Geography and cartography

Family: Knowledge: science, medicine, astronomy and the rest · 19 entries

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Person

• al-Khwarizmi

  780 CE · 164 AHMuhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, numbered by al-Mas'udi among Islam's astronomers.

• Ibn Khurradadhbih, Ubayd Allah ibn Abd Allah

  820 CE · 205 AHA historian and geographer of encyclopaedic learning, author of al-Masalik wa-l-Mamalik.

• Al-Istakhri, Ibrahim ibn Muhammad

  A Persian geographer and traveller who visited many lands. He met the geographer Ibn Hawqal in Baghdad.

• Al-Biruni, Muhammad ibn Ahmad

  973 CE · 362 AHBorn in Kath, the old city of Khwarazm. One of the leading astronomers, mathematicians, geographers and historians of his age.

• Al-Bakri, Abu Ubayd Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Aziz

  1041 CE · 432 AHAn encyclopaedic scholar of al-Andalus, author of al-Masalik wa-l-Mamalik on geography and history.

• Al-Idrisi, Muhammad ibn Abd Allah

  1100 CE · 493 AHA geographer who wrote Nuzhat al-Mushtaq fi ikhtiraq al-afaq for Roger II, king of Sicily, and completed it in Shawwal 548 AH.

• Yaqut al-Hamawi

  1179 CE · 575 AHA geographer and lexicographer, author of Mu'jam al-Buldan and Mu'jam al-Udaba'. Sold young from Byzantine lands to a Baghdad merchant who freed him; he copied books for hire, traded in them, fled Damascus in 613 when a defence of Ali nearly cost his life, then fled the Tatars at Khwarazm 'like one risen from his grave on Judgement Day', settling outside Aleppo. His books he endowed to the Zaydi mosque at Darb Dinar, Baghdad, delivered to Ibn al-Athir himself; late in life he took the name Ya'qub.

• al-Samhudi

  1440 CE · Safar 844 AHHistorian, mufti and teacher of Medina, resident there from 873 AH; he wrote three histories of the Prophet's city — the large Iqtisaf al-Wafa which burned unfinished in the mosque fire, the middling Wafa al-Wafa, and the brief Khulasat al-Wafa — and himself served in the rebuilding of the Noble Chamber, so his book carries eyewitness knowledge no other historian of the city matched.

• Piri Reis, Ahmad ibn Muhyi al-Din

  A navigation scholar and admiral of the Egyptian and Ottoman fleets, and a pioneer of nautical cartography.

• Jamal Hamdan

  1928 CE · 1347 AHAn Egyptian geographer born in Gharyat Anay, a village in the Qalyubiyya district.

• Ibn al-Wardi

  Draft card for Zayn al-Din Umar ibn al-Muzaffar known as Ibn al-Wardi, the Shafi'i jurist and geographer of Ma'arra author of Kharidat al-Aja'ib, d. 1349; the biographical entry is not yet checked on the page.

Object

• Piri Reis map

  A world map drawn on gazelle skin in 1513 by the Ottoman admiral Piri Reis; the surviving fragment is kept at Topkapı and is the most famous Ottoman map.

Concept

• The seven climates

  Seven climates in each quarter of the earth — settlement reaching 24 degrees beyond the equator, the southern quarter desolate with heat, the rest drowned — and the fourth climate, Iraq, holding the fairest share where the sun's ray falls purest.

• The equator

  The equator is the circle on the earth parallel to the equinoctial circle, dividing the earth into northern and southern halves; it is the first limit of the inhabited quarter, where day and night are always equal.

• The horizon circle

  The horizon circle divides the visible sky from the hidden sky, its pole at the zenith; al-Farghani notes that it bisects only the equinoctial circle among the parallels, and cuts every other parallel unequally.

• The earth's sphericity

  The astronomers' earth in al-Mas'udi's report: a sphere hung at heaven's centre like a yolk in the egg, a point against the sky's circle, drawing heavy bodies as the magnet draws iron, split by the equator — its circumference 9,000 farsakhs at 25 farsakhs the degree, ninety degrees from equator to each pole.

• Measuring the earth

  Estimating the earth's circumference by measuring one degree of a north-south meridian in cubits. al-Farghani gives the degree as 56 2/3 miles, using the mile of 4,000 black cubits, the measurement made in the days of al-Ma'mun with a number of scholars present. That gives a circumference of 20,400 miles and a diameter of about 6,500 miles.

• Joining the Red Sea to the Mediterranean

  The ancient canal-joining dossier: a Roman king's failed cut between Qulzum and the Mediterranean at the Crocodile's Tail bridge, the silted al-Zabr canal that once let boats relay goods between the seas, Harun al-Rashid's two attempts — abandoned when Yahya ibn Khalid warned that Roman squadrons would then land near Jeddah and snatch pilgrims from the Haram — and Umar's veto on Amr ibn al-As for the same reason.

Work

• Nuzhat al-Mushtaq fi ikhtiraq al-afaq

  A twelfth-century geography written by al-Idrisi for Roger II of Sicily. It describes the seven climates, their cities, roads, seas, peoples, crafts and trade, and comes with a world map engraved on a silver disc. The author says he finished it in Shawwal 548 AH.

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