript,22 but was copied by the scribe of the twelfth- or thirteenth-century manuscript of the Book of Curiosities from an unknown source, maybe having access to a copy of al-Idrīsī, as Ibn Khaldūn did subsequently.23

21 22

23

Kahlaoui, “Towards reconstructing the Muqaddimah following Ibn Khaldūn’s reading of the Idrīsīan text and maps,” Journal of North African Studies 13 (2008), 293–307, esp. 299. See Maqbul Ahmad, “Cartography of al-Sharif al-Idrīsī.” An Eleventh-Century Egyptian Guide to the Universe: The Book of Curiosities, ed. and trans. Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 30–31; Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith, Lost Maps of the Caliphs: Drawing the World in Eleventh-Century Cairo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 24–27. Ibn Khaldūn, The Muqaddimah. An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal, 3 vols (New York: Princeton University Press, 1958).

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However, this new evidence indicates the strong possibility that a map of this kind might have been more common in Arabic-Islamic cartography than has been previously thought, and that it might not necessarily be an invention of al-Idrīsī himself. As a consequence, some researchers have begun to speak of maps of the “Idrīsīan style”, instead of maps of al-Idrīsī.24 It follows that Vesconte-Sanudo’s template for their world map may have been an intermediary, rather than al-Idrīsī’s work itself. They may, for example, have had access just to a single sheet of vellum with the cartographical representation and without any accompanying Arabic manuscript. It remains unknown where and under what circumstances Vesconte and Sanudo obtained access to such an “Idrīsīan map”. Nevertheless, the likelihood that some kind of “Idrīsīan map” was available on the Latin Christian side becomes even stronger when the so-called “silent world map” in an early fourteenthcentury south Italian manuscript of Brunetto Latini’s Livres dou Tresor is taken into account. The map in the Livres dou Tresor, which is “silent” in that not a single word is placed on it, shares many features with the map of Vesconte and Sanudo.25 However, its graphic style differs markedly to that of the VesconteSanudo map, and in general its representation of space amounts to a different reception of an “Idrīsīan map”. The version of Vesconte-Sanudo resembles its “Idrīsīan model” more closely. It shows mountain chains with an imbricated structure in the very same manner seen in the version of of al-Idrīsī’s world map in BnF, MS arabe 2221. The same can be said of the shape and placement of the three islands in the Caspian Sea. However, the comparison of the depictions of the River Nile, for instance, reveals some significant differences. 2 The Transmission of Arabic-Islamic Knowledge and Its Challenges: The Case of the Mountains of the Moon and the Caspian Sea Beyond the question of how Vesconte and Sanudo had knowledge of an “Idrīsīan map”, it is important to consider how they dealt with the transcultural knowledge found on such a document. As the depiction of the so-called 24

25

Sonja Brentjes, “Revisiting Catalan Portolan Charts: Do They Contain Elements of Asian Provenance?,” in The Journey of Maps and Images on the Silk Road, ed. Andreas Kaplony and Philippe Forêt (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 181–201: 183; Kahlaoui, “Towards reconstructing the Muqaddimah,” 300. Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, “Die stumme Weltkarte im Bodleian Douce 319 – ein arabisches Dokument in einer abendländischen Handschrift?,” in Wissen über Grenzen. Arabisches Wissen und lateinisches Mittelalter, ed. Andreas Speer and Lydia Wegener (­Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006), 791–804.

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Mountains of the Moon and the Caspian Sea reveals, their world map is not a simple copy. The Arabic elements were instead synthesized and transformed through a process of translation and commentary, in order to combine them with Latin Christian conceptions of space. Until the fourteenth century, Latin Christian mapmakers were confronted with the problem of different ancient theories of the origin of the Nile and the biblical tradition that the river emanated from the earthly paradise in the Far East. Based on Pliny, Orosius and others, the Ebstorf map for instance explains that the biblical Gihon drains away after leaving paradise, has its reappearance in West Africa, flows eastwards, disappears several times again and comes finally into sight near the Red Sea, from where it makes its way to the Mediterranean. The connection to Africa was imagined by some mapmakers as an underground passage below the Indian Ocean.26 As a result of the translation of the Geography of Ptolemy into Arabic in the ninth century, in contrast, Arabic-Islamic cartography offered a somewhat different image. With the exception of maps of the so-called Balkhī school, the Jabal al-Qamar (Mountains of the Moon) became one of the few very prominent graphic elements on Arabic-Islamic maps.27 Ptolemy’s assumption that the origin of the Nile was to be found at very high, snow-capped mountains in the centre of Africa is visualized in the map of the river Nile in the only extant manuscript of Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārazmī’s Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ (“Book of the image of the Earth”), an image that is also the oldest known Arabic map.28 What is more, the depiction in al-Khwārazmī’s work had by that time already been extended by a third lake, a feature that was not mentioned by Ptolemy. This almost iconic graphic sign of the mountains of the moon is to be found for the first time in Latin Christian cartography on the world map of Vesconte 26

27

28

See the map in a fourteenth-century manuscript of Isidore’s of Seville Etymologiae in Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Plut. 27 sin. 8, fol. 64v (Fig. 18.32 in vol. 1 of the History of Cartography). For the Western course of the river through Africa see Robin Seignobos, “L‘origine occidentale du Nil dans la géographie latine et arabe avant le XIVe siècle,” in Orbis Disciplinae: Hommages en l‘honneur de Patrick Gautier Dalché, ed. Nathalie Bouloux, Anca Dan and Georges Tolias (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 371–94. For the Mountains of the Moon in Islamic geography and cartography and in its context of Africa see J. H. Kramers, “al-Nīl,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. 8 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 37–43; Francesc Relaño, The Shaping of Africa. Cosmographic Discourse and Cartographic Science in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). See Gerald R. Tibbetts, “The Beginnings of a Cartographic Tradition,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 2, book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, ed. J. Brian Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 90–107.

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fig. 5.3 Detailed view of the Mountains of the Moon from (left to right) Figs 5.1 (Vesconte-Sanudo world map), 4.1 (world map in al-Idrīsī’s Nuzhat al-mushtāq), and 5.2 (circular world map in the Book of Curiosities).

and Sanudo. However, there are some significant differences between their example and the Arabic-Islamic models (Fig. 5.3). Instead of ten headwater streams floating down the Mountains of the Moon (as found in the Gharāʾib al-funūn and in most of the world maps in copies of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq), they drew just eight. These streams also do not fan out again after passing the first two lakes. Vesconte and Sanudo, moreover, drew the lakes not as round circles but in a form that looks like two narrow rivers flowing around a big island. A third lake is missing and so too is the “mountain of the division” (Jabal al-muqassim), a mountain chain that extends into the lake and divides the Nile into two branches – one flowing to the north ending in the Mediterranean, and the other flowing to the west and emptying in the Atlantic. Vesconte and Sanudo’s world image does show a substantial river streaming westwards to the Atlantic, but it is clearly separated from the Nile. Only the “silent world map” indicates in some way a third lake in close proximity to the first two, as well as a mountain chain that is the starting point for a river that ends in the Atlantic as it is depicted by al-Idrīsī and the scribe of the Book of Curiosities. A final difference concerns another river on the map of Vesconte and Sanudo, which originates from an unidentified source in eastern Ethiopia and merges with the Nile. This river and its source probably resemble what is

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today called the Blue Nile and the Lake of Tana. Both are again mentioned by Ptolemy (as Astapus and the Lake of Koloe) and visualized by al-Khwārazmī. Al-Idrīsī describes this river and source in the fourth section of the first clime, pointing out that it also ends in the third lake.29 The image of this river was included in al-Idrīsī’s sectional maps and it appears to be present in the oldest of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq’s world maps (the image in BnF MS arabe 2221 is badly damaged in this area), as well as the version of the map now in Cairo.30 Nevertheless, it is absent from all other known copies, including the world map that accompanies Ibn Khaldūn’s Muqaddimah. Intriguingly, Vesconte and Sanudo’s map shows the river entering the Nile much further north than it does on those “Idrīsīan” word maps that include it. This depiction in fact resembles more closely that of the circular world map in the Gharāʾib al-funūn (Book of Curiosities), which similarly represents the river curving to the north and entering the Nile at a point well beyond the Mountains of the Moon and the three lakes.31 In summary, Vesconte and Sanudo’s depiction of this region clearly follows an Arabic-Islamic model, but it is far from an identical copy of any known map. The adoption of the Mountains of the Moon as the source of the Nile and as the southern border of human settlement was a substantial alteration to the ordinary world image in the medieval Latin West, and one that must have caught the observer’s eye, but it was not necessarily contradictory to earlier or contemporary Latin Christian representations. The Mountains of the Moon could still be interpreted in accordance with the standard Latin Christian theory of a biblical river that disappears and reappears several times in Africa. In this context it might be important that Sanudo and Vesconte depict the mountain chain without its Arabic name, which is also absent from Sanudo’s Liber secretorum. There he argues very cautiously that nothing can be said of the origin of the river except that it comes down from some Nubian mountains that mark a border with unknown southern lands.32 The graphic sign of the Mountains of the Moon thus might indicate for the contemporary fourteenth-century 29

Al-Idrīsī, Opus geographicum sive “Liber ad eorum delectationem qui terras peragrare studeant”, ed. E. Cerulli et al. (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, 1970–84), 32–33; Géographie d’Édrisi, trans. Amédée Jaubert, 2 vols (Paris, 1836–40), vol. 1, 27–28. 30 Cairo, Dār al-Kutub, Jugrāfiyā 150. See Maqbul Ahmad, “Cartography of al-Sharif al-Idrīsī,” 161 fig. 7.2. The conception of space is different on the Cairo map, however: the Mountains of the Moon are not the origin of the eastern (i.e. Egyptian) Nile, but of the “Nile” that runs westwards to the Atlantic, while the eastern Nile itself splits in two, with one branch continuing to the Mediterranean, and the other forming a second river flowing to the west and ending in the Atlantic. 31 The stream lacks a name and is simply labelled as “a river that flows into the Nile”. See The Book of Curiosities, ed. Rapoport and Savage-Smith, 439. 32 Sanudo, Liber secretorum, 261.

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fig. 5.4 Detailed view of the Caspian Seas from (left to right) Figs 5.1 (Vesconte-Sanudo world map), 4.1 (world map in al-Idrīsī’s Nuzhat al-mushtāq), and 5.2 (circular world map in the Book of Curiosities).

reader the use of other sources of information of some kind, but the alteration marks no definite break with established Latin Christian conceptions of space. Only later in the fourteenth century – for instance in the sea charts ascribed to the Venetian Pizigano family – and thereafter in the fifteenth century, was the name for the mountains at times integrated in maps either in its transcribed (Gibelcamar) or translated form (Mons Lune). Only these combinations of graphic image and name point to a significantly altered understanding of the geography of Africa. The case of the Caspian Sea is more complex. In ancient times the relationship of the Caspian Sea to the surrounding world ocean was debated: was it a gulf of the outer Ocean, or an inland lake? In the Latin West during the Middle Ages, the first solution was preferred. Both on zonal maps and on maps of the T-O type, the Caspian is usually depicted as a huge bay in the north-east next to the apocalyptic tribes of Gog and Magog. Sanudo’s world map, in contrast, shows a somewhat pear-shaped Mare caspium surrounded on two sides by a mountain chain similar especially to the version of al-Idrīsī contained in a sixteenth-century copy of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Pococke 375) (Fig. 5.4). The dependence on an “Idrīsīan template” and ArabicIslamic tradition in general – in which the status of the Caspian Sea as an inland lake was never questioned – can clearly be seen even if Vesconte and Sanudo

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did not give some kind of transcription of an Arabic name.33 However, there is again a major difference, because the mapmakers placed this Caspian Sea in the far East. On the position where in the “Idrīsīan maps” the pear-shaped Caspian is usually depicted, Vesconte and Sanudo drew a second Caspian Sea. This sea has the form of an arrowhead heading from west to east. With Mare Caspis, [Mare] Yrcanum and [Mare] de Sara[i], Vesconte and Sanudo gave several names that referred to both ancient and contemporary terminology. A water-network beneath this sea in the atlas probably produced by Vesconte as a potential prototype for the maps in the Liber secretorum strongly suggests that this second Caspian Sea is the result of a change of plans that occurred during the process of mapmaking. As Konrad Kretschmer long ago pointed out, it seems that Vesconte first drew several rivers flowing through the region, but painted over them at a later point. Since he used lighter ink for drawing this second Caspian Sea, the rivers that had been drawn initially are still visible.34 In all later versions of the Vesconte-Sanudo world map this water-network is missing, but the place and the shape of both Caspian Seas remain relatively constant. It seems, then, that Vesconte and Sanudo had contradictory information either from an unknown map or from texts such as those of Hayton of Corycus (more probably) and William of Rubruck (less probably), who both describe the Caspian as a closed sea without access to the ocean.35 It is also possible that they got the information from Italian merchants trading between the Black Sea and Tabriz. This possibility could help to explain some further dissimilarities regarding the depiction of eastern Asia between Vesconte and Sanudo’s map and the “Idrīsīan template”, such as the depiction of the river network south of the Caspian. In mixing these different traditions, the Genoese mapmaker and the Venetian merchant might have decided to draw two Caspian Seas, showing the conflicting data and leaving the decision of which is the right one to the observer. 33 34 35

It has to be said, however, that on “Idrīsīan maps” the Caspian Sea is only sometimes named and that in Arabic-Islamic geography generally different names were in use. See Kretschmer, “Marino Sanudo der Ältere,” 364–65. William of Rubruck, The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck. His journey to the court of the Great Khan Möngke 1253–1255, trans. Peter Jackson and David Morgan (London: The H ­ akluyt Society, 1990), 128–29; Hayton of Corycos, “La Flor des Estoires des Parties d’Orient,” in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades. Documents Arméniens, vol. 2 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1906), 113–253: 125. As Sanudo mentions himself, Hayton was an important source for his Liber secretorum. The text of William of Rubruck, however, was less known in the Middle Ages and survived only in a few manuscript copies.

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This example illustrates the difficulties that mapmakers faced when they had to deal with contradictory traditions. The position and extent of the Caspian Sea were still unclear, the knowledge not yet defined and fully accepted. The unknown artist who produced the “silent world map” to support Brunetto Latini’s text on the geography of the world seemingly avoided drawing an inland Caspian – thus keeping intact the relation between the image and Brunetto’s text, which refers to the Caspian Sea as part of the world ocean.36 The case of the Caspian Sea shows Vesconte and Sanudo’s awareness that cartographical space is the result and forum of discursive assumptions, and that the conception of space visualised on a map cannot always accurately represent local geographical conditions.37 In this awareness, they at first sight undermine the persuasive power of the map as a medium that allocates each piece of geographical and cultural information to an exactly definable position on parchment in order to achieve a seemingly accurate and neutral representation of the physical reality of the world.38 However, one could argue that by unmasking this process and including different representations of the Caspian Sea, Vesconte and Sanudo showed that they had thoroughly weighed all options in order to produce a map that was as reliable as possible, and that by doing so they may even have increased the credibility of their work as a whole. This double inscription of the Caspian Sea was evidently difficult to understand even for contemporaries.39 The Franciscan Paulinus Minorita (c. 1270/74– c. 1344), one of the experts commissioned by the Pope to ­evaluate Sanudo’s 36

37

38

39

Brunetto Latini, Li Livres dou Tresor, ed. Francis James Carmody (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1948), 112. Although one can see some similarities to the map of Sanudo and Vesconte concerning the surrounding mountain chains, the area in between these mountains on the map in the Livres dou Tresor manuscript clearly lacks the bright blue ink used for oceans and seas. This notion is expressed at the bottom of the folio in some versions of the Sanudo-­ Vesconte world map produced after 1321, in the form of a statement to the effect that it is impossible to show everything on such a map of the world. Sanudo, Liber secretorum (note 2), 285. For the whole inscription and further discussion see Nathalie Bouloux, Culture et savoirs géographiques en Italie au XIVe siècle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), 62; Nathalie Bouloux, “L’espace habité,” in La Terre: Connaissance, représentations, mesure au Moyen  ge, ed. Patrick Gautier Dalché (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 259–441: 357–59; Edson, “Reviving the crusade,” 139. For the power of maps see, for instance, Jacob, The Sovereign Map, 191; Denis Wood, The Power of Maps (New York: Guilford Press, 1992); John Brian Harley, “Maps, Knowledge and Power,” in The Iconography of Landscape. Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design, and Use of Past Environments, ed. Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels (Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press, 1988), 277–312. See for the following Evelyn Edson, The World Map, 1300–1492. The Persistence of Tradition and Transformation (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2007), 72–73.

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Liber secretorum, used the world map twice for his own world ­chronicle. It is unclear whether Paulinus became aware of this new type of map only by seeing Sanudo’s Liber secretorum in Avignon. Born also in Venice, he might already have been familiar with it before 1321 and might have worked – as Michelina di Cesare suggests – more independently from Sanudo than has been assumed.40 In a version of his map produced around 1329, Paulinus adopted both Caspian Seas, but added a long legend from an unknown source to the second sea, where he explains the different names and inserts further details.41 In this way, Paulinus apparently gave this inland lake a greater verisimilitude than the one derived from Arabic models. In his second version of the world map, part of a manuscript dated between 1334 and 1339 and probably produced by another scribe and illustrator, this legend is missing.42 Instead, one great bay of the world ocean is named as the Caspian Sea. The viewer thus can choose between two inland Caspians and the traditional view that it is part of the ocean. In later Latin Christian maps, however, the question of the Caspian Sea was quickly solved in favour of one inland lake east of the Black Sea. The differing traditions were only discussed by a few authors of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries like Giovanni Boccaccio, who used Paulinus’ chronicles as a source, and Pierre d’Ailly.43 3

Place Names

The eye-catching graphic elements of the Mountains of the Moon and the Caspian Sea are accompanied on the Vesconte-Sanudo world map by the introduction of new place names. Some of these can be traced back to an Arabic origin, though fewer than Lewicki assumed: Gaulolia, Nubia, Sym, Sycia sive regnum Cathay and Castrum Gog et Magog, for instance, are certainly not 40 41 42 43

Michelina Di Cesare, Studien zu Paulinus Venetus De mapa mundi (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2015). Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 4939, fol. 9r. See Bernhard Degenhart and Annegrit Schmitt, Corpus der Italienischen Zeichnungen 1300–1450, 2.2: Venedig. Addenda Süd- und Mittelitalien (Berlin: Mann, 1980), no. 692, 261–74. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 1960, fol. 264v. See Degenhart and Schmitt, Corpus, no. 693, 274–89. In his De montibus, Giovanni Boccaccio apparently interpreted the display of two Caspian Seas at first as a mistake of the mapmaker, but subsequently presented the contradictory ancient and contemporary theories on the Caspian without favouring one or the other. See Bouloux, “L’espace habité,” 389–94; Emmanuelle Vagnon, Cartographie et Représentations de l’Orient méditerranéen en Occident (du milieu du XIIIe à la fin du XVe siècle) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 191–92.

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of Arabic origin.44 Others like Locacessim (Locessim), Chus, Kis, Neze (Nese), nebile, termelit, flumen Gyon and Bedoni could have some Arabic connection, but the source does not have to be al-Idrīsī. With Chus and Kis at the shores of eastern Africa, for example, there are some analogies to names in section maps of the Nuzhat al-mushtāq. However, these names are not part of the round world maps and there is no logical argument to explain why Sanudo should choose of all possible names these and only these. In the case of Chus and Kis, which can be identified as the important trading sites al-Quṣayr and Kish Island, it is more likely that they were already known through other – including non-written – sources. Some oral information, for example, could explain also the term Gyon that refers to the Central Asian river Jayḥūn, the ancient Oxus and modern Āmū Darjā. The term is not extant in the “Idrīsīan” world maps and only very rarely used on the Latin side,45 but it could have reached Sanudo by means of Venetian and Genoese trade connections to the Black Sea and beyond.46 A closer connection to an “Idrīsīan template”, however, can be affirmed for the inscriptions Provincie Oburge, hec et Ethiopia inferior; Habesse vel Terra Nigrorum; Carab terra destructa; Insula Lince dicitur Camar; and Zinc et idem Zinciber. Provincie Oburge, hec et Ethiopia inferior refers to the Arabic term al-boja or al-Bujah, which refers to the nomadic tribe of the Beja.47 Habesse vel Terra Nigrorum is the transcription of the Arabic al-Ḥabasha that is itself a loanword 44

45

46

47

See already Drecoll, Idrísí aus Sizilien, 42; Bertrand Hirsch, “L’espace nubien et éthiopien sur les cartes portulans du XIVe siècle,” Médiévales 9.18 (1990): 69–92, at 74; Patrick Gautier Dalché, “Epistola fratrum sincerorum in cosmographia: une traduction latine inédite de la quatrième Risāla des Iḫwān al-Ṣafā,” Revue d’histoire des textes 18 (1988): 137–67, at 137–38. The river is only mapped in the rectangular world map as well as in a regional map of the Gharāʾib al-funūn. The earliest reference in a Latin source is the pseudo-Aristotelian tractate De causis proprietatum elementorum, a text that was translated into Latin in the twelfth century and is preserved in many manuscripts, in two cases connected to a map. However, there is no evidence that Vesconte and Sanudo were aware of that work. For an overview see Stanley Vodraska, “Pseudo-Aristotle, De causis proprietatum et elementorum: Critical Edition and Study” (PhD thesis, University of London, 1969), and Chapter One in this volume. The analysis of the tractate and its geographical/cartographical information forms another chapter in my forthcoming study. For trade relations around the Black Sea, see, with further references, David Jacoby, “­Western Commercial and Colonial Expansion in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea in the Late Middle Ages,” in Rapporti mediterranei, pratiche documentarie, presenze veneziane: le reti economiche e culturali (XIV–XVI secolo), ed. Gherardo Ortalli and Alessio Sopracasa (Venice: Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 2017), 3–50. Hirsch, “L’espace nubien et éthiopien,” 76. For more on the Beja see Karen Pinto, Medieval Islamic Maps: An Exploration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 187–218.

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taken from the Amharic language.48 As a standard entry on Arabic maps, it means the land of Ethiopia and/or the Ethiopian people. The term Carab from the legend Carab terra destructa in Asia is not based on known Western travel reports. It might be derived from the Arabic expression for ruin or destruction.49 On the extant “Idrīsīan” world maps the inscription appears only in one later version, while it is used several times on the equivalent section map of north-eastern Asia in the Nuzhat al-mushtāq.50 The biggest island in the Indian Ocean, Camar, refers to the Arabic al-kamar or jazīra al-Qumr, which is usually identified as modern Java. Finally Zinc et idem Zinciber on the shores of East Africa comes certainly from the Arabic as-Zanj, the term usually used to name the black population of that region.51 These names appear here for the first time as part of a Latin Christian map and have to my knowledge no immediate relation to other contemporary Western sources. Of course terms like Habesse are to be found elsewhere, for example in the travelogue of Marco Polo. But since the Arabic language is based on consonants and diacritical signs are only rarely used, such links between Sanudo’s transliteration on one hand, and Arabic sources and other Western texts on the other, are difficult to determine. Such toponyms could also derive from orally-transmitted information available, for instance, in the city of Venice, Europe’s gate to the East. What speaks for the argument that Vesconte and Sanudo derived especially the above-mentioned five terms from an “Idrīsīan template” is the analogy in placing. The names appear at more or less the same position in the Vesconte-Sanudo world map as they do in the “Idrīsīan maps”. In this context it is noticeable that these inscriptions are all to be found near the newly introduced graphic elements like the Mountains of the Moon, the Caspian Sea and the Indian Ocean. Even when not using transcriptions of the Arabic for these elements themselves, their prominent design drew the attention of the observer to specific regions and to these inscriptions. In case of the Mountains of the Moon, the Arabic denotations accentuate the meaning of the region that is inhabited by Christian Ethiopians as the source of Egypt’s most important water stock. The inscription Carab terra destructa near the Caspian 48 49 50

51

Hirsch, “L’espace nubien et éthiopien,” 74. Lewicki, “Marino Sanudos Mappa mundi,” 194; Drecoll, Idrísí aus Sizilien, 42. It is not used in the maps of the Gharāʾib al-funūn. On the world maps accompanying the Nuzhat al-mushtāq, it is only marked in the version of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Pococke 375, fols 3v–4r, but is missing from all other copies. Due to the condition of the map it cannot be decided whether it appeared in the copy in BnF MS arabe 2221. For the section maps see Miller, Mappae arabicae, vol. 1, 3, 99 and vol. 6, figs. 58 and 68. For the term see with further references see A. Popovic, “al-Zandj,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. 11 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 444–46.

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Sea is connected with hints concerning the original and current dwellings of the Mongols ruling the regnum Cathay, Marco Polo’s term for northern China.52 The encounter with the Mongols, who had completely altered the geopolitical constellation in Asia, is thus for the first time reflected on a map.53 The legend also characterizes Asia as an area that is in flux and facing war. The Indian Ocean, finally, is emphasized by its dimensions as an important region of the world that is almost unknown to Christianity as a result of the Muslim dominance in the Near and Middle East. By adopting these features and by adding explanatory information on the meaning of the Arabic expressions, Vesconte and Sanudo actively accentuated these parts of the world. By using phrases like dicitur they clearly announced to the observer that some unusual and new information had been introduced. By using clarifying descriptions like terra destructa or Terra Nigrorum, they demonstrated their expertise even when they had probably received some help in translating these terms from Arabic. 4

The World Map and Sanudo’s Liber secretorum

What significance did this altered conception of space have for Sanudo’s Liber secretorum? Sanudo wrote his very detailed plan to recover the Holy Land not only because the most holy Christian sites were in the hands of infidels. He was also preoccupied by the power of the Mamluks as well as the gradual expansion of the Turks that threatened Europe in general, and Venice and its trade connections in particular. Like other authors of crusade proposals he assumed that the mission to recover the Holy Land would only be successful if it was accompanied by economic warfare against Egypt.54 He suggested that as a first 52 53

54

See Folker Reichert, Begegnungen mit China. Die Entdeckung Ostasiens im Mittelalter (­Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1992), 96–98. It is interesting to consider whether Sanudo and Vesconte actively identified the Mongols as the apocalyptic tribes of Gog and Magog. In that case, as O’Doherty has shown, the world map could be interpreted as a hint that the eschatological chain of events that will result in the Last Judgement is now definitely set in motion. The Mongols are not enclosed behind an eastern mountain chain anymore, but are on the move through Asia ravaging the world. This view, however, is not emphasised in the text of the Liber secretorum. Marianne O’Doherty, The Indies and the Medieval West. Thought, Report, Imagination (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 272. For this tactic see for instance Benjamin Z. Kedar and Sylvia Schein, “Un projet de ‘passage particulier’ proposé par l’ordre de l’Hôpital 1306–7,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 137 (1979): 211–26. For the context and further references on crusader proposals see Sylvia Schein, Fideles Crucis. The Papacy, the West, and the Recovery of the Holy Land 1274–1314 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Antony Leopold, How to Recover the Holy Land. The Crusade Proposals of the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000).

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step a naval blockade in the Mediterranean should cut off all trade in order to weaken the Mamluk Empire. The spice trade of India should furthermore be re-directed from the Indian Ocean to Persia and the Caucasus so as to disconnect the Sultan from his major source of income. As a second step, an expeditionary corps should conquer strategic points in Egypt. With a large Crusader army following in its wake, it would finally be easy to liberate Jerusalem and the Levant.55 In some of his letters to potential leaders or financiers of his crusade, Sanudo proposed a close connection between the verbal and visual medium.56 However, the Venetian actually refers nowhere in the text of the Liber secretorum to the world map, and there are some examples where text and image are not synchronised.57 All the same, the world map as well as the other cartographical depictions in the book still had several functions.58 Firstly they distinguished Sanudo’s 55 56

57

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For a more detailed view see Schröder, “Wissenstransfer”; Alfredo Cocci, “Il progetto di blocco navale delle coste egiziane nel ‘Liber secretorum Fidelium Crucis’ di Marino Sanudo il Vecchio,” Clio 36 (2000): 5–19. See for instance two letters written in 1325 (Sanudo, Liber secretorum, 290–94; Sherman Roddy, “The Correspondence of Marino Sanudo Torsello” (PhD thesis, University of Philadelphia, 1971), 124 and 130), a letter to the Bishop of Ostia written in 1330 (Friedrich Kunstmann, “Studien über Marino Sanudo den Aelteren mit einem Anhange seiner ungedruckten Briefe,” Abhandlungen der Historischen Classe der Königlichen Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 7 (1855): 697–819, at 788; Roddy, “The Correspondence,” 268), and a letter addressed to the French King Philip VI (Kunstmann, “Studien über Marino,” 794; Roddy, “The Correspondence,” 275–76). One example is the map’s location of Prester John in India, a reference to the tale of a mighty Christian king and descendant of the three Magi, who ruled over numerous kingdoms and lived in incredible luxury somewhere in India near the earthly paradise. It was hoped that this king would support the Christians in Europe in their fight against the Muslims. In the text of the Liber secretorum, however, Sanudo referred to Prester John only in the context of his son or grandson David, who had already been defeated by the Mongols: Sanudo, Liber secretorum, 235. In doing so, Sanudo was drawing on De interfectione David Indie regis a tartaris, a text contained in Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum maius. De interfectione David was therefore completely at odds with the original meaning of the legend as well as with a further text, the Relatio de Davide, in which David gloriously defeated all his non-Christian enemies. On these texts see Der Priester Johannes. Zwei Teile in einem Band, ed. Friedrich Zarncke (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1876); Prester John: The Legend and its Sources, ed. and trans. Keagan Brewer (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015). For Vincent of Beauvais’ incorporation of De interfectione David see Jean Richard, “The ‘Relatio de Davide’ as a Source for Mongol History and the Legend of Prester John,” in Prester John, the Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes, ed. Charles F. Beckingham and Bernard Hamilton (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), 139–58, esp. 148. For the function of the maps see further Edson, “Reviving the crusade”; Nathalie Bouloux, “Deux Vénitiens du XIVe siècle et la géographie: Paulin de Venise et Marino Sanudo,” in Savoirs des lieux: Géographies en histoire, ed. Odile Redon (Vincennes: Presses universitaires de Vincennes, 1996), 11–25, esp. 14–15 and 22; Bouloux, Culture et savoirs géographiques, 62 and 68.

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treatise from other crusade proposals that were produced after the fall of Acre in 1291. As previously mentioned, only one other text of this genre is known that used a map.59 In comparison, Vesconte and Sanudo’s world map, their sea charts depicting parts of the Mediterranean, the map of Egypt and the Levant and the later included plans of the Holy Land and of the cities of Acre, Antioch and Jerusalem, are much more elaborate. Together with the lavish illuminations that are to be found on many folios in the manuscripts of the Liber secretorum, the maps increased both the material and non-material value of Sanudo’s text as a whole. The world map served secondly as an important tool in visualizing Sanudo’s plan on a global level. It helped the reader to gain an overview of the topographic dimensions of the regions mentioned in the text. Sanudo saw the Persian Il-Khans and the Ethiopians in the Liber secretorum as potential allies, even though the Il-Khans at the time of his writing had already converted to Islam instead of Christianity, and the military strength of the Ethiopians was certainly overestimated.60 Concerning the region of the Caspian, he referred several times to the ferocious fighting skills of the fearless Christian Georgians and the Armenians, who were nevertheless in need of military and financial aid.61 He furthermore remarked that after a victorious campaign not only would Egypt and the Holy Land be under Christian rule, but that the way to the Indian Ocean and the spice routes to India could also be directly controlled.62 The opportunity to get direct access to the incredible wealth of the east marked in the world map by the Insula piperis in the Indian Ocean must have sounded tempting for the leaders of Latin Europe. By looking at the world map, the internal logic of Sanudo’s plan could thus be imagined. This logic is also reflected in a petition written in 1332 to King Philip VI of France that is integrated in the prologue of later redactions of the Liber secretorum. Sanudo stated there that the maps would not only help to reconquer the Holy Land, but in at least a figurative sense would also enable the French king to have the lordship of the world, to win paradise and thus even to outreach Alexander the Great.63 59 See footnote 3 above. 60 Sanudo, Liber secretorum, 95 and 36. For Christian-Mongol relations see Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410 (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2005). Concerning the Ethiopians see also Robin Seignobos, “L’autre Éthiopie: la Nubie et la croisade (XIIe–XIVe siècle),” Annales d’Éthiopie 27 (2012): 49–69 and 307–11, at 58–63. 61 See Sanudo, Liber secretorum, 183–84. 62 Sanudo, Liber secretorum, 94. See Antonio Garcia Espada, “Marco Polo, Odorico of Pordenone, the crusades, and the role of the vernacular in the first descriptions of the Indies,” Viator 40 (2009): 201–22, at 215. 63 Sanudo, Liber secretorum, 5.

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5 Conclusion It is clear that Vesconte and Sanudo’s selection of graphic and verbal elements from an “Idrīsīan template” for the world map in the Liber secretorum was not accidental. They included the Islamic elements not because they considered Arabic-Islamic cartography to be more accurate or more modern. Rather, the altered representation of space facilitated a fresh view on the world and drew the attention of the observer to specific regions. The map depicted new empires and current threats to Christianity as well as displaying possible ways to change the geopolitical situation in favour of the Christians, in a more suitable way than could be achieved by a mappa mundi like the Ebstorf map. The depiction of the Caspian Seas with the settlement areas of the Mongols, and the representation of the Mountains of the Moon alongside the lands of the Christian Ethiopians, as well as the Indian Ocean with its connections to India, were highly significant features designed to enhance the visualisation of certain strategic aspects of Sanudo’s project. Sanudo and Vesconte’s world map in the Liber secretorum was therefore an expression of political and economic ambitions. This function, however, does not exclude other motives for reading the map: its use, for instance, for geographical orientation, for contemplation of God’s wondrous creation, or as a mnemonic device. Even without a close relation to the text of the Liber secretorum the – in total moderate – use of Arabic-Islamic elements distinguished Sanudo’s work from other crusade proposals and allowed the reader to internalize his geopolitical views. In a sense, with their world map Vesconte and Sanudo aimed to use knowledge gained from the religious antagonist in order to defeat him. Moreover, since the mapmakers gave no explicit hint of the origin of their transcultural information, it may well be that contemporary viewers did not recognize new elements and toponyms as specifically Arabic-Islamic. Nevertheless, despite the vast conflicts between the competing monotheistic religions, and the fact that Sanudo’s crusader call emphasized the religious and political differences between the Latin Christian and the Arabic-Islamic worlds, the map reveals that an exchange of knowledge was possible and far from exceptional. These observations are not intended to suggest the abandonment of the term “transitional maps” or its displacement in favour of the label “transcultural map”, which if understood as a taxonomical category would be equally misleading. They do however indicate that we have to interpret Vesconte and Sanudo’s world map – as well as other examples of this type of map – as a conceptual representation like other mappae mundi, taking into account their multiple functions and the numerous ways in which they can be read. Their level of accuracy in comparison to other maps and to our present knowledge of

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geography might be just one aspect of many. In any case, the world map shows Vesconte and Sanudo’s flexibility and their willingness to adopt, transform and re-functionalize transcultural knowledge according to their own specific needs and intentions. Apart from Paulinus Minorita, a clear and direct impact on other mapmakers is difficult to confirm. The Arabic place names for instance are almost unknown on later maps and where they do appear, there seems to be no particular connection to Vesconte and Sanudo. This applies even for later Venetian cartographers such as Andrea Bianco and Fra Mauro. Their maps show some general similarities, but there is no straightforward evidence that they relied on the Liber secretorum. The inventive design of the world map, however, may have laid the path for other Latin Christian maps of the time. Without claiming a direct relation, parallels can be seen for example in a map created by the Florentine painter Giusto de’ Menabuoi for the Baptistery of St John in Padua, in Gregorio and Leonardo Dati’s cartographical representations of the Sphera and – regarding single elements like the Mountains of the Moon – in sea charts such as those attributed to the Pizigano family. Furthermore, Vesconte and Sanudo’s integration of graphic items like the Mountains of the Moon in the fourteenth century may have prepared the ground for the quick reception of the Ptolemaic world view that began to gain ground following the translation of the Geographia into Latin at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Given the huge loss of cartographical material over the course of centuries, it might be a coincidence that these parallels are to be found mostly in maps of Italian provenance. It is true that both the similarities and the differences between the world map of the Venetian patrician and the Genoese mapmaker in comparison with the “silent world map” in one manuscript of Brunetto Latini’s Livres dou Tresor give credence to the view that “Idrīsīan maps” were accessed and used independently in different parts of the Italian peninsula. However, it would be hazardous to make further suppositions based on the available evidence. Given the selective nature of the use of the Arabic-Islamic elements, as analysed in this chapter, it is equally possible to reach a conclusion similar to that of Patrick Gautier Dalché regarding the twelfth century: namely that the use of cartographical material from the Islamic world, visible chiefly in maps produced in fourteenth-century Italy, can be seen as a sign of a rather limited diffusion of Arabic-Islamic geography within Christian Europe.64 Ultimately, Sanudo’s vision of the re-conquest of the Holy Land and of the defeat of Islam was never realised. Pope John XXII preferred in the end a 64

Patrick Gautier Dalché, “Géographie arabe et géographie latine au XIIe siècle,” Medieval Encounters 19 (2013): 408–33, at 421–33.

