Geography and cartography in medieval Islam

Muslim geography was based on Hellenistic geography and reached its apex with Muhammad al-Idrisi in the 12th century.

After its beginnings in the 8th century based on Hellenistic geography,^[1] Islamic geography was patronized by the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad. Various Islamic scholars contributed to its development, and the most notable include Al-Khwārizmī, Abū Zayd al-Balkhī (founder of the 'Balkhī school') and Abu Rayhan Biruni.

Islamic cartographers inherited Ptolemy's Almagest and Geographia in the 9th century which is said to have stimulated an interest in geography and map-making, however, they made almost no direct use of the latter in map-making.^[2] The way in which earlier knowledge reached Muslim scholars is crucial. For example, since Muslims inherited Greek writings directly without the influence of the Latin west, T-O maps play no role in Islamic cartography though popular in the European counterpart.^[2] Muslim scientists then made many of their own contributions to geography and the earth sciences. In the 11th century, Uyghur scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari was the first to draw an ethnographic map of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia. Later (post-medieval) developments took place under the Ottoman Empire, with notable cartographer Piri Reis.

Gallery 1
See also 2
Notes and references 3
External links 4

Gallery

Al-Masudi's atlas of the world.
Kangnido reflects the geographic knowledge of China during the Mongol Empire when geographical information about Western countries became available via Islamic geographers.^[1]

Notes and references

Notes

Citations

^ Gerald R. Tibbetts, The Beginnings of a Cartographic Tradition, in: John Brian Harley, David Woodward: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, Chicago, 1992, pp. 90–107 (97-100), ISBN 0-226-31635-1
^ ^a ^b Edson & Savage-Smith 2004, pp. 61–63.
^ (Miya 2006; Miya 2007)

Bibliography

Alavi, S. M. Ziauddin (1965), Arab geography in the ninth and tenth centuries, Aligarh: Aligarh University Press
Edson, Evelyn; Savage-Smith, Emilie (2004). Savage-Smith, Emilie, ed. Medieval Views of the Cosmos. Oxford:
King, David A. (1983), "The Astronomy of the Mamluks",
King, David A. (2002), "A Vetustissimus Arabic Text on the Quadrans Vetus", Journal for the History of Astronomy 33: 237–255
King, David A. (December 2003), "14th-Century England or 9th-Century Baghdad? New Insights on the Elusive Astronomical Instrument Called Navicula de Venetiis",
King, David A. (2005), In Synchrony with the Heavens, Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization: Instruments of Mass Calculation,
McGrail, Sean (2004), Boats of the World,
Mott, Lawrence V. (May 1991), , ThesisThe Development of the Rudder, A.D. 100-1337: A Technological Tale, Texas A&M University
Rashed, Roshdi; Morelon, Régis (1996),
Sezgin, Fuat (2000), Geschichte Des Arabischen Schrifttums X–XII: Mathematische Geographie und Kartographie im Islam und ihr Fortleben im Abendland, Historische Darstellung, Teil 1–3 (in German), Frankfurt am Main

External links

"How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs" by De Lacy O'Leary
Islamic Geography in the Middle Ages

Geography and cartography in medieval Islam

Geographers

9th century	Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī Abū Ḥanīfa Dīnawarī Ya'qubi Sulaiman al-Tajir

10th century	Ibn Khordadbeh Ahmad ibn Rustah Ahmad ibn Fadlan Abu Zayd al-Balkhi Abū Muhammad al-Hasan al-Hamdānī Al-Masudi Istakhri Khashkhash Ibn Saeed Ibn Aswad Ibn Hawqal Ibn al-Faqih Al-Muqaddasi Al-Ramhormuzi

11th century	Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī Abu Saʿīd Gardēzī Al-Bakri Mahmud al-Kashgari Domiyat

12th century	Al-Zuhri Muhammad al-Idrisi Abu'l Abbas al-Hijazi

13th century	Ibn Jubayr Saadi Shirazi Yaqut al-Hamawi Ibn Said al-Maghribi Ibn al-Nafis

14th century	Al-Dimashqi Abu'l-Fida Ibn al-Wardi Hamdollah Mostowfi Ibn Battuta

15th century	Ahmad ibn Mājid Zheng He Ma Huan Fei Xin

16th century	Sulaiman Al Mahri Piri Reis Mir Ahmed Nasrallah Thattvi Amīn Rāzī

17th century	Evliya Çelebi

Works

Influences

Geography (Ptolemy)

Categories

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Geography and cartography in medieval Islam