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In the latter 7th century, adherents of the new religion of Islam surged northward out of Arabia taking over lands in which Jews, Byzantine Christians and Persian Zoroastrians had been established for centuries. There, carefully preserved in the monasteries and libraries, they discovered the Greek classics which included great works of geography such as Ptolemy's Almagest and Geography, along with the geographical wisdom of the Chinese and the great accomplishments of the Roman Empire. The Arabs, who spoke only Arabic, employed Christians and Jews to translate these and many other manuscripts into Arabic. The primary geographical scholarship of this era occurred in Persia, today’s Iran, in the great learning center the House of Wisdom at Baghdad. Early caliphs did not follow orthodoxy and so they encouraged scholarship.[39] Though under their rule the native non-Arabs were often discriminated against as mawali or dhimmi,[40] nevertheless most of the geographers who arose from this period of history were Syrian (Byzantine) or Persian, i.e. of either Zoroastrian or Christian background. Persians who wrote on geography or created maps during the Middle Ages, included: Jābir ibn Hayyān (Geber or Jabir) (721– c. 815) Wrote extensively on many subjects, expanded on the wisdom of the Greek classics and engaged in experimentation in natural science. It is unclear whether he was Persian or Syrian.[41] Al-Khwārizmī (780–850) wrote The Image of the Earth (Kitab surat al-ard), in which he used the Geography (Ptolemy) of Ptolemy but improved upon his values for the Mediterranean Sea, Asia, and Africa. Ibn Khurdadhbih (820–912) authored a book of administrative geography Book of the Routes and Provinces (Kitab al-masalik wa’l-mamalik), which is the earliest surviving Arabic work of its kind. He made the first quadratic scheme map of four sectors. Sohrab or Sorkhab[42] (died 930) wrote Marvels of the Seven Climes to the End of Habitation describing and illustrating a rectangular grid of latitude and longitude to produce a world map.[43][44] Al-Balkhi (850–934) founded the "Balkhī school" of terrestrial mapping in Baghdad. Al-Istakhri (died 957) compiled the Book of the Routes of States, (Kitab Masalik al-Mamalik) from personal observations and literary sources Al-Biruni (973–1052) described polar equi-azimuthal equidistant projection of the celestial sphere. Abu Nasr Mansur (960–1036) known for his work with the spherical sine law. Wrote Book of Azimuths which is no longer extant. Avicenna (980–1037) wrote on earth sciences in his Book of Healing. Ibn al-Faqih (10th century) wrote Concise Book of Lands (Mukhtasar Kitab al-Buldan). Ibn Rustah (10th century) wrote a geographical compendium known as Book of Precious Records. Further details about some of these are given below: In the early 10th century, Abū Zayd al-Balkhī, a Persian originally from Balkh, founded the "Balkhī school" of terrestrial mapping in Baghdad. The geographers of this school also wrote extensively of the peoples, products, and customs of areas in the Muslim world, with little interest in the non-Muslim realms.[45] Suhrāb, a late 10th-century Persian geographer, accompanied a book of geographical coordinates with instructions for making a rectangular world map, with equirectangular projection or cylindrical equidistant projection.[45] In the early 11th century, Avicenna hypothesized on the geological causes of mountains in The Book of Healing (1027). In mathematical geography, Persian Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, around 1025, was the first to describe a polar equi-azimuthal equidistant projection of the celestial sphere.[46] He was also regarded as the most skilled when it came to mapping cities and measuring the distances between them, which he did for many cities in the Middle East and western Indian subcontinent. He combined astronomical readings and mathematical equations to record degrees of latitude and longitude and to measure the heights of mountains and depths of valleys, recorded in The Chronology of the Ancient Nations. He discussed human geography and the planetary habitability of the Earth, suggesting that roughly a quarter of the Earth's surface is habitable by humans. He solved a complex geodesic equation in order to accurately compute the Earth's circumference.[47] His estimate of 6,339.9 km for the Earth radius was only 16.8 km less than the modern value of 6,356.7 km. By the early 12th century the Normans had overthrown the Arabs in Sicily. Palermo had become a crossroads for travelers and traders from many nations and the Norman King Roger II, having great interest in geography, commissioned the creation of a book and map that would compile all this wealth of geographical information. Researchers were sent out and the collection of data took 15 years.[48] Al-Idrisi, one of few Arabs who had ever been to France and England as well as Spain, Central Asia and Constantinople, was employed to create the book from this mass of data. Utilizing the information inherited from the classical geographers, he created one of the most accurate maps of the world to date, the Tabula Rogeriana (1154). The map, written in Arabic, shows the Eurasian continent in its entirety and the northern part of Africa. An adherent of environmental determinism was the medieval Afro-Arab writer al-Jahiz (776–869), who explained how the environment can determine the physical characteristics of the inhabitants of a certain community. He used his early theory of evolution to explain the origins of different human skin colors, particularly black skin, which he believed to be the result of the environment. He cited a stony region of black basalt in the northern Najd as evidence for his theory.[49] |
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