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smaller crusade which would have cost less money than the sum calculated by Sanudo.65 But his attention was in any case diverted to European conflicts in general and the unstable situation in Germany in particular. Two years after the audience in Avignon, Sanudo reminded the Pope of his Liber secretorum in a letter, but there was no response.66 The start of the Hundred Years’ War in 1337, several severe crises in the Italian banking sector, and the outbreak of the Black Death in 1347 further diminished the chances of a crusade as advocated by Sanudo.67 By that point of time, however, Sanudo had already died. In his testament, he ordered that his work and his maps should be kept safe in the Venetian monastery of San Giovanni e Paolo until other noble men would make use of them.68 Even this last wish remained unfulfilled. 65

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Frankfort, “Marino Sanudo Torsello,” 113. Regarding John XXII’s plans and negotiations with the French kings, see, with further references, Norman Housley, “The Franco-Papal Crusade Negotiations of 1322–3,” Papers of the British School at Rome 48 (1980): 166–85; Gion Wallmeyer, “Wie der Kreuzzug marktfähig wurde. Überlegungen zur Anwendung des Marktbegriffs auf das höfische Ratgeberwesen des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts,” in Wissen und Wirtschaft. Expertenkulturen und Märkte vom 13. bis 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Marian Füssel, Philip Knäble and Nina Elsemann (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 279–312. Roddy, “The Correspondence,” 109–13. See Norman Housley, The Later Crusades, 1274–1580. From Lyons to Alcazar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). Arturo Magnocavallo, Marin Sanudo il Vecchio e il suo progetto di crociata (Bergamo: ­Istituto italiano d’arti grafiche, 1901), 151; Frankfort, “Marino Sanudo Torsello,” 275.

CHAPTER 6

Pluricultural Sources of the Catalan Atlas Emmanuelle Vagnon Transmission of knowledge between Arabic-Islamic and Christian European cultures has sometimes been presented in terms of “origins” or “influences”, as part of a general process of scientific progress.1 At one extreme, some authors have argued that the origins of cartography in the Latin West, particularly ­mappae mundi and sea charts (also called “portolan charts” by historians),2 lie in the development of cartography in Islamic societies. This emphasis on inheritance inevitably raises the question of the definition of geographical knowledge, and of the material and human paths of its transmission.3 As a starting point for a discussion of cultural transmission, it is important to insist on the fact that geography and maps do not simply belong to science seen as an accumulation of objective knowledge about the world, but are representations of the world strongly determined by their cultural background, and changing 1 Fuat Sezgin, Mathematical Geography and Cartography in Islam and their Continuation in the Occident, trans. Guy Moore and Geoff Sammon, 3 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science, 2000–2007). See in particular vol. 1, chapter 3, “Arab influence on the emergence of the new type of map”, “the oldest Arab traces on European world maps” (329–35), and “the oldest Arab traces in European portolan charts” (335–40). 2 On the definition of portolan charts, see Tony Campbell, “Portolan Charts from the Late Thirteenth Century to 1500,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 1: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. J. Brian Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 370–463; Patrick Gautier Dalché, “Cartes marines, représentation du littoral et perception de l’espace au Moyen Âge. Un état de la question,” Castrum 7 (2002): 9–33; Ramon Pujades i Bataller, Les cartes portolanes: la representació medieval d’una mar solcada/Portolan Charts: The Medieval Representation of a Ploughed Sea (Barcelona: Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya, 2007); Philipp Billion, Graphische Zeichen auf mittelalterlichen Portolankarten: Ursprünge, Produktion und Rezeption bis 1440 (Marburg: Tectum, 2011); Catherine Hofmann, Hélène Richard, Emmanuelle Vagnon, eds, L’Âge d’or des cartes marines. Quand l’Europe découvrait le monde (Paris: BnF-Seuil, 2012). 3 A good critical analysis of the alleged Islamic origin of portolan charts appears in Sonja Brentjes, “Revisiting Catalan Portolan Charts: Do They Contain Elements of Asian Provenance?,” in The Journey of Maps and Images on the Silk Road, ed. Philippe Forêt and Andreas Kaplony (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 181–201. Further arguments can be found in Patrick Gautier Dalché, “Géographie arabe et géographie latine au XIIe siècle,” Medieval Encounters 19 (2013): 408–33; Jean-Charles Ducène, “Le portulan arabe décrit par al-ʿUmarī,” Cartes et géomatique 216 (2013): 81–90. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004446038_008

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according to new cultural contexts.4 Medieval maps resulted from different levels of cultural transfers which invariably involved processes of adaptation and multiple mediators. The search for a unique cultural origin for maps is problematic, because it rests on a view of maps as finished products, in which both the form and scientific content have been determined from the beginning by the initial context of their production. In fact, maps are historical constructions drawn from various sources, and are in turn subject to divergent readings and interpretations. They are never “original” but are always a compilation and reinterpretation of sources that are used in different ways in order to design the shapes of territories, to locate and name places, and to transmit stories and images. They display a shared knowledge. The evidence of transmission between cultures also takes various forms: it can consist of quotations of texts, place names, locations of phenomena or legends, or a specific iconography.5 The Catalan Atlas is certainly one of the most famous cartographic documents of the Middle Ages.6 It was made in 1375, according to the evidence of the astronomical calendar presented at the beginning of the Atlas, and it was part of the collection of Charles V, King of France, before his death in 1380. The author generally credited with this work is Cresques Abraham (1325–1387), a Jewish master of workshops in Ciutat de Mallorca (now Palma de Majorca), specializing in maps and compass making.7 The work was kept in the French royal 4 The History of Cartography, vol. 1: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. J. Brian Harley and David Woodward; Marianne O’Doherty, The Indies and the Medieval West. Thought, Report, Imagination (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013). 5 On shared knowledge in maps, see for example Emmanuelle and Eric Vallet, eds, La fabrique de l’océan Indien. Cartes d’Orient et d’Occident (Antiquité-XVIe siècle) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2017). 6 Jaume Riera i Sans, ed., El Atlas catalàn de Cresques Abraham. El primer atlas del Mundo. Primera edición completa en el sexcentesimo aniversario de su realización, 1375–1975 ­(Barcelona: Diafora, 1975); Hans-Christian Freiesleben, ed., Der katalanische Weltatlas vom Jahre 1375 (Stuttgart: Brockhaus, 1977); Georges Grosjean, ed., Mapamundi. The Catalan Atlas of the Year 1375 (Zurich: Urs Graf, 1978); Gabriel Llompart i Moragues and Ramon Pujades, eds, El món i els dies: l’atles català, 1375 (Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2005). See also The Cresques Project, a website with translated articles by Gabriel Llompart about Catalan charts: http:// www.cresquesproject.net/home. 7 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS espagnol 30. Ernest T. Hamy, “Cresques lo Juheu. Note sur un géographe juif catalan de la fin du XIVe siècle,” Bulletin de géographie historique et descriptive (1891), 218–22; Jaume Riera i Sans, “Cresques Abraham, Judio de Mallorca, maestro de mapamundis y de brújulas,” in El Atlas catalàn de Cresques Abraham, ed. Riera i Sans, 14–22: 18 (English translation by Juan Ceva in The Cresques Project); Ramon J. Pujades i Bataller, “La història de l’Atles català i l’enigma de l’autor,” in El món i els dies, ed. Llompart and Pujades, 32–43. Katrin Kogman-Appel, Catalan Maps and ­Jewish Books. The Intellectual Profile of Elisha Ben Abraham Cresques (1325–1387) (­ Turnhout: Brepols, 2020) appeared as this volume was going to press, and could not be taken into account in the following discussion.

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collections after the Middle Ages, then stored in the Manuscript Department of the Bibliothèque nationale, where it remains. The name “atlas” may be inappropriate. In its composition, the work is a hybrid between a collection of sea charts, such as those produced in maritime milieux in Italy and Catalonia during the fourteenth century, and a world map in the sense of a totalising representation of the known world, from England to China.8 This world image is divided into six parchment sections, each section comprising two halves glued on wooden panels which originally were bound together. Two of the sections contain cosmographic texts and images, and four sections display maps, in a “sea chart” style, but with much information within the lands as well (Figs 6.1 and 6.2). Probably composed for the royal French court, and thus for an educated Christian audience, this document brings together both geographical and historical information from a large range of sources that remain incompletely identified.9 Soon after the first publication of the facsimile of the Catalan Atlas in the middle of the nineteenth century, historians noticed a certain “Islamic” or ­“Oriental” “light” cast upon the Atlas.10 Some of its characteristics could be associated with Arabic-Islamic scientific culture and geographical knowledge, even though other features were clearly not in accord. At the same time, since the Catalan Atlas was made by a Jewish chartmaker of medieval Spain, the cultural influence of Jewish intermediaries on this masterwork came into question. To add to this mix, the Catalan Atlas is strongly related to the text of Marco Polo’s Divisement dou monde (Description of the World), which presents geographical knowledge of the eastern part of the world, through the medium of the report of an Italian merchant. At the time of the Atlas’ production, maritime cities such as Barcelona and Palma de Majorca were centres of interconnected networks of merchants, who played an important role in the transmission, but also in the translation and understanding, of g­ eographical knowledge of 8

9

10

About the “atlas” form, see Pujades, Les cartes portolanes, 441. The Catalan Atlas should be referred to as a “mappamundi in panels”: Philipp Billion, “How did medieval cartographers work? New insights through a systematic analysis of the visual language of medieval portolan charts up to 1439,” Cartes et géomatique 216 (2013): 33–45. To avoid confusion, I will nevertheless continue to refer to the Catalan Atlas as an atlas throughout this essay. For a transcription of the place names and captions of the Atlas, see J.A.C. Buchon and J. Tastu, “Notice d’un atlas en langue catalane,” in Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la bibliothèque du roi et autres bibliothèques, vol. 14 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1841) (French translation); Jaume Riera i Sans, ed., El Atlas catalàn de Cresques Abraham (­Spanish translation); Llompart and Pujades, eds, El món i els dies (Catalan translation). Joachim Lelewel, Géographie du Moyen Âge, 4 vols (Brussels: Pilliet, 1850–57), vol. 2, 62–63: “des indices que sur cette partie de l’ouvrage du cosmographe catalan rejaillit la lumière mahommédane.” Discussed in Sezgin, Mathematical Geography and Cartography, vol. 1, 291–94.

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fig. 6.1 The Catalan Atlas, geographical panels (west). Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS ­espagnol 30 (c. 1375).

fig. 6.2 The Catalan Atlas, geographical panels (east). Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS ­espagnol 30 (c. 1375).

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­different parts of the world. There is little doubt then that transcultural knowledge, in the sense of knowledge shared between cultures, without being the patrimony of any single one, shaped this landmark of cartography. This chapter will consider the nature of this knowledge, and its impact on the Catalan Atlas, first through consideration of the pluricultural context in which the Catalan Atlas was made, and then through an examination of the sources for the map’s representation of Africa and India. I will argue, in particular, that not only was the toponymy of distant lands brought to the map through Arab intermediaries, but that the iconography displayed in the Asian part of the world echoes images and fables shared by Islamic and Christian narrators, which were adapted to their particular audiences. The term “pluricultural” can therefore be justly used to describe the Atlas’ sources as well as the context of its composition, since its author brought together elements – such as place names, stories and images – from diverse religious and linguistic origins. 1 The Jewish Mapmakers of Majorca and Barcelona, Readers of Marco Polo? The Catalan Atlas forms part of a genre of deluxe maps, which represent not only the territory around the Mediterranean Sea, as was common on sea charts, but a much larger expanse of land, extending to the entire known world. Though extant documents of such richness are rare, several map books of this kind were recorded in the inventories of merchants or noblemen in western Europe.11 At least two texts bear witness to the circulation of world maps similar to the Atlas at the end of the fourteenth century. One of these texts, the Libro del conosçimiento, is the fictional narrative of a voyage around the world, based on an illuminated world map combining heraldic symbols with the representations of sovereigns and certain historical or legendary events.12 The other is a transcription of legends from a world map of the same style as the Catalan Atlas, made in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, perhaps

11 Pujades, Les cartes portolanes, 84–106. In France, for the collections of the Duke of Berry and Marguerite of Flanders, see Emmanuelle Vagnon, Cartographie et Représentations de l’Orient méditerranéen en Occident (du milieu du XIIIe à la fin du XVe siècle) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 231–32. 12 El Libro del conosçimiento de todos los reinos (The Book of Knowledge of All Kingdoms), ed. and trans. Nancy F. Marino (Tempe, Arizona: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and ­Studies, 1999).

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at Genoa.13 Surviving examples of other large medieval world maps, though not divided into panels, include the “Catalan” world map in Modena (created around 1450–60), which shows a world image similar to that of the Catalan Atlas, albeit in circular form;14 a fragment of a mappa mundi, from around the same period, which has been compared to the Asian part of the Catalan Atlas;15 and other large world maps such as the “Genoese map” of the National Library of Florence,16 and the famous mappa mundi produced in Venice in the middle of the fifteenth century by Fra Mauro, which also presents itself as a synthesis of all available geographical knowledge.17 Barcelona and Majorca were well-known centres of production of sea charts designed on parchment in the fourteenth century.18 The oldest extant chart signed and dated in Majorca was made in 1339 by Angelino Dulcert, who was perhaps of Genoese origin. Two other charts of the same design but dated slightly earlier, around 1330, can also be attributed to him.19 By the end of the fourteenth century, the most famous mapmaker in Majorca, protected by the kings of Aragon, was the Jewish master Cresques Abraham, designated as an expert in maps and navigation instruments by the title “master of the compass”. Some other documented mapmakers, such as Jafudà Cresques (Jaume Ribes) and Samuel Corcos (Mecia de Viladestes) were Jews who converted to Christianity after the persecution of 1391.20 Although not all Majorcan mapmakers were of Jewish origin, Jews certainly played an important role in the 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Jacques Paviot, “Une mappemonde génoise disparue de la fin du XIVe siècle,” in L’iconographie. Études sur les rapports entre textes et images dans l’Occident médiéval, ed. Gaston Duchet-Suchaux (Paris: Le Léopard d’or, 2001), 69–97. Catalan-Estense world map: Modena, Biblioteca Estense, C.G.A.1. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum Library, MS 1828 (49361/2758). See Billion, “How did medieval cartographers work?,” 36. Angelo Cattaneo, Mappa mundi 1457. Carta conservata presso la Biblioteca Nazionale ­Centrale di Firenze con la segnatura Portolano 1 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 2008). Fra Mauro’s World Map, ed. and trans. Piero Falchetta (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006); Angelo Cattaneo, Fra Mauro’s Mappa Mundi and Fifteenth-Century Venice (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). Julio Rey Pastor and Ernesto García Camarero, La cartografía mallorquina (Madrid: Instituto Luis Vives, 1960); Pujades, Les cartes portolanes. The maps in Pujades’s book are referred to as follows: Pujades C+number. Florence, Prince Corsini collection (signed Angelinus de Dalorto, and dated 1325); London, British Library, MS Additional 25691 (unsigned and undated). Gabriel Cortès i Cortès, Historia de los judiós mallorquines y de sus descendientes cristianos (Palma de Majorca: Miquel Font, 1985); Claire Soussen-Max, “De la convergence à la conversion. Les juifs de Majorque (XIIIe–XVIIe siècle),” e-Spania 28 (2017): http://journals. openedition.org/e-spania/27199. [Last accessed 17.17.2020].

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transmission of geographical knowledge, because of the role of their community in the African trade, and the importance of Majorca as a pluricultural centre.21 Archives from the Datini collection of Prato, Tuscany, an Italian trading company which was continuously present on Majorca from 1394 to 1411, give significant details about the relationships between the Majorcan mapmakers and the organization of international business on the island.22 Some of the Jewish or converso cartographers of Majorca were well known, and there is evidence in the Datini archives of their activities and their close relationships with Christian merchants and mapmakers.23 Jafudà Cresques was given the name of Jaume Ribes when he was forced to convert after 1391. He lived in Ciutat de Mallorca and his family owned a house with a garden situated close to the Porta del Temple.24 Jafudà/Jaume subsequently moved to Barcelona in 1394, and he appears in the letters of the Datini company in Barcelona in 1399, when a map was ordered from him.25 His apprentice in Majorca, Samuel 21

22

23 24

25

Michel Abitbol, “Juifs maghrébins et commerce transsaharien du VIIIe au XVe siècle,” in Le Sol, la parole et l’écrit: Mélanges en hommage à Raymond Mauny, 2 vols (Paris: Société française d’histoire d’Outre-Mer, 1981), vol. 2, 561–77; Nehemia Levtzion, “The Jews of Sijilmasa and the Saharan trade,” in Communautés juives des marges sahariennes du Maghreb, ed. M. Abitbol (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1982), 253–64; Ingrid Houssaye Michienzi, Datini, Majorque et le Maghreb: Réseaux, espaces méditerranéens et stratégies marchandes (Leiden: Brill, 2013); Ingrid Houssaye Michienzi and Emmanuelle Vagnon, “Cartographie commerciale et circulations marchandes à Majorque au XVe siècle,” in Centres pluriculturels et circulation des savoirs (XVe–XXIe siècles), ed. Françoise Richer and Stéphane Patin (Paris: Houdiard, 2015), 27–44. The entire commercial and private correspondence has been scanned and is available on the website of the archives of Prato: http://datini.archiviodistato.prato.it/. On the Datini documentation, see Bruno Dini, “L’Archivio Datini,” in L’impresa, industria, commercio, banca secc. XIII–XVIII, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Florence: Le Monnier, 1991), 45–60; Jérôme Hayez, “L’Archivio Datini, de l’invention de 1870 à l’exploration d’un système d’écrits privés,” in Le carteggio Datini et les correspondances pratiques des XIVe–XVIe siècles, ed. Jérôme Hayez, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome - Moyen Age 117 (2005): 121–91. Ingrid Houssaye Michienzi and Emmanuelle Vagnon, “Commissioning and Use of Charts Made in Majorca c. 1400: New Evidence from a Tuscan Merchant’s Archive,” Imago Mundi 71 (2019): 22–33. José Maria Quadrado, La judería de Mallorca en 1391 (Palma de Majorca, 1886, repr. Muntaner, 2008), 87: “Jaffuda Cresques. Jacobus Ribes. Magnum hospitium versus portam del Temple, cujus hortus cum pariete ipsius domus confrontat. Habitare vel locare.” On 24 October, 1391, the conversos or “New Christians” had one month to declare if they wanted to stay in the Jewish district (call). Jafudà Cresques presented himself on 30 October. Jaume Riera i Sans, “Jafudà Cresques, jueu de Mallorca,” Randa 5 (1977): 51–66; R.A. Skelton, “A contract for world maps at Barcelona, 1399–1400,” Imago Mundi 12 (1968): 107–13. Jaume Riera i Sans and Gabriel Llompart, “Jafudà Cresques i Samuel Corcós. Més

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Corcos, ­better known by his post-conversion name, Mecia de Viladestes, is documented d­ uring the years of the Datini activities in Majorca in 1401, 1404 and 1409.26 As Ingrid Houssaye has pointed out, the account books demonstrate that the agents of the Datini Company planned their commercial operations and socialized almost every day with Jewish and converso merchants in their bottega in Majorca.27 The agents of the Datini Company were in direct business relationships with a great variety of interlocutors, who came to the bottega in person, and who left written testimony of their transactions in some account books. The Datini documentation for Majorca consists of around fifty registers with many different functions, written in the Tuscan language. We find in some registers several different hands and even alphabets, since the client or commercial partner himself sometimes had to write inside the book in his own language and with his own hand in order to testify that he had received a certain amount of money in cash. On the same page of some registers it is thus possible to find sentences in Latin characters (representing Tuscan or Catalan) or in Hebrew characters (representing Hebrew or Arabic) with short summaries in Tuscan just below.28 As the account books of the Majorcan Datini Company show, the bottega was a meeting point where multiple languages were spoken and written, and where Christians, Jews and newly converted Christians encountered one another. The number of maps from Majorcan workshops of Jewish mapmakers suggests that the role of Jewish intermediaries was important for the transmission of knowledge, particularly knowledge of the geography of Africa, where the Italian merchants used Jewish communities as intermediaries for sub-Saharan African trade. What kind of information or influence could come from this

26

27 28

­documents sobre els jueus pintors de cartes de navegar (Mallorca, s. XIV),” Bolletí de la Societat Arqueològica Lulliana 40 (1984): 341–50. Gabriel Llompart, “La cartografia mallorquina del siglo XV. Nuevo hitos y rutas,” Bolletí de la Societat Arqueològica Lulliana 34 (1975): 438–65; Riera i Sans and Llompart, “Jafudà Cresques i Samuel Corcós”; Gabriel Llompart, “Registro de los cartógrafos medievales activos en el puerto de Mallorca,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 27 (1997): 1117–48. Ingrid Houssaye Michienzi, “Entre Majorque et l’Afrique: configuration de l’espace et réseaux juifs d’après des sources commerciales italiennes (fin XIVe-début XVe siècle),” Revue des études juives 173 (2014): 139–74. See Ingrid Houssaye Michienzi and Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, “Écrits comptables et commerce interreligieux: les cas des registres d’Ugo Teralh de Forcalquier et de la compagnie Datini (XIVe–XVe siècles),” Les Cahiers de Framespa 16 (2014): http://framespa.revues. org/2917; I. Houssaye Michienzi and Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, “Échanges marchands et pratiques langagières. La communication entre chrétiens, juifs et convertis à Majorque vers 1400,” Cahiers d’Histoire Textuelle du LAMOP (CHTL) 10 (2017): 65–88.

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intercultural background? On the Catalan Atlas certain general features give the initial impression of a non-Christian influence. For example, one can find traces of Arabic vocabulary on the map, slightly changed by the transliteration of Arabic words into the Latin alphabet. This feature is particularly evident in geographical names in Arabic-speaking lands: for example, the use of ras for cape, or gebel for mountain. This is also the case for the astronomical tables at the beginning of the Atlas. Names of the stars of the zodiacal signs do not appear in their Greek or Latin form, but are transliterations of Arabic names, according to Islamic astronomy.29 On the other hand, the description of the cosmos at the beginning of the Atlas is for the most part a translation into Catalan of the twelfth-century Imago Mundi of Honorius Augustodunensis, and thus directly reflects a geographical conception of the world ultimately derived from classical Rome.30 Elements of the cosmographical texts and the calendars in the introduction of the Catalan Atlas, such as the calculation of the date of Easter, Ascension day, and Pentecost, are clearly adapted to the Christian user. Another detail that draws attention to the pluricultural nature of the map is the presence of Arabic or pseudo-Arabic letters in the decoration of the Atlas around the cosmographic tables, and on the heraldic banner above the city of Granada in Spain. None of these characters is legible: instead, they refer to decorative patterns in Islamic culture (such as the ornamental kufic borders around certain prayer rugs), without providing evidence of any real knowledge, either of Arabic script or of Arabic itself. This interpretation of the letters as being essentially decorative is supported by the finding of art historians that the same kufic decoration (as well as other decorative features found on the Atlas) had been used some years before the making of the Catalan Atlas on a Hebrew Bible decorated by a member of the Cresques family (Elisha Cresques), possibly another name for Cresques Abraham himself.31 29 30

31

Llompart and Pujades, El món i els dies, 99. The Arab geographical treatises themselves draw on Greco-Latin material. See the introduction of the Geography of Abulfeda (Abū l-Fidāʾ, 672–732/1273–1331): Géographie, ed. and trans. Joseph-Toussaint Reinaud (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1848; repr. Frankfurtam-Main, 1998). Riera i Sans, “Cresques Abraham, Judio de Mallorca”; B. Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts (Jerusalem: Encyclopedia Judaica, 1969; repr. New York: Amiel, 1974), 72–73, pl. 16. J. Leveen, The Hebrew Bible in Art (London: Oxford University Press, 1944): Farhi Bible, pl. XXXIV. Katrin Kogman-Appel, “The Scholarly Interests of a Scribe and Mapmaker in Fourteenth-Century Mallorca: Elisha ben Abraham Benvenisti Cresques’s Bookcase,” in The Late Medieval Hebrew Book in the Western Mediterranean: Hebrew Manuscripts and Incunabula in Context, ed. Javier del Barco (Leiden, Brill, 2015), 148–81.

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The main source of the Catalan Atlas regarding the Islamic world is Marco Polo’s Divisement dou monde.32 Marco Polo’s account contains a great deal of direct or indirect information from the Islamic world, such as place names, but also stories and anecdotes reported to him.33 The Catalan Atlas is the earliest extant map to include features derived from Marco Polo, raising the question of how this information reached the Catalan cartographer in Majorca, and how the cartographer selected details and captions. Archival records inform us that King Peter IV of Aragon (r. 1336–1387), protector of Cresques Abraham, bought three copies of Marco Polo’s book between 1372 and 1374. Two of them were offered afterwards to French lords: one to Gaston Fébus, Count of Foix, in 1384, and the other to Jean de Berry, Charles V’s brother, in 1393.34 We can deduce that the mapmaker used one of these three manuscripts as a source for the Atlas. Moreover, as Christine Gadrat-Ouerfelli has demonstrated, a comparison of the legends of the Atlas with different versions of the text of Marco Polo suggests that it is the French version that was used by Cresques Abraham, rather than the Catalan version that we know from a unique extant manuscript.35 This hypothesis presupposes a good knowledge of French on the part of the master cartographer, or an assistant, as well as an ability to translate the stories found in the Divisement into short texts in Catalan, and into images.36 Of course, the Catalan Atlas is not a simple picture book of Marco Polo’s 32

Marco Polo, Le Devisement du monde, ed. Philippe Ménard et al., 6 vols (Geneva: Droz, 2001–2009); The Book of Ser Marco Polo the Venetian Concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, ed. and trans. Henry Yule, rev. Henri Cordier, 2 vols (London: Murray, 1920) (English translation); Marco Polo, La description du monde, ed. and trans. Pierre-Yves Badel (Paris: Livre de poche, 1998). 33 Fuat Sezgin considers Marco Polo an important “mediator of maps from the Islamic world” (Mathematical Geography and Cartography, vol. 1, 318), but without strong evidence. The authenticity of the maps attributed to Marco Polo is still an unresolved question. See Leo Bagrow, “The Maps from the home archives of the descendants of a friend of Marco Polo,” Imago Mundi 5 (1948): 3–13; Benjamin B. Olshin, The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014). 34 Christine Gadrat-Ouerfelli, Lire Marco Polo au Moyen Âge. Traduction, diffusion et réception du Devisement du Monde (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 129–33; Antoní Rubió y Lluch, Documents per l’historia de la cultura catalana Mig-eval, 2 vols (Barcelona: Institut d’estudis catalans, 1908–21), vol. 2, 165–66, 171. 35 The Catalan version (Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 2048) and the Aragonese version (San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Biblioteca de San Lorenzo, MS Z.I.2) exist in only one manuscript each. Jacques Monfrin, “La tradition du texte de Marco Polo,” in his Études de philologie romane (Geneva: Droz, 2001), 513–33; Viatges de Marco Polo: versió catalana del segle xiv, ed. Annamaria Gallina (Barcelona: Barcino, 1958); Juan Fernández de Heredia’s Aragonese version of the Libro de Marco Polo, ed. John J. Nitti (Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1980). 36 Gadrat-Ouerfelli, Lire Marco Polo au Moyen Âge, 132.

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Divisement dou monde. Certain regions on the Atlas, particularly North Africa and the regions of Arabia and India, are either not mentioned, or are imprecisely mentioned, in Marco Polo’s book. As a result, the cartographer’s ability to translate the spatial description of Marco Polo’s text onto a map required other sources of geographical knowledge. 2

Knowledge of Africa and India

Information about Africa on sea charts may have been collected by Italian travellers or merchants (especially from Genoa), but it was certainly reinforced by Jewish intermediaries in North Africa and Majorca.37 The Datini documentation gives evidence of specific operations by Majorcan merchants which stretched into sub-Saharan Africa.38 It is indeed possible to see a significant evolution in the European mapping of Africa between the second quarter of the fourteenth century and the first half of the fifteenth century, with a peak around 1410–1415, on maps made in Majorca and using the Catalan language.39 As previously 37

38

39

The author of the Liber de existencia riveriarum knew of the Bab el Mandeb strait; he explains that this information came from Islamic pilgrims to Mecca sailing back to the West from Alexandria. Patrick Gautier Dalché, Carte marine et portulan au XIIe siècle: le Liber de existencia riveriarum et forma maris nostri Mediterranei (Pise, circa 1200) (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1995), 126: “ostium Pelusiacum, quod Sarracenice dicitur Bebelmundeb, prout didici a garbinis qui tunc temporis a sepulcro Macumetti latoris legis eorum peregrini descenderant cum quibus ab Alexandria Aegypti in Garbum tunc transfretavi”. The chart signed by the Genoese Giovanni Carignano gives information about North Africa and the Sahara from “a trustworthy Genoese merchant” who lived in Sijilmasa and had good relations with the inhabitants there (“hoc audivi a fide digno mercatore januesi qui aliquando morabatur in Sigelmesa et habebat societatem cum eis”). The chart, now destroyed, is reproduced in Youssouf Kamal, Monumenta Cartographica Africae et Aegypti, 5 vols (Cairo, 1926–51), vol. 4, 1138. See Houssaye Michienzi, “Entre Majorque et l’Afrique”; Ingrid Houssaye Michienzi, “De l’île de Majorque au désert du Sahara: réseaux de commerce juifs et trafic du cuivre vers 1400,” Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée 146 (2019): https://journals. openedition.org/remmm/13187. My analysis here is quite different from that of Sonja Brentjes (which is based only on early Italian/Latin portolan charts). Brentjes, “Medieval Portolan Charts as Documents of Shared Cultural Spaces,” in Acteurs des transferts culturels en Méditerranée médiévale, ed. Rania Abdellatif et al. (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012), 134–46, esp. 141: “None of the chartmakers gave Arabic names to regions on the Mediterranean coast, except for the rare case of masr (Egypt). Contemporary Arabic societies of northern Africa and their geographical literature were by and large ignored in both medieval Italian and Catalan portolan charts. This is all the more remarkable since Pisan, Genoese, Venetian, and Catalan merchants had traded there since the twelfth or thirteenth century. Naming African regions thus

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mentioned, the first extant map signed in Majorca was made by Angelino Dulcert in 1339; it contained Latin names and texts. Unlike the two other maps attributed to him, and far less detailed, this chart includes some African place names south of the Atlas mountains, in the region of Ganuya (a term referring either to Guinea or to the medieval Ghana Empire).40 It provides the following names for Western Africa, with small designs of cities: ­Marochus, Valle de Sus, flumen de Dara, Tabelbelt, Tachor (Tammergrut or Takrur?), Sigelmesa (represented as an oasis), castrum de Tagendubet, Buda. Small texts explain: “Here is the Valle de Sus. This is the way to go to the land of the Blacks” (Valle de Sus. Hec est via pro ire at tera nigrorum). Nearby, a “King Melly” (Rex Melly) is presented as a rich “Saracen” King, who owns mines of gold (Iste rex saracenus dominatur tera arenosa et habet mineries auro in masima habundancia). The Catalan Atlas goes further, conveying additional information. A text on the Atlas’ western map, near a passage through the North African mountains, reads: “Through this passage go the merchants who enter the land of the Black people of Guinea. This passage is named Val de Dara” (per aquest loch passen los merchades qui entren en la terra del negres de gineva, le qual pas es appellat vall de darha).41 East of this passage, one can see the picture of a city with the name Temenasin (Tlemcen), connected by a river to a blue circle (representing an oasis?) with the name Sigilmessa. Then to the south-west appear Tacorom (Tammergrut or Takrur?), Tagaza (Tegeza), Sudam, Tenbuch (Timbuktu), and in the southern limit of the map, Ciutat de Melly, close to a lake. East from the oasis of Sijilmassa, one can read Tebelbelt, Anzicha, Badia, Tacort, Buda, Geugeu (Gao) and Maynia. Two characters are represented in this region (Fig. 6.3). On the west side is a veiled nomad on a dromedary, with the following explanation: “In all this part live people covered up such that only their eyes can be seen, and they live under tents and ride camels, and there are some animals named lemp from the leather of which they make good shields” (Tota aquesta pertida tenen gens qui son enbossats que no les veu hon sino los uyls, e van en tendes e fan cavalcades ab camels, e ay bisties qui han nom lemp e daquel cuyr fan les bones dargues).42 The second character is the famous African king, and

40

41 42

did not serve merely to emphasize the chart-makers’ familiarity with ancient or Arabic knowledge. It also hid the North African trading partners and their political spaces.” Angelino de Dulceto, Florence, coll. Corsini, c. 1330 (Pujades C7); Angelino Dulcert, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ge B 696 Rés, dated 1339 (Pujades C8); Anonymous map “close to Angelino Dulceti,” London, British Library, MS Additional 25691, c. 1339– 1350? (Pujades C9). English translations of legends from the Catalan Atlas are taken, with some modifications, from the translations provided by Juan Ceva for The Cresques Project: http://www .cresquesproject.net/catalan-atlas-legends. [Last accessed 17.7.2020] Lemp is probably some kind of gazelle or antelope.

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fig. 6.3 The Catalan Atlas, detail. Veiled nomad and King Mansā Mūsā. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS espagnol 30.

the text p ­ rovides more information than Dulcert’s map: “This black lord is named Musse Melly, lord of the Blacks of Guinea. This king is the richest and the noblest lord of all this region, because of the abundance of gold extracted from his land” (Aquest senyor negre es appellat musse melly, senyor dels negres de Gineva. Aquest rey es lo pus rich e l pus noble senyor de tota esta partida per labondancia de lor lo qual se recull en la suua terra). The image shows him as a black man, crowned and seated on a throne, bearing a sceptre and holding in his right hand a golden sphere.43 Further development of this representation of Africa can be seen on a map made in 1413 and produced by Mecia de Viladestes. In this image the two main trade roads of Western Africa, between Honein and the Niger stream, are drawn with great accuracy.44 Place names divide clearly into two wings, following the two main roads through sub-Saharan Africa. West from Marrakech and across the Atlas mountains, we read: Maroch, Val de Dara (with explanatory text), 43

The artist is obviously using the symbols of Empire traditional in Christian iconography. See Percy-Ernst Schramm, Sphaira, Globus, Reichsapfel: Wanderung und Wandlung eines Herrschaftszeichens von Caesar bis zu Elisabeth II (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1958). 44 Pujades, Les cartes portolanes, C30, 202–3; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ge AA 566 Rés.

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Tocorom, Sudam and then Ciutat musamely. Further to the west are Bude, Turega, Tocoror, near the riu de lor (“stream of gold”), which is located further south than on the Catalan Atlas; to the east: Segelmese, Tebelbelt, Tamautet, Ciuta de Buda, Tegaza, Anzica (written twice), Tenbuch, and Geugeu. The texts written near the veiled nomad and Mūsā Melly are also expanded. The repetition of some place names (such as Anzica), which is frequent on medieval maps, shows that the cartographer had difficulties localizing place names coming from contradictory sources. The 1413 map of Mecia de Viladestes is certainly the most informative of all extant medieval maps concerning this area. However, other maps, neither dated nor signed, display a toponymy and an iconography close to it.45 The distinctive depiction of Africa on the Catalan Atlas and maps of the same style may be the product not only of knowledge conveyed directly by merchants, but may also derive from geographical or historical texts written in Arabic. The latter certainly appear to be the source for the appearance of Mansā Mūsā of Mali on European representations of Africa.46 This famous king was renowned as the richest man of his time. He reigned from 1312 to 1337, and made a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 through North Africa and Egypt. During his stay in Cairo, he displayed an enormous amount of gold. The story of this king is reported in an unusually large number of Islamic sources describing the kingdom of Mali in Africa.47 The earliest authors who mention Mansā Mūsā are Syrian or Egyptian historians under the Mamluk rule. The first of them is al-Nuwayrī (d. 732/1332), an historian and member of the administration under the Sultan al-Malik al-Nāṣir: During this year [724/1324] King Mūsā, ruler of the land of Takrūr, arrived in the Egyptian countries in order to make the pilgrimage. He went to the 45

See Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS XII D 102 (Pujades C19, Les cartes portolanes, 164– 65), an anonymous map, undated, from the last quarter of the fourteenth century, and the anonymous and undated chart, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ge AA 751 Rés (Pujades C22). These maps have been assigned to the so-called Cresques workshop due to their similarities with the Catalan Atlas. 46 Kamal, Monumenta Cartographica Africae et Aegypti, vols 4 and 5, 1195–96, 1236–44, 1340 ff, with Arab documents translated into French; Yoro K. Fall, L’Afrique à la naissance de la cartographie moderne (Paris: Karthala, 1982), 216–26; François-Xavier Fauvelle-Aymar, Le rhinocéros d’or. Histoires du Moyen Âge africain (Paris: Gallimard, 2013), 272–85; the most recent and best documented synthesis is to be found in Hadrien Collet, Le sultanat du Mali (XIVe–XVe siècle). Historiographies d’un état soudanien de l’Islam médiéval à aujourd’hui (PhD thesis, Université Paris 1, 2017), esp. 218–83. 47 Hadrien Collet, Le sultanat du Mali, has translated and analysed the complete traditions of these accounts of Mansā Mūsā. Most of them come from the Mamluk area (thirteen authors come from Syria and Egypt between 1330 and 1524).

