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Islamic Maps
Spanning the Islamic world, from ninth-century Baghdad to nineteenth-century Iran, this book tells the story of Islamic cartography and the key Muslim map-makers who shaped the art over the centuries. Muslim geographers like al-Khwārazmī and al-Idrīsī developed distinctive styles, often based on geometrical patterns and calligraphy, and their maps covered all the known world, from the sources of the Nile to the European lands of the north and the Wall of Gog and Magog in the east. These map-makers combined novel cartographical techniques with art, science, and geographical knowledge to produce maps that could be both aesthetically stunning and mathematically sophisticated.
Islamic Maps examines Islamic visual interpretations of the world in their historical context through the map-makers themselves. What was the purpose of their maps, what choices did they make, and what arguments about the world were they trying to convey? Lavishly illustrated with stunning manuscripts, beautiful instruments, and Qibla charts, this book shows how maps constructed by Muslim map-makers capture the many dimensions of Islamic civilization across the centuries.
Islamic Maps examines Islamic visual interpretations of the world in their historical context through the map-makers themselves. What was the purpose of their maps, what choices did they make, and what arguments about the world were they trying to convey? Lavishly illustrated with stunning manuscripts, beautiful instruments, and Qibla charts, this book shows how maps constructed by Muslim map-makers capture the many dimensions of Islamic civilization across the centuries.
192 pages, Hardcover
Published December 11, 2019
78 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 8, 2023
10/8/2023
Full review as promised!
Al-Khwarizmi: a 9th century Baghdadi mathematician. Al-Istakhri: an 11th century scholar working for the Abbasid caliph. Al-Idrisi: a courtier of the Norman King Roger of 12TH century Sicily. Piri Reis: a 16th century Ottoman pirate. Muhammad Muqim Yazi: a 17th century court astronomer of the Safavid Shah. This is the story of mapmaking in Islamic history, told through the eyes of the mapmakers themselves.
This is absolutely gorgeous, filled with dozens of photos of old Muslim-made maps and astrolabes. I was expecting this book to just have a bunch of beautiful photos with brief explanations, but it actually makes several valuable historiographical interventions.
While Western/modern critics might blame the maps’ inaccuracies on ignorance or exaggeration, Rapoport is contextualizes the maps to highlight their mapmakers’ intentions. In many cases, he argues that the mapmakers weren’t aiming for geographical accuracy, but rather to make them accessible to their intended audiences. Sometimes they were designed with incorrect detail of the landmarks because the mapmaker was more interested in the sea, as they were made for sailors or skippers. Other times they distorted distances so that average readers can get a general understanding of cities’ relativities between each other. Many times maps were symbols of power—like the Safavid astrolabes, which were not for finding the direction of Makkah—which was accurately known for centuries by then—but to display the shah’s knowledge and power. Sometimes world maps were made not to reflect the world of Islam, but to actually create the idea of a united Muslim world.
Rapoport also emphasizes the scholarly links through time and space: how entirely different intellectual traditions influenced each other. From Greek geometry to Baghdadi mapmaking, from early modern Europe to Andalusia, and from medieval Arabs to early modern Ottomans. The book also beautifully traces the trajectories of the maps being copied and recopied, translated and retranslated across the Muslim world—from Arabic to Persian to Ottoman Turkish and more.
Highly recommend it, even if all you’ll do with it is browse the photos!
***
10/6/23
gorgeous book - both the photos and their explanations
full rtc
***
Full review as promised!
Al-Khwarizmi: a 9th century Baghdadi mathematician. Al-Istakhri: an 11th century scholar working for the Abbasid caliph. Al-Idrisi: a courtier of the Norman King Roger of 12TH century Sicily. Piri Reis: a 16th century Ottoman pirate. Muhammad Muqim Yazi: a 17th century court astronomer of the Safavid Shah. This is the story of mapmaking in Islamic history, told through the eyes of the mapmakers themselves.
This is absolutely gorgeous, filled with dozens of photos of old Muslim-made maps and astrolabes. I was expecting this book to just have a bunch of beautiful photos with brief explanations, but it actually makes several valuable historiographical interventions.
While Western/modern critics might blame the maps’ inaccuracies on ignorance or exaggeration, Rapoport is contextualizes the maps to highlight their mapmakers’ intentions. In many cases, he argues that the mapmakers weren’t aiming for geographical accuracy, but rather to make them accessible to their intended audiences. Sometimes they were designed with incorrect detail of the landmarks because the mapmaker was more interested in the sea, as they were made for sailors or skippers. Other times they distorted distances so that average readers can get a general understanding of cities’ relativities between each other. Many times maps were symbols of power—like the Safavid astrolabes, which were not for finding the direction of Makkah—which was accurately known for centuries by then—but to display the shah’s knowledge and power. Sometimes world maps were made not to reflect the world of Islam, but to actually create the idea of a united Muslim world.
Rapoport also emphasizes the scholarly links through time and space: how entirely different intellectual traditions influenced each other. From Greek geometry to Baghdadi mapmaking, from early modern Europe to Andalusia, and from medieval Arabs to early modern Ottomans. The book also beautifully traces the trajectories of the maps being copied and recopied, translated and retranslated across the Muslim world—from Arabic to Persian to Ottoman Turkish and more.
Highly recommend it, even if all you’ll do with it is browse the photos!
***
10/6/23
gorgeous book - both the photos and their explanations
full rtc
***
September 10, 2023
Excellent!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews