Rapoport, Yossef (Author)
Savage-Smith, Emilie (Author)
About a millennium ago, in Cairo, an unknown author completed a large and richly illustrated book. In the course of thirty-five chapters, this book guided the reader on a journey from the outermost cosmos and planets to Earth and its lands, islands, features, and inhabitants. This treatise, known as The Book of Curiosities, was unknown to modern scholars until a remarkable manuscript copy surfaced in 2000.Lost Maps of the Caliphs provides the first general overview of The Book of Curiosities and the unique insight it offers into medieval Islamic thought. Opening with an account of the remarkable discovery of the manuscript and its purchase by the Bodleian Library, the authors use The Book of Curiosities to re-evaluate the development of astrology, geography, and cartography in the first four centuries of Islam. Their account assesses the transmission of Late Antique geography to the Islamic world, unearths the logic behind abstract maritime diagrams, and considers the palaces and walls that dominate medieval Islamic plans of towns and ports. Early astronomical maps and drawings demonstrate the medieval understanding of the structure of the cosmos and illustrate the pervasive assumption that almost any visible celestial event had an effect upon life on Earth. Lost Maps of the Caliphs also reconsiders the history of global communication networks at the turn of the previous millennium. It shows the Fatimid Empire, and its capital Cairo, as a global maritime power, with tentacles spanning from the eastern Mediterranean to the Indus Valley and the East African coast. As Lost Maps of the Caliphs makes clear, not only is The Book of Curiosities one of the greatest achievements of medieval mapmaking, it is also a remarkable contribution to the story of Islamic civilization that opens an unexpected window to the medieval Islamic view of the world.
...MoreReview Zayde Antrim (2019) Review of "Lost Maps of the Caliphs: Drawing the World in Eleventh-Century Cairo". Imago Mundi: A Review of Early Cartography (pp. 208-209).
Article
Patrick Gautier Dalché;
(2021)
Les cartes des manuscrits de Salluste
(/isis/citation/CBB443557295/)
Book
Pérez, Sandra Sáenz-López;
Krakenberger, Peter;
Coldham, Gerry;
(2014)
Los mapas de los beatos: La revelación del mundo en la Edad Media
(/isis/citation/CBB001551630/)
Article
Galichian, Rouben;
(2008)
A Medieval Armenian T-O Map
(/isis/citation/CBB000931590/)
Article
Duzer, Chet Van;
(2013)
Benedetto Cotrugli's Lost Mappamundi Found---Three Times
(/isis/citation/CBB001251929/)
Article
Michael Rathmann;
(2012)
Neue Perspektiven zur Tabula Peutingeriana
(/isis/citation/CBB408076319/)
Book
Bazzaz, Sahar;
Batsaki, Yota;
Angelov, Dimiter;
(2013)
Imperial Geographies in Byzantine and Ottoman Space
(/isis/citation/CBB001253041/)
Book
Alfred Hiatt;
(2021)
Cartography between Christian Europe and the Arabic-Islamic World, 1100-1500: Divergent Traditions
(/isis/citation/CBB173778499/)
Article
Sezgin, Fuat;
(2001)
Al-Uṣūl al-`arabīya li-l-ḥarāiṭ al-ūrubbīya bain al-qarn aṯ-ṯāliṯ `ašar wa-ṯ-ṯāmin `ašar li-l-mīlād
(/isis/citation/CBB000471437/)
Chapter
Emilie Savage-Smith;
(2014)
Cartography
(/isis/citation/CBB538584160/)
Book
Karen C Pinto;
(2016)
Medieval Islamic Maps
(/isis/citation/CBB642336403/)
Article
Yu Hoki;
(2022)
Synchronic and Diachronic Factors Influencing Medieval Arabic Medical Practice: A Study of Ophthalmological Fragments Found in the Cairo Genizah
(/isis/citation/CBB742613110/)
Book
Beata Medyńska-Gulij;
Tadeusz J. Żuchowski;
(2018)
European Topography in Eighteenth-century Manuscript Maps
(/isis/citation/CBB435731150/)
Book
Ralph A. Ruch;
(2015)
Kartographie und Konflikt im Spätmittelalter: Manuskriptkarten aus dem oberrheinischen und schweizerischen Raum
(/isis/citation/CBB556379793/)
Article
(2015)
Ptolemy from Manuscript to Print: New York Public Library's Codex Ebnerianus (MS MA 97)
(/isis/citation/CBB001551609/)
Article
Karen de Groene;
(2015)
Continuïteit of innovatie? Een onbestaand dilemma in het Liber Floridus van Lambertus van Sint-Omaars.
(/isis/citation/CBB670688832/)
Article
Wyder, Samuel;
(2014)
Karte des Bodensees von Hans Conrad Gyger (1633)
(/isis/citation/CBB001421753/)
Article
Gyuri Danku;
(2016)
Is This the Original? A Manuscript Map of the Mexico Valley by Adrián Boot
(/isis/citation/CBB297738892/)
Book
Katrin Marx-Jaskulski;
Annegret Wenz-Haubfleisch;
(2020)
Pragmatische Visualisierung. Herrschaft, Recht und Alltag in Verwaltungskarten [Pragmatic Visualisation: Rule, Law and Everyday Life in Administrative Maps]
(/isis/citation/CBB206816470/)
Book
Pietro Omodeo;
(2021)
Amerigo Vespucci: Il contributo alla scoperta del Nuovo Mondo
(/isis/citation/CBB373655783/)
Chapter
Renda, Günsel;
(2006)
Mapping and Picturing: Maps as Records of History
(/isis/citation/CBB001022415/)
Be the first to comment!