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noble Hijaz. He returned to his country in 725 [1325]. His company had brought in a considerable sum of gold. So he had spent it all, scattered it, [and] exchanged it for some cloth (qumāsh), with the result that he needed a lot of money from traders and others before his trip [to Mecca].48 The story is expanded in the version of another historian of the same period, Ibn al-Dawādārī, who noted of the king that “[h]e had with him a lot of gold, and his country is the country that grows gold”.49 With the notable exception of Abulfeda (Abū l-Fidāʾ), many other Arab writers, including the Syrian historian al-ʿUmarī (700–749/1301–1349), mention Mansā Mūsā, with increasing amounts of detail.50 The Moroccan traveller Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (703–770 or 779/1304– 1368 or 1377, writing in 1355–56), visited the kingdom of Mali during the reign of Mansā Suleyman (the grandson of Mansā Mūsā), and gives interesting details about the region.51 Later historians, such as Ibn Khaldūn (d. 808/1406, writing between 1375 and 1382), and al-Maqrīzī (d. 845/1442), also refer to Mansā Mūsā, and provide new information about his reign, but according to the chronology, they cannot be direct textual sources for the Catalan Atlas.52 Unfortunately, we lack any evidence for the transmission of detailed Arabic geographical texts to Europe at the time of the Catalan Atlas; moreover, if complete texts had been transmitted and used by the mapmaker, we should read more African and Asian place names on the maps related to them. But we know that al-ʿUmarī was in close contact with Christian European navigators, and that Ibn Baṭṭūṭa travelled on Christian vessels.53 Ultimately, we can 48 49 50

51 52 53

Nihāyat al-ʿArab fī funūn al-adab, vol. 33, ed. I. Shams al-Dīn (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmīya, 2004), 54; quotation and translation from Collet, Le sultanat du Mali, 227. Ibn al-Dawādārī, Kanz al-durar wa jāmiʿ al-ghurar, vol. 9, ed. H. R. Roemer (Cairo: Sāmī al-Khānjī, 1960), 316–17. Al-ʿUmarī, Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār, vol. 27, ed. M. al-Najm (Beirut: Dār alkutub al-ʿilmīya, 2010), 345; another version of this account appears in: Al-ʿUmarī, Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār, vol. 4, ed. K. al-Jubūrī (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmīya, 2010), 54–58; Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Voyages, ed. C. Defrémery and B.R. Sanguinetti (Paris: Thunot, 1858), re-ed. Stéphane Yerasimos, 4 vols (Paris: La Découverte/Poche, 1982–1997). English translation from The Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, AD 1325–1354, trans. H.A.R. Gibb, 5 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958–2000). Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Voyages, vol. 3, 412–46. J.F.P. Hopkins and Nehemia Levtzion, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African H ­ istory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 334–35: 351; see Collet, Le sultanat du Mali, 600–17. Al-ʿUmarī used a sea chart (qunbas), translated into Arabic, for his description of the Mediterranean sea. Jean-Charles Ducène, “Le portulan arabe décrit par al-ʿUmarī.” Ibn Baṭṭūṭa travelled to Sardinia with Catalan mariners (Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Voyages, vol. 3, 364); Ragheb Youssef, “Les marchands itinérants du monde musulman,” in Voyages et voyageurs au Moyen Âge: XXVIe Congrès de la Société des historiens médiévistes de l’enseignement supérieur public (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1996), 177–215.

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only infer the transmission of information about Africa to sea charts, through ­merchants’ and pilgrims’ reports, and especially through those Italian, Catalan and Jewish merchants in Cairo who were in contact with Majorca.54 Furthermore, while place names and legends associated with Africa were apparently related by Islamic and Jewish intermediaries, this information is always presented from the point of view of a Christian European reader. The veiled nomad and the Black king are both presented as “exotic” characters in regions far from Europe, in the sense that their dress and general appearance mark them out as clearly foreign. A caption near the Taurus mountains explains the pilgrimage to “the arch of Muḥammad in Mecca” for an audience that is not familiar with Islam, and in fact with an incorrect interpretation by analogy to Christian pilgrimage (the Muslims are not praying upon Muḥammad’s sepulchre, which is not in Mecca, but in Medina).55 Elsewhere on the map, a legend about the Atlas Mountain comments inaccurately on Arabic vocabulary. This legend explains that the “Saracen” name of the mountain is “carena”, and the “Christian” name “Monte Claris” (“Bright Mountain”).56 The author of the legend clearly had no idea of the Arabic name of the mountain; revealingly, his use of the name “carena” can be explained by reference to earlier maps of this group, made in Majorca and attributed to Angelino Dulcert, who was certainly of Italian origin.57 On the earliest map of this group, a caption explains in Latin

54 55

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57

For example, Luca del Biondo, a merchant of the Datini Company, travelled from Alexandria to Bruges in 1398, then commissioned a chart in Majorca showing the Egyptian sultanate. Houssaye Michienzi and Vagnon, “Commissioning and use,” 26–28. “Aci es la migane brancha de montis Taurus. Sobre aquesta muntanye passen alscuns Sarrayns palagrins, de la partied de Ponent que volen anar a la Mecha e veer larcha de Muffumet, loqual es lur lig” (Here is the middle branch of the Taurus mountains. Over this mountain travel Muslim pilgrims from the western regions who want to go to Mecca to see the arch of Muḥammad, according to their Law). The polemical tale (in Western countries), describing the tomb of Muḥammad as an “arch” floating in the air, supported by the force of two magnets, in order to abuse the naïve crowds, is analysed in John Tolan, L’Europe latine et le monde arabe au Moyen Âge: Cultures en conflit et en convergence (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2009), 41; John Tolan, Mahomet l’Européen: Histoire des représentations du Prophète en Occident (Paris: Albin Michel, 2018), 104–5. Obviously, this “arch” is not Noah’s ark, which is also depicted on the map, on Mount Ararat. However, there is an Islamic tale related to Noah’s ark in Mecca. See Youssef Taharraoui, “La figure de Noé entre le Coran et les isrāʾīliyyāt,” Revue de l’histoire des religions, 232 (2015): 645–82. Buchon and Tastu, “Notice,” 75: “Tota aquesta muntanya de lonch es appellade Carena per Serrayns, e per Crestians es appelade Muntis Claris. E sepiats que en aquesta dita muntanya ha moltes bones villes e castels, losquals conbaten los huns ab lus altres. Encara con la dita muntanya es abunda de pa e de vi e d’ol e de totes bones fruytes”. See the arguments of Pujades about Angelino Dulcert’s origin: Les cartes portolanes, 255.

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that “carena” is a word referring to the lower part of a ship.58 However, all the maps of the same group with legends in Catalan explain instead that “carena” is the Islamic name.59 As a result, we have to admit that in this particular case, the copyist (who may not have been Cresques Abraham himself) who wrote this notice on the Catalan Atlas did not understand the vocabulary coming from Italian mariners, and had an incomplete understanding of Arabic. Another kind of question comes from the analysis of place names of Indian regions, translated or simply transcribed from Arabic.60 Does the knowledge of these place names derive from a precise textual source that we can discover, or only from moments of oral transmission that have left no trace for the historian? For example, the Catalan Atlas’ representation of the western coast of the Indian peninsula displays specific local names, such as Nocran, Chesimo, Damonela, Semenat (Somnath), Ciutat de Goga, Baroch, Nervala, Cambetum (Cambay), Chintabor, and Nandor (Fig. 6.4). Only a few of these names come from Marco Polo’s text, but some are also present in earlier texts that circulated in the West, and that originated in Islamic sources.61 Some of the names found on the Atlas had already been mentioned in crusade-related sources such as the De viis maris, a text describing coastlines from Yorkshire in England to the Mediterranean, and which extended as far as the Indian Ocean and the western shores of India. De viis maris includes scattered information about cities of India that can also be found in the sixth/twelfth-century author, al-Zuhrī.62 58

59

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Dulceto, coll. Corsini, 1330: “Iste mons diversis nominibus noncupatur. Dicitur autem generalliter mons Athalans, a Christianis dicitur Carena, quia est lunga ad modum carene navis”; Dulcert 1339: “Iste mons diversis nominibus noncupatur. Dicitur generaliter a Saracenis mons Athlans, a Christianis dicitur Carena”. Buchon and Tastu, “Notice,” 75, inferred that the origin of the name “carena” came from the Italian poem, the Dittamondo of Fazio degli Uberti, in which the author plays on the words “carena” (the hull of the boat) and “catena” (the chain of mountains): “Qui sono i gran deserti, e la Carena/ E dietro a tutto l’Oceano, poi,/Che de levante a ponente incatena” (Dittamondo, lib. I, cap. IX). On the contrary, Nathalie Bouloux explains that Fazio degli Uberti read a sea chart while composing his poem. Nathalie Bouloux, “Carte marine et culture visuelle chez Giovanni Villani et Fazio degli Uberti,” Cahiers électroniques d’Histoire Textuelle du LAMOP 7 (2014): 1–27. Emmanuelle Vagnon, “Ports of Western India in Latin cartographic sources, 13th–16th c. Toponomy, localisation and evolution,” in Ports of the Ancient Indian Ocean, ed. MarieFrançoise Boussac, Jean-François Salles, Jean-Baptiste Yon (Delhi: Primus Books, 2016), 179–98. Marco Polo, Le Devisement du monde, ed. Ménard, vol. 6, 49–51 and notes at 167–73. The only place names mentioned for the Western coast of India are Gazarat (Gujarat), Tanambruta (Thana), Cambaer (Cambay), Semenat (Somnath), Quemascuram (Kech-Makran). De viis maris, ed. Patrick Gautier Dalché, in Du Yorkshire a l’Inde: une “géographie” urbaine et maritime de la fin du XIIe siècle (Roger de Howden?) (Geneva: Droz, 2005), 216 and 280: “completis itaque XXX diebus et totidem noctibus quibus currunt ad velum, inveniunt

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fig. 6.4 The Catalan Atlas, detail. The western coastline of India. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS espagnol 30.

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Certainly, some Indian place names were well known by Islamic geographers. For example, Abulfeda, quoting previous sources such as Ibn Saʿīd, describes Somnath, Nawarala in Gujarat, and Cambay. He notes that some Jewish communities live in cities of the Malabar coast.63 There is, of course, no evidence that Abulfeda’s Geography was known to the makers of the Atlas; rather, the point is that information about distant places such as India was in circulation both in written and oral sources, even if the precise route of transmission cannot be identified. This observation is illustrated nicely by the Atlas’ mysterious place name “Damonela”. A discovery of the archaeologist Monik Kervran has made possible the explanation of this toponym, situated in the Sind, near the Indus delta, and distinct from the better-known Daybul.64 Kervran studied the old city of “Damrila” near the lower part of the Indus, in present day Pakistan, where a mosque was founded around 1221–23 by Sultan Jalāl al-Dīn and later destroyed or abandoned. She uncovered archaeological evidence (including ruins and a beautiful Kufic inscription) of a great mosque on a site called Jam Jaskar Goth, nowadays covered by sand and water most of the time. According to Kervran’s study, the Catalan Atlas is a rare but crucial example of the transmission of information about the Indus Delta from Arab sources into the Mediterranean world, even though the mechanism of transfer remains unknown. Two other Western documents mentioning “Damonela” were also composed at the end of the fourteenth century and could be closely related to the Catalan Atlas: the so-called Medici Atlas, currently kept in the Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence,65 and the previously mentioned Libro del conosçimiento.66 We can infer that the Medici Atlas, the Libro and the Catalan Atlas rely on the same sources, coming

63 64

65 66

civitates Indie, scilicet Baroch et Kortosten, Fivesim et Narroan et alias plures civitates. Si quis vult in Averam pergere, inveniet ibi insulas unde ... species quamplures.” Al-Zuhrī, Kitāb al-Djaʿrāfiyya: Mappemonde du calife al-Maʾmūn reproduite par Fazārī (IIIe/IXe s.), rééditée et commentée par Zuhrī (VIe/XIIe s.), ed. M. Hadj-Sadok (Damascus: Institut français de Damas, 1968), 281–85, and Dolors Bramón, El mundo en el siglo XII: Estudio de la versión castellana y del “original” árabe de una geografía universal: “El tratado de al-Zuhrī” (Barcelona: Editorial AUSA, 1991), 41–47. See The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, ed. P. Bearman et al, 11 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1969–2002), vol. 11, 566. Patan is not close to the sea, but is a fluvial emporium. Averam could be an island near Aden, or Aden itself. Géographie d’Aboulfeda, vol. 2, 115–17. Monik Kervran, “La mosquée de Ğalāl al-Dīn Ḫwārazm Sāh à Damrilā, dans les bouches de l’Indus,” in Les non-dits du nom. Onomastiques et documents en terres d’Islam: Mélanges offerts à Jacqueline Sublet (Beirut: Presses d’Ifpo, 2013), 526–46. Also discussed in Vagnon, “Ports of Western India,” 181–85. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Gaddi 9, fols 2v-3r. El Libro del conosçimiento, 72: “demonela”. Libro del conosçimiento de todos los rregnos et tierras et señorios que son por el mundo, et de las señales et armas que han, ed. M. ­Lacarra,

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from Muslim or Jewish merchants navigating the Indian Ocean and travelling to the West, where their knowledge could be collected in workshops such as that of Cresques Abraham in Majorca. 3

A Collection of Stories and Images

The Catalan Atlas also bears witness to the transmission of iconography and “visual quotations” associated with legends that cross the frontiers from Asia and Africa to Europe.67 The history of cartography is in this respect indebted to the tools of art history, which help to trace the circulation of visual motifs that could be understood and appreciated in different cultures. The Catalan Atlas certainly gives many examples of the interpretation and then translation of transcultural narratives into images. Some of these narratives have the same Biblical roots and are obviously shared by the three monotheisms, such as the crossing of the Red Sea by the Hebrews, or the legend of Gog and Magog.68 But other motifs and stories came from distant Asian cultures and were transferred by different paths to the most western part of the medieval world, in the Iberic area. Two examples can serve here to show the complexity of this kind of transmission: the iconography of the caravan, and the description of the “sati” ritual in India. 3.1 The Caravan in the Lop Nor Desert One of the most famous images on the Catalan Atlas is the representation of a caravan, with horses and camels, travelling to the East (Fig. 6.5). This image, and the legend that accompanies it, is a direct visual and textual quotation from Marco Polo’s description of the Silk Road, during the crossing of the Lop Nor desert, where the lack of water and exhaustion provoke hallucinations.69 On the Catalan Atlas the legend runs as follows: M. del Carmen Lacarra Ducay, and A. Montaner (Zaragoza: Institución “Fernando el Católico”, 1999), 173: “demouel”. 67 O’Doherty, The Indies and the Medieval West, 273–80; Cattaneo, Fra Mauro’s Mappa Mundi and Fifteenth-Century Venice, 211–19. 68 On Gog and Magog on the Catalan Atlas, see Sandra Sáenz-López Pérez, “La representación de Gog y Magog y la imagen del Anticristo en las cartas náuticas bajomedievales,” Archivo Español de Arte 78 (2005): 263–76; Katrin Kogman-Appel, “Eschatology in the ­Catalan Mappamundi,” in Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe: the Historiographical Legacy of Bernhard Blumenkranz, ed. Philippe Buc, Martha Keil and John Tolan (­Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 227–52. 69 Gadrat-Ouerfelli, Lire Marco Polo, 131; Llompart and Pujades, El món i els dies, 154–55; Marco Polo, Le Devisement du monde, ed. Ménard, vol. 2, ch. 56, 14–15.

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fig. 6.5 The Catalan Atlas, detail. Caravan in the Lop Nor desert. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS espagnol 30.

[…] e si.s esdevendra [que de] nit cavalcant algù agreujat se adorma o en altra cosa [era] per què leix los altres companyons, sovén s’esdevé que ou [en l’àer] veus de diables semblants a les veus dels companyons [encara] que.l nomenen per son nom propri, per què los [diables] lo mènan tant deçà e dellà per lo desert axi con [companyons] seus que null temps no pot trobar sos companyons. E d’aytal desert M novelles ne son sabudes. And if it happens that, during the night, some horse-riding traveller falls asleep, either by illness or for any other reason, and so he leaves his comrades, it often happens that he hears in the air many voices of devils, like the voices of his companions, even calling him by his own name. By this mean the devils lead him here and there through the desert, in the guise of his companions, so that he cannot find them again. And from this desert a thousand stories are known. The end of the Catalan text on the chart is very close, although not identical, to the French version of Marco Polo’s text: Mais on i trueve une tel merveille que je vous dirai que, quant on chevauche par nuit par ce desert et il avient que se aucuns remaint et il se desvoie de ses compaignos pour dormir ou pour autre chose, quant

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il cuide retourner et trover ses compaignons, si ot parler un esperit qui samble estre ses compaignons, et tel foiz l’apelent par son non, si que pluseurs foiz le fait desvoier en tel manière que plus ne s’entrevoient; et en ceste manière en sont ja maint mort et perdu.70 But here we find the marvel: when travellers ride at night through this desert, it happens that one of them stops and departs from his companions to sleep or for some other reason; when he thinks to come back and find the group, he hears a spirit who seems to be one of his companions, and sometimes calls him by his name; thus spirits often cause people to deviate so much that they no longer meet, and so many are lost and die. This text about the danger of the desert is echoed in Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s Travels (written after 754/1353), in this case with regard to the Western Sahara: “There are many demons in the desert. When the guide (takshīf) is alone, they play tricks on him and delude him till he loses his way and perishes”.71 The image represents a group of camels or camel-like creatures loaded with baggage, followed by a group of men on foot, then some riders, all bearded and wearing conical hats. This archetypal image of Asian people, and in particular of Mongols, appears in other medieval manuscripts, as well as the Catalan Atlas. The motif of the caravan is also present in two other Catalan maps, albeit of lesser quality.72 The iconographic source for the caravan motif is less easy to determine than its textual source. Dromedaries formed part of the representation of the East in medieval bestiaries well before the Catalan Atlas. Illuminated manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries evoke the East by presenting numerous illustrations showing groups of riders along with camels, dromedaries and elephants. However, the motif of the caravan loaded with baggage is not so frequent.73 In a collection of articles on the circulation of images between Asia and Europe, Sonja Brentjes put forward the hypothesis that the representation of a caravan in European art derives from central Asian models, particularly

70 71 72 73

Marco Polo, Le Devisement du monde, ed. Ménard, vol. 2, ch. 56, 14–15. English translation from The Book of Ser Marco Polo, trans. Yule, revised. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Voyages, vol. 3, 399. Mecia de Viladestes, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Ge AA 566 Rés; Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum Library, MS 1828 (49361/2758); see Billion, “How did medieval cartographers work?,” 36. For example, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 12201, fol. 17v (Hayton, fourteenth century); Livre des Merveilles, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 2810, fol. 14v or fol. 118.

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ceramics.74 She pointed out that the Catalan Atlas’ caravan resembles the one seen in illustrations of the literary genre, the maqāma, in some manuscripts.75 According to Brentjes, the most characteristic aspect of the Catalan Atlas’ caravan is the motif of brightly-coloured horses (in yellow, pink, or violet) with some dots or hoops (to indicate dapple-grey horses). In the Catalan Atlas, this motif is also found in the depiction of horses mounted by the Magi to the south of the caravan. This manner of representing horses appears in Persian miniatures, albeit from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If Brentjes is correct, the iconography of the caravan reached Spain, and the Catalan Atlas, from Asian sources, probably via Italy. An additional point, not noted by Brentjes, is that the motif of the caravan can in fact be found earlier in Spain, and – significantly – in relation to the Jewish community. A much earlier image showing a group of dromedaries in profile, some of whom carry bundles, is found in a celebrated Carolingian Bible known as the “Tours Pentateuch” (Fig. 6.6). This manuscript contains one of the most ancient versions of the Vulgate; it was produced in a Mediterranean scriptorium, probably in Italy or Spain, and has been in Tours since at least the eleventh century.76 It has been suggested that it may have Jewish origins.77 Another manuscript, a French exemplar of the Fleur des Histoires d’Orient of Hayton, produced at the beginning of the fourteenth century, probably in ­Catalonia, also presents this very motif of the brightly-coloured, dappled horses.78 This manuscript attests to a style which, if not definitively Persian, was in 74 Brentjes, “Revisiting Catalan portolan charts,” 181–201. 75 The maqāma (“Assembly”) is a collection of picturesque stories and anecdotes written in a mix of verse and literary prose, related by a narrator. Some manuscripts of al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāma refer to a pilgrimage to Mecca, with an illustration of a caravan. Al-Ḥarīrī, Maqāma, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 5847 (thirteenth century), copied by al-Wasit. 76 Ashburnham or Tours Pentateuch (Spain, North Africa, North Italy or Rome?), end of the sixth or beginning of the seventh century: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. lat. 2334, fol. 76. Lavishly illustrated with a great number of images, this manuscript provides an exceptional example of the pictorial art which flourished in late antiquity. This Pentateuch also possesses great importance with regard to the textual tradition of the Bible, as it contains one of the oldest versions of the Vulgate, prior to the revision of Alcuin. 77 Bezalel Narkiss, El Pentateuco Ashburnham: la ilustración de códices en la Antigüedad tardía (Valencia: Patrimonio ediciones, 2007). 78 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. fr. 886 (Catalonia, first quarter of the fourteenth century), fol. 17: battle between Mongols and Georgians. François Avril, Manuscrits de la péninsule ibérique (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1982), 92–93. This manuscript’s illuminations have other common points with the illustrations of the Catalan Atlas that should be further investigated. See Brunilde Brigante, “Representation of Mongols in the Fleur des histoires de la terre d’Orient illuminated for the Cabrera-Cruïlles family,” Ming Qing Yanjiu 22 (2018): 215–32.

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fig. 6.6 Dromedaries in the “Tours Pentateuch”. Paris, ­Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Nouv. acq. lat. 2334, fol. 30r.

any case present in Spain at the time of the creation of the Catalan Atlas, in works concerning oriental matters. 3.2 The Sati Ritual The Catalan Atlas’ representation of the ritual of Sati provides another example of the intermingling of source material. Marco Polo and other Latin sources describe this ritual, whereby the widow of a nobleman is expected to commit suicide by jumping into her husband’s funeral fire. But two or three details differ in the Atlas’ portrayal of the ritual from Marco Polo’s description and suggest instead possible derivation from Islamic sources. After the description of the desert of Lop Nor, Marco Polo’s account presents some specific death rituals in the province of Tangut: And you must know that all the Idolaters in the world, when they die, are burnt. And when they are going to carry a body to the burning, the relatives build a wooden house on the way, and drape it with cloths of silk and gold. When the body is going past these buildings they call a halt

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and set before it wine and meat and other food; and this they do with the assurance that the dead will be received in the other world with as much honour (. . .). And I also tell you that when they carry the body to be burnt, all the instruments in the place are played before it.79 A few lines are also devoted to the sacrifice of spouses in the last part of the Devisement, the “Book of India”. There the elation of the public is mentioned but not musical instruments: And when he is dead his kinsfolk take the body and burn it with a joyful celebration. Many of the women also, when their husbands die and are placed on the pile to be burnt, burn themselves along with the bodies. And such women as do this have great praise from all.80 The representation of the death ritual on the Catalan Atlas synthesises these two passages (Fig. 6.7). The ritual is located on the map not in the Indian peninsula, but at the extreme north of Asia, near a gulf opened to the Ocean. An illustration shows the dead man naked, in a foetal position, and placed on a kind of sacrificial altar. A man prepares to light the fire. To the side, three musicians play string and wind instruments (resembling a harp, a violin and a flute). The widow is not represented, but she is evoked in the long commentary that accompanies the image, the critical tone of which is notable: Know that the men and women of this country, when they are dead, are burned to the sound of instruments and with great rejoicing, although the parents of the dead cry. And it happens sometimes but belatedly that the women of the dead throw themselves into the flames along with their husbands; however husbands never throw themselves in with their wives.81 Where does this information come from, and above all, what is the origin of the surprising nuance, whereby it is noted that men are exempt from the 79 80 81

The Book of Ser Marco Polo, trans. Yule, revised. Marco Polo, La description du monde, ed. Badel, 144–45. The Book of Ser Marco Polo, book 3, ch. 17; Marco Polo, Le Devisement du monde, ed. Ménard, vol. 6, 154–56; Marco Polo, La description du monde, ed. Badel, 419. “Sapiats que los homens e les fembres de aquesta regio quant son morts, ab esturments e ab solaços porten los a cremar, empero los parents dels morts ploren. Esdevesse algunes vegades, mas a tart, que le mullers dels morts se lançen ab los marits al foch, los marits empero null temps no si lançen ab lus mullers”.

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fig. 6.7 The Catalan Atlas, detail. The ritual of Sati. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS espagnol 30.

terrible sacrifice demanded of their wives? Several travellers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries reported the ritual of Sati, which was attested since antiquity.82 Odoric of Pordenone reports the ritual of Sati around 1320 in terms very close to those of the Catalan Atlas, but without the suggestion of criticism: according to Odoric, men may choose to sacrifice themselves with their dead wife, but they do it rarely and have the right to remarry; on the other hand, a woman can abstain from suicide if she has children to raise, but at the risk of dishonour.83 Odoric emphasises the inequality between the genders, but he 82 83

On the ancient origins of the Sati sacrifice, see L. Renou and J. Filliozat, L’Inde classique: manuel des études indiennes, 2 vols (Paris: Payot, 1947–53), vol. 1, 366–67. Le voyage en Asie d’Odoric de Pordenone: iteneraire de la Peregrinacion et du voyaige, (1351), ed. Alvise Andreose et Philippe Ménard, trans. Jean le Long (Geneva: Droz, 2010), ch. 11, 23: “Encores ont une autre coustume les idolastres de celui païs. Quant aucuns y muert, il l’ardent car il dient que ilz s’en va en autre roiaume. Et se cellui mort a une femme, il le ardent avec son mari affin qu’elle li tiengne compaignie en celui autre roiaume. Mais se celle femme ha josnes anffans de celui mary, par la loy du pays, se il li plaist, elle puet

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does not mention the joy of sacrifice nor the musical instruments. Around the same time, Jordan Catala also reported the ritual and chose to emphasise the enhanced reputation and the elation of the widow, but he does not speak of music.84 The description of Sati on the Catalan Atlas is in fact more reminiscent of Arab sources, in particular al-Masʿūdī and Ibn Baṭṭūṭa. Al-Masʿūdī’s comment on the ritual may have been indirectly the model of Odoric’s report, and it may also lie behind the critical tone of the legend on the Catalan Atlas: When a man dies, his wife is burned with him. But if it is the woman who dies first, the husband does not suffer the same fate. When someone dies unmarried, he is given a wife after his death. The women desire to be burned with their husbands to enter (so they think) after them in ­paradise. This custom, as we have already remarked, takes place in India, with the difference, however, that the woman is burned with her husband only if she herself consents to it.85 Significantly, al-Masʿūdī is the only author to place the Sati ritual in a chapter concerning the Khazar region, in modern day Russia, near the Caspian Sea. The most complete account of the horror of the scene, meanwhile, comes from the Arab traveller Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, who mentions the sacrifice of the widow accompanied by three kinds of musical instrument: The burning of the wife after her husband’s death is regarded by [Hindus] as a commendable act, but is not compulsory . . . Thereupon she joined her hands above her head in salutation to the fire and cast herself into

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demourer avec ses enffanz pour les nourrir et esleveir. Maiz se elle eslit a demourer avec ses enffanz, elle n’avra jamais honneur, ains vivera tousjours a grant honte et a grant diffame. Mais se une femme y muert devant son mary, son mary yra avec lui, se il luy plaist mais il n’y est mie constrainy de la loy du pais; ains tantost que celle est morte, il se puet marier a une autre se il lui plaist”. Une image de l’Orient au XIVe siècle: les “Mirabilia descripta” de Jordan Catala de Sévérac, ed. and trans. Christine Gadrat (Paris: École des Chartres, 2005), 279: “Dans cette Inde, lorsque meurt un homme noble, et de même pour tous ceux qui possèdent quelque chose, on les brûle. Mais leurs épouses aussi, vivantes, marchent vers le feu avec eux, et pour la gloire du monde et l’amour de leur mari et la vie éternelle, elles se brûlent en même temps que lui, avec autant d’allégresse que si elles allaient à leurs noces. Et celles qui le font sont réputées meilleures et plus parfaites que toutes les autres”. Translated from Al-Masʿūdī, Les prairies d’or, ed. and trans. C. Barbier de Ménard and Pavet de Courteille, rev. Charles Pellat, 3 vols (Paris: Société Asiatique, 1962–1971), vol. 2, 162.

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it. At the same moment the drums, trumpets and bugles were sounded, and men threw on her the firewood they were carrying and the others put those heavy balks [i.e. beams of wood] on top of her to prevent her moving, cries were raised and there was a loud clamour. When I saw this I had all but fallen off my horse, if my companions had not quickly brought water to me and washed my face, after which I withdrew.86 To summarize, some details of the image on the Catalan Atlas do not come directly from Marco Polo’s text, but can be found in Arabic literature. In the depiction and description of Sati the key points of correlation between the Atlas and Arabic texts are the comment that the man does not sacrifice himself in the burial of his wife, which was related in al-Masʿūdī; the location of the Sati ritual near a northern gulf, but not in India, a location that is also present in al-Masʿūdī where Sati is found in the Khazar regions, that is to say, the Caspian area; finally the representation of instruments and joy, as described by Ibn Baṭṭūṭa. Again, it is not argued that the maker of the Catalan Atlas had direct access to texts such as al-Masʿūdī and Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, but rather that material found on the Atlas appears to have made its way there by means of Islamic sources or intermediaries. 4 Conclusion The Catalan Atlas displays evidence of different levels of transmission of geographical knowledge, a knowledge that was shared and adapted to context. The plurality of sources of the Atlas firstly came from the plurality of cartographic genres that were involved in its construction. The cosmographical and astronomical part of the Atlas refers to the kind of science that was taught in medieval universities, whereas descriptive geography about Europe, Asia and Africa was related both to the reading of travel reports and to the culture of merchants and mariners. The mix of pluricultural sources in the Catalan Atlas can be also explained in the light of merchants’ archives, and by the position of Majorca as a centre of international cultural exchanges during the fourteenth century. The Atlas is an interpretation of the book of Marco Polo, but its information on distant lands had been filtered through different media, including books, sea charts, other maps and oral reports.

86

The Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, AD 1325–1354, trans. H.A.R. Gibb, vol. 3, 615–16; cf. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Voyages, vol. 2, 350–52.

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For these reasons, one must conclude that it is not only non-European toponyms, with exotic associations, that reached the cartographer in Majorca through the Arabic language, but also an iconography of Asia, which echoes images and fables shared by narrators of different languages and cultures. We cannot therefore speak of the influence of one culture over another, but of shared knowledge and images, assimilated by the authors of texts and maps in Jewish, Muslim and Christian cultures, and adapted to their audiences, all of whom were fond of tales of the East. Sometimes this transfer entails a loss of information, but it can also allow for enrichments from other sources or from the personal point of view of the author. The maps that comprise the Catalan Atlas, like other well-known medieval cartographic documents, are outstanding illustrations of the journey of scientific concepts, place names and iconographic motifs from distant lands, and their integration into Western European culture.

CONCLUSION

Divergent Traditions Alfred Hiatt and Yossef Rapoport The essays in this volume have considered different instances of transfer, or in some cases the lack of transfer, of geographical and cartographic material between European Christian and Arabic-Islamic cultures of the Middle Ages. In conclusion, it may be helpful to summarise in clear terms the extent of sure and certain transference between the Latin West and the Arabic-Islamic world, at the same time as indicating shared and divergent aspects of geographic culture. From that basis, it will be possible to offer some comments on the broader significance of the question of cartography “between Christian Europe and the Arabic-Islamic world”, and to outline directions for future research. We can, in the first place, be sure of the transfer of a certain amount of geographical knowledge as a by-product of the large-scale translation of astronomical materials from Arabic into Latin in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. As discussed in Chapters One and Three of this volume, celestial and terrestrial co-ordinates, the scheme of division into seven climes, and new theories about the relationship between land and sea all circulated within the Latin West as a result of the translation of works such as Ptolemy’s Almagest, Abū Maʿshar’s Introduction to Astrology, and al-Farghānī’s Compendium of Astronomy. The Ṣūfī Latinus corpus, meanwhile, a tradition that incorporates drawings from al-Ṣūfī’s fourth/tenth-century star catalogue, was responsible for the importation of at least some Arabic-Islamic iconography into Christian Europe. Even if outrightly geographical texts did not attract the interest of the translation movement, the effects of the transference of geographica within astronomy and cosmography were significant. For example, emphasis on the scheme of the climata raised questions about classical zonal theory, and led authorities such as Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon to hypothesize the habitability of equatorial regions. This was not a small step, as at least in theory it made travel beyond the equator conceivable, well before the European explorations of the fifteenth century began. At the same time, the translation of Arabic materials contributed to an altered representation of seas and oceans. In particular, the Indian Ocean, always of importance within Arabic-Islamic geography, came to enjoy greater significance within certain Latin schematisations. The ­initial impetus here came not from descriptive geography, but from essentially theoretical texts such as the pseudo-Aristotelian work, De causis proprietatum © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446038_009

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e­ lementorum. The results may not have been instantaneous. But the wide circulation of texts such as De causis, and the much more restricted circulation of the map that illustrated it – the only surviving example of a medieval map wholly translated from Arabic into Latin – shows that, as with the transmission of much astronomical, medical, and philosophical material, translated texts could be rapidly assimilated into Latin learning. Thus the scheme of the seven climata would not have struck commentators such as Albertus Magnus or Roger Bacon as foreign, or imported, but rather as part of their scientific patrimony, even if they were attested by figures such as “Albumasar”, “Alfraganus”, or Avicenna, as well as by Pliny the Elder and Bede. This familiarity of the scheme of the climata may have encouraged one of the most ambitious acts of translation of a geographical text during the Middle Ages, the translation into Latin of the epistle on geography published by the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā (Brethren of Purity). This translation, perhaps made in Sicily while the island remained a site of intercultural exchange, did not achieve a wide distribution, and it illustrates some of the difficulties of bridging the gaps, particularly linguistic ones, between the two cultures. By the same token, it reveals the possibilities of the movement of geographical texts across boundaries, and shows the existence of interest, however limited, in such ventures. The second area where it is possible to be sure of the influence of ArabicIslamic geography in Christian Europe is to be found on world maps of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the earliest of which is the world map produced by Pietro Vesconte and Marino Sanudo for inclusion in Sanudo’s crusading treatise of 1321, the Liber secretorum fidelium crucis. As with the transmission of the climata and other aspects of theoretical geography, the observation of Arabic influence on the Vesconte-Sanudo map is not new. However, Stefan Schröder’s review of the evidence in this volume allows us to see in clearer detail the extent of the influence. An Arabic source, in the form of a map similar to or derived from the circular world map found in al-Idrīsī’s Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq, lies behind Vesconte-Sanudo’s representation of the “Mountains of the Moon” as the source of the Nile, aspects of the depiction of the Caspian Sea, and some place names in Africa and Asia (Provincie Oburge; Habesse; Carab; Camar; and Zinc and Zinciber). The Idrīsīan map was, that is, far from the only source for Vesconte-Sanudo’s map, but it made a significant contribution to it. The areas in which it supplied information were, for the most part, distant from direct European experience and observation, but of no small interest to a Christian European audience, given the longstanding debate about the sources of the Nile, as well as the presence of Christian communities in Ethiopia and (so it was hoped) northern Asia. As Schröder points out, the map was intended by Sanudo to be viewed with

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strategic ends in mind. The partial use of an Arabic-Islamic source was not the result of an attempt to replace an inferior model with a superior one, or even to update a map with “new knowledge”, but rather to draw attention to particular regions which carried both threats and opportunities for Christian geo-political ambitions. The earlier presence in Latin Europe of some form of the same Idrīsīan model can be conjectured from the “silent” map attributed to Brunetto Latini (although the absence of toponyms on this map makes it difficult to be certain); it is certainly possible to trace, from Vesconte-Sanudo onwards, the use of Latinised toponyms such as “Gibelcamar” (Mountains of the Moon) or “Habesse” (Ethiopia) that show the presence of Arabic source material. These features, along with the shape of Africa on maps such as the fifteenth-century Estense world map, can with confidence be seen as forms of influence. Such influence increased as more information circulated. Thus by the mid-fifteenth century Fra Mauro included on his mappa mundi not only “Çiebelchamir”, “Abassia”, the “Provincia big” (derivative of Vesconte-Sanudo’s “Provincie Oburge”), but also a number of place names gleaned from Ethiopian clerics, whom he cites as one of his sources, and who apparently drew a map for him, as well as Indian Ocean place names of Arabic origin.1 Investigation of the Arabic material that came through Vesconte-Sanudo into later European works, and new material added by mapmakers such as Fra Mauro, lies beyond the scope of this volume, but the basic pattern identified by Schröder and others of genuine but restricted influence seems unlikely to change.2 What of influence in the other direction, from Latin to Arabic texts? As mentioned in the introduction to this volume, the instances of sure and certain transmission are relatively few. In al-Andalus during the late ninth or tenth century Paulus Orosius’ Historiae, including its opening description of the known world, was translated into Arabic; around the same time, or possibly earlier, a T-O map along Isidorean lines was rendered in Arabic, with toponyms and ethnonyms that were not part of the Latin tradition. The transmission of the Arabic Orosius was limited (the work survives in only a single, incomplete, manuscript),3 but meaningful, at least within Andalusian circles, given its use by al-Bakrī and its citation by al-Idrīsī. Finally, although this has not been 1 Fra Mauro’s World Map, ed. and trans. Piero Falchetta (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 98 (p. 201). The direct use of Arabic texts by Fra Mauro can be ruled out. See Falchetta’s discussion of source material: Fra Mauro’s World Map, 72–74, 96–114; on Fra Mauro’s representation of the Indian Ocean see too Angelo Cattaneo, Fra Mauro’s Mappa Mundi and Fifteenth-Century V ­ enice (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 116–26. 2 Cf. the conclusions reached by Patrick Gautier Dalché for the twelfth century: “Géographie arabe et géographie latine au XIIe siècle,” Medieval Encounters 19 (2013): 408–33. 3 New York, Columbia University Library, MS Arab. X893.712H.

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explored in this volume, it must be noted that towards the end of the medieval period sea charts began to be copied and translated into Arabic. Such charts were certainly produced by Muslims in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and they were evidently used by Arab navigators of the period.4 It is of course the case that many texts present a less than clear-cut picture of cross-cultural influence. In these instances a more productive approach than Quellenforschung is to try to see texts as the product of a cultural milieu, with a variety of possible influences, not all of which can be finally known from the distance of several centuries. In this mode, one can consider al-Idrīsī to be the product, and to some extent the agent, of the possibilities of geographical representation available in Palermo in the mid-twelfth century. Whether or not the Nuzhat al-mushtāq was intended to promote the interests of Roger II and the Norman court to an Arabophone audience (the authors of this conclusion disagree on this point), there should be little doubt that what al-Idrīsī produced was squarely rooted in the traditions of Arabic-Islamic geography, with minimal debts to Latin models. There seems very little likelihood that he drew on any known Latin maps, nor has there yet been clear identification of written material in Latin informing the Nuzhat al-mushtāq. Yet it is equally hard to credit that al-Idrīsī’s detailed and often highly contemporary description of Europe came solely from Arabic sources. Hence the near certainty that al-Idrīsī gleaned information about parts of central and northern Europe not traditionally described in detail in Arabic-Islamic geography from oral informants encountered in Palermo. Thus one can see the Nuzhat al-mushtāq as an outstanding example of Arabic-Islamic geography, but one that draws on otherwise undocumented Christian European geographical knowledge. Something similar, if in reverse, may be said about the Catalan Atlas. As Emmanuelle Vagnon shows in this volume, there is evidence on this deluxe map for the indirect contribution of non-European sources. However, attempts to show that features on the map such as a caravan with coloured and dappled horses must come from Islamic sources are not conclusive, because the same iconography appears also in earlier European sources. It is then more productive and also more accurate to see the map as the product of a ­“pluricultural” milieu: the work of a Jewish chartmaker on a Mediterranean island with significant links to north Africa, created for a Christian king. Such a work i­ nevitably 4 Svat Soucek, “Islamic Charting in the Mediterranean,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 2, book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, ed. J. Brian Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 263–92: 263–65; Mónica Herrera Casais, “Granada en los atlas náuticos de al-Šarafī,” Al-Qantara 30 (2009): 221–35; Tarek Kahlaoui, Creating the Mediterranean: Maps and the Islamic Imagination (Leiden: Brill, 2018).

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draws on shared cultural heritage, with the result that isolation of each e­ lement of the map as Christian, Jewish, or Muslim is not possible. A number of possibilities for spatial representation between Christian Europe and the Arabic-Islamic world can be ruled out. Only rarely were Christian world maps directly influenced by Arabic-Islamic models, and with the important exception of sea charts, Islamic maps were almost never influenced by Latin models. Sea charts do not have an Arabic origin; al-Idrīsī should not be seen as an example of hybridity; and with only a couple of exceptions significant geographical works were not translated from Arabic into Latin, or from Latin into Arabic. Yet it is the mixture of sharing and divergence between these two traditions that is particularly interesting. Nothing illustrates this point better than the case of Ptolemy’s Geography. This text enjoyed very different trajectories in the Arabophone and the Latin worlds. In the Latin West the Geographia seems to have dropped out of circulation at some point not long after the mid sixth century, when it was mentioned by Cassiodorus as one of the texts to be consulted by monks who desired particularly to enhance their geographical knowledge.5 Thereafter the text was known only indirectly, not least through the widespread dissemination of Ptolemy’s Almagest from the twelfth century onwards, until Jacopo Angeli’s translation of the Greek text in the first decade of the fifteenth century. In the Arab world, the Geography was, from the ninth-century, known and apparently readily available in Arabic translation. Yet, as Jean-Charles Ducène has shown in this volume, the tradition of Ptolemy’s “Jughrāfīa” is a far from straightforward one. Several translations of the work are mentioned in Arabic sources, yet the only extant translation into Arabic dates from 1465, having been produced for the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II. The key ninth-century transmission of the work into Arabic, in terms of influence and reach, was that of al-Khwārazmī, but the nature of that translation remains open to question. Al-Khwārazmī’s Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ is not a translation of the entire Geography, but rather an extraction of its geographical data, based in all likelihood on an intermediary Syriac text. There is no reason to assume that al-Khwārazmī had access to any original maps produced by Ptolemy or his predecessor, Marinus of Tyre. On the other hand, there is every reason to assume that al-Khwārazmī did have access to a Ptolemaic map or maps (that is, one derived, at whatever distance, from the Geography), and that such a map or maps continued to inform aspects of the Arabic-Islamic geographic tradition over the succeeding centuries. Ptolemy continued to enjoy great “nominal authority” in Arabic geography, but as Ducène indicates, close inspection of references to Ptolemy often reveal the use of al-Kwārazmī’s 5 Institutiones, ed. R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937), 1.25 (p. 66).

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adaptation, and certainly not direct reference to the Greek text. The “Jughrāfīa” was, then, a very different creature to the Geographia that re-emerged in the Latin West in the fifteenth century. The text’s provision of co-ordinates, and its model of mathematical geography, were undoubtedly of high importance to both cultures; yet whereas in the Latin West it quickly became a means of apprehending the ancient world, and within a century epitomised ancient geography in contrast to new and modern maps, in the Arabic-Islamic world it seems to have served as a more pliable resource. Clearly formative, it was open to adaptation and extraction, as well as assimilation into the traditions of mathematical and perhaps also descriptive geographies as they developed. This need not signal a fundamental difference in attitude or mentality. Had the Geographia been translated into Latin at an earlier stage – in the ninth, or twelfth centuries, say – it would in all likelihood have been treated in a similar way, assimilated and Christianised, with its mathematical elements diluted. While it is a simplification to trace the differences between the Latin and Arabic traditions to the division of their geographical patrimony between the Romans and the Greeks, the case of Ptolemy shows how significant the transmission – and the loss – of a single text can be. What, finally, does this study of geographical cultures have to contribute to the broader picture of cross-cultural pollination between the European Christian and Arabic-Islamic worlds, and where might future research on this question head? The case of geography may, at first glance, seem at odds with the general trend in recent work on cultural transmission to emphasise the extent and speed of “knowledge transfer”, especially from Arabic into Latin. Certainly anyone coming to the question of the interactions between Arabic and Latin geographical texts with the expectation of finding the widespread translation of major works by Arab and Greek authors via Arabic into Latin will be disappointed. Geography, to put the matter more positively, helps to show the limits of the translation movement that flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The translators and, one could presume, their audiences were very interested in certain kinds of material, but not geography, and hence geographical elements were only translated where they formed part of subject matter, such as astronomy, that was of interest. The explanation for the relatively limited movement of geographical texts does not seem to lie in religious antipathy. If it did, it would be hard to explain why such antipathy did not prevent the translation and study of other sorts of text, nor why an author such as Marino Sanudo, who manifestly was hostile to Islam and an agitator for crusade, should include elements on his map derived from Arabic-Islamic sources. Instead, four possible hindrances to

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widespread transfer or exchange of geographica can be proposed. The first of these is the status of geography, or the lack thereof, in the Latin West. In many ways “geography” did not exist as a formally constituted body of knowledge: it was not taught as an independent subject in schools, or in the emergent universities. Geographical material was instead scattered across other more easily identifiable subjects, such as astronomy, geometry, and rhetoric, and in texts of different genres, including classical and medieval poems, chronicles, and encyclopedic works. This lack of institutional status must have reduced the pedagogical motives for seeking out and translating Arabic geographical works, particularly those such as the Kutub al-masālik wa-al-mamālik, whose focus on the Islamic world may in any case have made them less attractive to a Christian European audience. A second factor would have been the difficulties involved in assimilating the large amounts of geographical detail contained in Arabic sources to the verbal and visual mappae mundi that had been transmitted from antiquity and that were developed in the Latin West in the twelfth century. It is hard, for example, to see how Latin maps could have accommodated the detail of the “ways and realms” tradition in Asia and Africa without jettisoning large amounts of material and reworking certain formal aspects of the mappae mundi. It is telling that when Arabic materials did enter onto Latin maps the model was generally that of accretion: the addition of the “Mountains of the Moon”, for example, or the introduction of a relatively small number of toponyms and ethnonyms. Clearly related to this second factor is a third, namely the particular difficulties posed by the transference of the names of places and peoples. The materials that were translated (whether the epistle of the “Brethren of Purity”, the De causis map, or al-Idrīsī’s rendering of European place names) all reveal how hard it was accurately to translate or simply transliterate toponyms and ethnonyms from one language (and one script) to another, and how easy it was for scribes to become confused and to render a text largely unintelligible. Finally, at the level of the map the question of function needs to be considered. The Latin mappa mundi tradition was heavily historicist in its origins and purpose. That is, mappae mundi were in significant part expressions of historiography, not designed to show the world in its most contemporary moment, but to make intelligible the processes of history by showing places and events that had occurred in the past. This function is not so evident on the Arabic ṣurat al-arḍ, though it must be added that the written texts that accompany Arabic maps very frequently comment on historical events and the historical significance of particular places. Nevertheless, the often-made assumption that the more “up-to-date” information on Arabic maps should have been

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eagerly sought by makers of mappae mundi fails to consider the importance of dated, historically attested material from the Roman imperial era, including material of direct relevance for Biblical narratives, within the Latin tradition. Ultimately, explaining why something did not happen is probably less important than explaining what did happen. In this regard, if we look beyond the questions of influence, importation, and exchange, many possibilities for comparativist research begin to appear. The starting point for such research should be the considerable amount that is shared by the Arabic and Latin geographical traditions. To name just four such areas (others doubtless could be added), both traditions have a classical heritage, some aspects of which are shared, others of which diverge; in both, certain key authors enjoyed a remarkable longevity, being copied and cited across nearly a millennium (Orosius and Isidore in the Latin West; Ptolemy and al-Iṣṭakhrī in the Arabic-Islamic world); both traditions reveal strong interests in maritime geography and both register the increasing importance of urban space; both incorporate the monstrous, legendary, and strange within their descriptions of the world. Much obviously differs, even within these four areas, but understanding the divergences of tradition is surely as much a part of comparativist study as identifying borrowings and convergences. The preceding pages will have served their purpose if they have contributed to a more complex understanding of the interactions between geographical thought and expression in Latin Europe and the ArabicIslamic world, and to the clarification of the links, as well as the differences, between these two traditions.

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Index ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III, Caliph 111 Abraham bar Ḥiyya 98 Sefer Ṣurat ha-ʿAreṣ 51–52 Abraham ibn Ezra 98 Abulfeda see Abū l-Fidāʾ Abū l-Fidāʾ (Abulfeda) 88, 168n30, 174, 178 Abū Maʿshar (Albumasar) 6, 45–46, 70, 189, 190 Adelard of Bath, De opere astrolapsus 52, 57 Africa 7, 27, 85, 87, 115, 127, 129–132, 134, 166, 167 on maps 11, 18, 21, 23–25, 38, 65, 79–80, 82, 124, 135, 138, 140, 145–148, 153, 170–176, 190 Agapius (Mahboub) of Manbij, Kitāb al-ʿunwān 47 ʿajāʾib 123, 124 Albertus Magnus De causis proprietatum elementorum 68–71; fig. 1.8 De natura loci 59, 189, 190 Albumasar see Abū Maʿshar Alexander the Great 25–26, 129, 156 Alexandria 43, 47, 125, 135 Alfonsi, Petrus see Petrus Alfonsi Alfonsine Tables 91 Alfonso X, King of Castile and León 96 Alfraganus see al-Farghānī Alhazen see Ibn al-Haytham ʿĀlī bin Abī Ṭālib 116, 133n71 Almohads 129 Amari, Michele 120 Amazons 47, 81, 87 Amuritzes, George 74, 88–89 al-Andalus 2, 4, 9, 11, 21–23, 72, 84, 95, 103, 110–112, 113n2, 116, 123, 125, 128–129, 130, 134–135, 191; fig. 4.2 antipodes 7, 59, 63 Apex physicae see De philosophia et eius secretis Apian, Peter 108 Arabian peninsula (al-Ḥijāz) 11, 24, 64, 126, 174 Arabs 125, 127, 129–132, 134 Aratus of Soli, Phaenomena 92

Aren/Arin (Ujjain) 48–50, 53, 57, 58, 59, 63 Aristotelianism 2, 40, 58, 64–65, 70–71 Aristotle 7, 25, 59 (pseudo) Aristotle, De causis proprietatum elementorum 37, 40, 63–73, 152n45, 189–190, 195; figs 1.6, 1.7 Asia 7, 123 on maps 18, 19, 21, 23, 82–83, 124, 138, 140, 145, 148–151, 153, 154, 190 astrolabes 48, 53, 84, 91, 93–96, 111–112 astrology 6, 28, 71, 84, 91, 93, 98 astronomy 1, 5, 9, 12, 28, 40, 41, 44, 57, 62, 74–75, 91–112, 140, 161, 162, 168, 189, 190, 194, 195 Atlantic Ocean 18, 22, 63, 83, 87, 113, 125, 146 Atlas mountains 21, 171, 172–173, 175 Augustine of Hippo 7 Averroes (Ibn Rushd) 58, 59 Avicenna (Ibn Sinā) 45, 58, 190 Avienus 92 Avignon 137, 151, 159 Bacon, Roger 31, 59–61, 189, 190 Baghdad 6, 9, 11, 62, 65, 68, 69, 93, 126, 128, 132 Bagrow, Leo 30 al-Bakrī, Abū ʿUbayd 23, 84, 128n45, 130, 191 al-Balkhī, Abū Zayd 11 “Balkhī school” 6, 11, 46, 145 Baltic Sea 68, 81, 87 Barcelona 162–170 Basra 65, 126 al-Battānī 85 Baudri de Bourgueil 5n14 Beatus of Liébana, Commentary on the Apocalypse 16 Beccari, Francesco fig. 0.8 Bede 44, 190 Beja, tribe 152 Belting, Hans 3, 36 “Berbers” 21, 22, 24, 65, 125, 130 Bernard, Saint 124 Bianco, Andrea 158 Bibles Christian 16, 70, 182 Hebrew 168

230 al-Bīrūnī 10 Kitāb al-tafhīm li-awāʾil ṣināʿat al-tanjīm 45 Kitāb taḥdīd nihāyat al-amākin li-taṣḥīḥ masāfat al-masākin 85–86 Black Sea 18, 44, 47, 68, 123, 126, 149, 151, 152 Boccaccio, Giovanni 151 Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes (Kitāb Gharāʾib al-funūn wa-mulaḥ al-ʿuyūn) 12–15, 26–28, 35, 46–47, 86–87, 143–144, 146, 147, 152n45; figs 0.5, 0.13, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4 Brentjes, Sonja 181–182 Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-Ṣafā) Epistola fratrum sincerorum in cosmographia 61–62, 71, 190, 195 On Geography 46, 47, 128n44 Britain 43, 58, 59, 125, 162 Byzantium 68, 125, 126 Cairo 125, 173 Campbell, Tony 35 Canary Islands 87, 88, 125 Carthage 123, 125, 132 Caspian Sea 12, 38, 64, 65, 67, 68–69, 71, 77, 126, 140, 144, 145, 148–151, 153–154, 156, 157, 186, 187, 190; fig. 5.4 Cassiodorus, Institutiones 22, 44, 193 Catalan Atlas 19, 29, 38, 160–188, 192–193; figs 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, 6.7 Cecco d’Ascoli 57–58 Charles V, King of France 19, 38, 161 China (al-sīn) 11, 21, 63, 64, 65, 82, 113, 126, 154, 162 Cicero, Marcus Tullius Phaenomena 92 Somnium Scipionis 7, 41, 52 Clement IV, Pope 61 climata maps 47, 49–50, 53–63, 117; figs 0.2, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 climes (climata, al-aqālīm) 7, 9, 12, 13, 14, 34, 37, 40–63, 71–72, 83–84, 87, 118, 119, 121, 124, 128, 136, 147, 189, 190 Constantinople 65, 125, 132 Copts 24 Corcos, Samuel see Viladestes, Mecia de Cordoba 21, 116, 125, 129, 132, 133, 135 Cosmographia Julii Honorii 22

Index Cresques Abraham 19, 38, 161, 162, 165, 168–169, 176, 179, 188 Cresques Jafudà (Jaume Ribes) 165–166 Crete 17, 125 crusades 134, 137–138, 140, 142, 154–159, 190–191, 194 Cumans 118, 126 Cyprus 12, 126 Damascus 57, 126, 133, 135 Dati, Gregorio and Leonardo 158 Datini, trading company 166–167, 170 De causis proprietatum elementorum see (pseudo) Aristotle De philosophia et eius secretis 53–55 De viis maris 176 di Cesare, Michelina 151 Djerba 131 Drecoll, Carsten 142 Dulcert, Angelino 165, 171–172, 175–176 Dunāsh 111 Dyffenbach, Conrad of 97 Ebstorf map see mappae mundi Edson, Evelyn 142 Egypt 11, 15, 80, 86, 115, 125, 129–130, 134, 143, 154–155, 156, 173 Ethiopia 21, 24, 63, 64, 68, 85, 125, 126, 138, 146, 152–153, 156, 157, 190, 191 Eudoxus of Cnidos 92 Euphrates river 12, 65, 67, 68 Europe  4, 7, 23, 24, 68, 81, 85, 87, 124, 191 al-Farghānī (Alfraganus) 46, 52, 57, 58, 61, 93, 189, 190 Fatimids 131; see also Book of Curiosities Fébus, Gaston, Count of Foix 169 Fidenzio de Padua 137n3 Fra Mauro see mappae mundi France 52 Franks 125, 134 Freudenthal, Gad 112 Gadrat-Ouerfelli, Christine 169 Ganges river 64 Gautier Dalché, Patrick 34–36, 158 Genizah collection 87 Gensfelder, Reinardus 97

231

Index geography and religion 15, 16 descriptive 6, 12–15, 21–23, 160–188, 189, 194 mathematical 6, 9–11, 12–15, 43, 72, 74–90, 124, 140, 194 regional 11–12, 37, 46, 64, 113–136 theoretical 7–9, 40–73, 189–190 George of Trebizond (Trapezuntius) 95 Gerard of Cremona 28–29, 63, 95 Gerbert of Aurillac 92, 96 Germania 43, 44, 69, 125 Germanicus 92 Ghana 125, 171 Giusto de’ Menabuoi 158 globes, celestial 91, 92, 93–98, 103–112 Cusanus’s globe 96, 104, 106; fig. 3.5 Dresden, Staatlicher MathematischPhysikalischer Salon, E II 1 109; fig. 3.7 Florence, Museo Galileo, 2712 103, 107–109, 111; fig. 3.6 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ge A 325 Rès 103, 107–109, 111; figs 3.6, 3.7 Gog and Magog (Yājūj wa-Mājūj) 26, 52, 87, 123, 126, 138, 148, 151, 179 Goldstein, Bernard R. 109 Grosseteste, Robert 57, 70 Guinea 171, 172 Ḥabash al-Ḥāsib Book on the Sphere and its Use 93–94, 120n27 Zīj 84 Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū 88 al-Ḥajjāj 93, 95 Ḥājjī Khalīfa 75–76 al-Hamdānī, Ṣifat jazīrat al-ʿArab 85 Ḥasdāy 111 Hayton of Corycus 149, 182–183 Hellespont 43, 68 Hercules, pillars of 17, 21 Hereford map see mappae mundi Hermann of Carinthia 28–29 Hippocrates 47 Honorius Augustodunensis, Imago Mundi 168

Houssaye, Ingrid 167 Ḥudūd al-ʿālam 83 Ibn Abī l-Rijāl, Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī, Al-bāriʿ fī aḥkām al-nujūm 84 Ibn al-Athīr 75 Ibn Baṭṭūṭa 174, 181, 186–187 Ibn al-Dawādārī 174 Ibn al-Haytham (“Alhazen”) 61, 83–84 Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ 11, 12, 14, 21, 46, 76–77, 123, 124; figs 0.2, 0.4 Ibn Juljul 74–75 Ibn Khaldūn, Muqaddimah 136n76, 143, 147, 174 Ibn Khurradādhbih, Kitāb al-masālik wa-almamālik 11, 14, 21, 76, 85, 123, 124 Ibn al-Nadīm 76 Ibn al-Qifṭī 75 Ibn Riḍwān, ʿAlī 84 Ibn al-Ṣaffār 84 Ibn Saʿīd 178 Ibn Ẓāhira 75 Idrīs 116 al-Idrīsī Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq 12, 14–15, 23, 35, 38–39, 46–47, 87–88, 113–136, 141–142, 147, 191, 192, 193, 195 Uns al-muhaj wa-rawḍ al-furaj 47, 114, 116, 117, 118, 122, 136 regional maps 88, 114, 117, 121–122, 135– 136, 142, 147, 152–153; figs 4.2, 4.3, 4.4 world map, circular 31, 37, 47, 119–120, 141–144, 146–149, 152–153, 158, 190; figs 4.1, 5.3, 5.4 Ikhwān al-Ṣafā see Brethren of Purity India 11, 15, 21, 64, 67, 115, 126, 155, 156, 157, 176–179; fig. 6.4 Indian Ocean 11, 12, 64, 65, 68, 70, 71, 80, 82, 115, 126, 138, 145, 153–157, 179, 189, 191 Iran see Persia Iraq 11, 15, 63, 68, 126, 134 Isaac Ben Sid 91 Isḥāq 93 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 5, 15, 21, 23–25, 44, 191, 196 “Islam Atlas” see ways and realms al-Iṣṭakhrī, Kitāb al-masālik wa-almamālik 11, 12, 46, 196; fig. 0.3

232

Index

Italy 68, 117, 118, 125, 162, 182 Iwaszkiewicz, Jarosław 113n1

Libros del saber 95–97, 103, 104–107, 109–112 Lucan, Bellum civile 41

Jacob Anatoli 111 Jacob ben David Poʿel 98 Jacob ben Makhir ibn Tibbon 97, 111 Jacob of Edessa, Hexaemeron 77–78, 79 Jacopo Angeli 62, 193 al-Jayhānī 123 Jean de Berry 169 Jerusalem 18, 57, 59, 126, 127, 132–133, 135, 138, 155, 156 Jews, and Judaism 3, 4, 5, 19, 35, 37, 38, 48, 51–52, 71, 87, 91, 97–98, 111–112, 133, 162, 164–170, 175, 178, 179, 182, 192–193; see also Abraham bar Ḥiyya; Abraham ibn Ezra; Cresques Abraham; Viladestes, Mecia de Johan Daspa 97 John XXII, Pope 137, 150–151, 158–159 John of Sacrobosco, De sphera 55–58; fig. 1.4 John of Wallingford 58–59; fig. 1.5 Jordan Catala 186 Judah ben Moses ha-Cohen 91, 97

Mack, Rosamund 3 Macrobius, Ambrosius Theodosius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis 7, 41, 52, 59, 71; figs 0.1, 1.1 Maghrib 4, 11, 84, 116, 117, 125, 134 “Maghrib chart” 31, 35; fig. 0.14 Mahdiyya 125, 130 Majorca 19, 35, 38; see also Palma de Majorca Mamluk Sultanate 154–155, 173 al-Maʾmūn, Abbasid caliph 6n19, 9, 31, 32, 46, 77, 88, 120n27 Manbij (Hierapolis) 132 Mansā Mūsā, King of Mali 171–174; fig. 6.3 Mansā Suleyman, King of Mali 174 manuscripts Cairo, Dār al-Kutub, Jugrāfiyā 150 147 El Escorial, Biblioteca de San Lorenzo, MS árabe 1636 47n27 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Conv. Soppr. J.V.6 65–68; fig. 1.7 Istanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Ayasofya MS 2596 89 Istanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Ayasofya MS 2610 89 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, Vitr. 14.3 23, 191; fig. 0.11 Milan, Biblioteca Trivulziana, MS 764 65, 72–73; fig. 1.6 New York, Columbia University Library, MS Arab. X893.712H 191 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arab. c. 90 26, 143; figs 0.5, 0.13, 5.2 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 191 50 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. F.1.9 52 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. F.5.28 65, 72–73 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Marsh 144 94, 104, 106–107 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Pococke 375 148 Palermo, Biblioteca comunale, 2 Qq D 121 61

Kamal, Youssouf 29–30 Kerkenna 131 Kervran, Monik 178 Khazars 24, 126, 186 Khurāsān 12, 52, 62, 64, 65, 67, 126 Khūzistān 12, 126 al-Khwārazmī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Mūsā, Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ 6, 9, 14, 46, 47n27, 77–90, 122, 145, 147, 193–194 al-Kīmākī 123 Kimaks 118, 123, 126 al-Kindī, Abū Yūsuf 75, 76 Kirmān 12, 126 Kretschmer, Konrad 149 Kurds 126 Latini, Brunetto, Livres dou Tresor 31, 144, 146, 150, 158, 191 Lelewel, Joachim 29, 141 Lewicki, Tadeusz 142, 151 Liber de existencia riveriarum 170n37 Libro del conosçimiento 164, 178–179

Index Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 1036 96, 107 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 2221 142–143, 144, 147; figs 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 5036 106 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS espagnol 30 161–188; figs 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, 6.7 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 4939 151 Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, MS Schoenberg ljs 057 37, 91–112; figs 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.6 San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 83 62 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Pal. lat. 1368 97 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 1960 151 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 3099 106 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 8174 106, 107, 110 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2292 72–73; fig. 1.8 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 5415 97–98, 100–101, 103–104, 106, 112; fig. 3.5 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS Heb. 132 99 mappae mundi Albi 15n33 Beatus 16 Catalan-Estense 165, 191 Duchy of Cornwall 17n36 Ebstorf 17–18, 138, 140, 145, 157 Fra Mauro 19, 158, 165, 191; fig. 0.9 “Genoese” world map 165 Hereford 17–18, 22, 26, 138, 140; figs 0.7, 0.12 “transitional” 138–159 Vat. lat. 6018 15n33; fig. 0.6 Vesconte-Sanudo 19, 29, 31, 37–38, 138–159, 190–191; figs 5.1, 5.3, 5.4

233 see also Book of Curiosities; Catalan Atlas maps, Arabic Jughrāfiyā 77–83, 85, 88, 193–194 of al-Maʾmūn 6n19, 31, 32, 77 qibla maps 15, 16 see also Book of Curiosities; climata maps; Ibn Ḥawqal; al-Idrīsī; al-Iṣṭakhrī maps, celestial 37, 91–112 maqāma, genre 182 al-Maqrīzī 174 Marco Polo see Polo, Marco Marinus of Tyre 9, 193 Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii 7, 9, 43–44, 52, 57, 59 Māshāʾallāh, Liber de orbe 53–55; fig. 1.3 al-Masʿūdī 123 Kitāb al-tanbih wa-l-ishrāf 75, 76 Murūj al-dhahab 83, 186, 187 mathematics 1, 28, 29, 40, 41, 100, 140 Matthew Paris 59 Mecca 15, 24, 93, 126, 133, 173–174, 175 Medici Atlas 178–179 medicine 1, 28, 123, 140, 190 Medina 126, 133, 175 Mediterranean Sea 9, 21, 22, 64, 77, 87, 115, 127, 129, 130–131, 134, 155, 176, 192 on maps 11, 12, 17, 18, 65, 68, 70, 71, 145, 146, 156, 164 Mehmet II, Ottoman Sultan 74, 89, 193 merchants 130, 142, 149, 152, 162–164, 166–170, 175, 179, 187 Meroe 43 Mesopotamia 81–82 Michael Scot 57, 58 Miller, Konrad 29, 141 Mongols 138, 154, 157, 181 monstrous peoples 25–28, 138, 196 Mountains of the Moon 38, 125, 138, 140, 145–148, 153, 157, 158, 190, 191, 195; fig. 5.3 al-Mubashshir ibn Fātik 74–75 Muḥammad 175 al-Muʿizz, Fatimid caliph 6n19 al-Munajjim (al-Zayyāt) 47n27 al-Muqaddasī, Ahsan al-Taqāsīm fī Maʿrifat al-Aqālīm 4, 7n19, 46 Mūsā al-Qurdī 123 “Musa Melly” see Mansā Mūsā

234 Neoplatonism 46 Nile river 11, 12, 13, 21, 64, 65, 68, 87, 88, 113, 125, 129–130, 138, 144, 145–148, 190 Noah 23, 45 Nubia 125 al-Nuwayrī 173–174 Odoric da Pordenone 19, 185–186 Orosius, Paulus Historiae adversus paganos 15, 21, 122, 145, 196 Kitāb Hurūshiūsh 21–23, 123, 191 Ovid, Metamorphoses 41 Oxus river (Jayḥūn, Āmū Darjā) 12, 64, 86, 126, 152 Palermo 113, 125, 131, 135, 192 Palestine 15, 17, 126, 127, 132–133, 154, 156, 158 Palma de Majorca 162–170, 171, 175, 179, 187–188 Paradise 21, 58, 63, 138, 145, 156 Paulinus Minorita 150–151, 158 Persia 11, 46, 62, 64, 68, 82, 126, 155, 156 Persian Gulf 64, 65, 70, 126, 130, 133 Peter IV, King of Aragon 169 Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogus contra Judaeos 9, 40, 48–52, 57, 59; fig. 1.2 Peutinger Table 15 Philip VI, King of France 156 philosophy 1, 28, 29, 140, 190 Pierre d’Ailly, Ymago Mundi 61, 151 pilgrimage Christian 124, 133, 175 Muslim 173–174, 175 Plato 7, 70 Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia 9, 15, 43, 44, 145, 190 Polo, Marco, Divisement dou monde 19, 153, 154, 162, 169–170, 176, 179–181, 183–184, 187 portolan charts see sea charts Prester John 138, 155n57 Ptolemy, Claudius Almagest 9, 43, 45, 47, 51, 57, 58, 61, 62, 63, 74–75, 84, 89, 92–93, 95, 101, 104, 108, 111, 189, 193 Geographia 6, 9, 14, 19, 31, 38, 62, 74–90, 122, 145, 147, 158, 193–194, 196; fig. 0.10 Tetrabiblos 9, 43, 45, 84–85, 89

Index Qudāma al-Basrī 123 Qurʾān 15, 26 Qusṭā ibn Lūqā, Book concerning the Globe 96–97, 111 Rashi (Shlomo Yitzhaqi) 16n34 Raymond of Marseilles 53 al-Rāzī 23, 132 Red Sea 64, 65, 70–71, 126, 145, 179 Rhodes 43, 47 Robertus Anglicus 58 Robert of Chester 28–29 Roger I of Sicily 117, 127 Roger II, King of Sicily 6n19, 39, 113–114, 117–124, 127–128, 130–131, 135–136, 142, 192 Roman empire 131–132, 135 Rome 43, 52, 65, 125, 132, 135 al-Ṣafadī, Ṣalāh al-Dīn 117 Said, Edward, Orientalism 2 St Albans, monastery 59 Samsó, Julio 111 San Giovanni e Paolo, monastery 159 Sanudo, Marino, Liber secretorum fidelium crucis 19, 37, 137–159, 190 Sati, ritual 179, 183–187 Savage-Smith, Emilie 94 Saxl, Fritz 98, 112 Scythia 21, 63, 85 sea charts 5, 18–19, 31, 34–36, 140, 148, 156, 158, 160, 162, 170, 174–175, 192, 193; figs 0.8, 0.14 Sebokht, Severus 77 Sezgin, Fuat 31–32, 35, 142 Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ṣāʿid ibn alAkfānī al-Anṣārī 88 Sicily 2, 12, 61–62, 96, 113, 116–120, 124, 125, 127–128, 132, 134, 190; see also al-Idrīsī; Palermo Sijilmassa 171 al-Sind 4, 24, 126, 178 Skelton, R.A. 30 Solinus, Julius, Polyhistor 15, 18 Spain 52, 65, 95–98, 110–112, 127–129, 130, 135, 162, 182–183 Sri Lanka (Sarandīb, Taprobana) 21, 82, 126 Stephanus Arlandi 97 Stephen of Antioch 53 Strabo, Geography 43

235

Index Sudan 24, 125 al-Ṣūfī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Kitāb ṣuwar al-kawākib al-thābita 37, 94–96, 103–112, 189 Ṣūfī Latinus 96, 103, 104, 107, 109–112, 189 Suhrāb 47n27 Syene (Aswān) 43 Syria 11, 126, 134 Szymanowski, Karol, Król Roger 113n1 Thābit ibn Qurra 76, 85, 93 Thule 26, 43, 88 Tigris river 12, 64, 65, 68 Tixier du Mesnil, Emmanuelle 130 Toledo 91, 125, 128, 129, 135 “Tours Pentateuch” 182–183; fig. 6.6 Tractatus de sphaera solida 97–98 translation Arabic to Castilian 96–97, 111 Arabic to Hebrew 97, 111–112 Arabic to Latin 28–29, 37, 40, 52, 61–62, 63–73, 95–97, 153, 154, 158, 168, 189–190, 194–195 French to Catalan 169 Greek to Arabic 74–90, 92–93, 94 Greek to Latin 19, 34, 62, 92, 95, 145, 193 Greek to Syriac 75, 76, 77–79 Hebrew to Latin 52, 97 Latin to Arabic 21–23, 191–192 Latin to Catalan 168 travel 6, 118, 120, 123–124, 170, 185; see also Hayton of Corycos; Ibn Baṭṭūṭa; Polo, Marco Tripoli 118, 125, 130, 131

Tunis 118, 125 Turks 26, 118, 123, 126, 154; see also Cumans; Kimaks al-ʿUdhrī 123 al-ʿUmarī, Ibn Faḍlallāh 174 Venice 137, 148, 151, 153, 154 Vesconte, Pietro 19, 137–159, 190 Viladestes, Mecia de (Samuel Corcos)  166–167, 172–173, 181n72 Virgil, Georgics 41 von Mžik, Hans 79–81, 85 Walcher of Malvern 52 wāqwāq 26–28, 126; fig. 0.13 ways and realms tradition (al-masālik waal-mamālik) 11, 12, 14, 46, 124, 195; see also Ibn Ḥawqal; Ibn Khurradādhbih; al-Iṣṭakhrī; al-Muqaddasī Wieber, Reinhard 81–82 William I, King of Sicily 117, 136 William of Conches 53 William of Rubruck 149 al-Yaʿqūbī 74, 123 Yāqūt 85 Yemen 15, 26, 64, 126 pseudo-Zachariah, Chronicle 77 Zanj 24, 126, 153 zodiac 45–46, 50, 168 zonal theory 41, 44, 49, 52, 53, 58, 59, 63, 148, 189 al-Zuhrī 176