The Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes: rectangular world map (fols. 23b-24a) and circular world map (fols. 27b-28a), Bodleian MS. Arab. c. 90
كتاب غرائب الفنون وملح العيون
Anonymous Egyptian compiler
How we know
compilation Assembled from earlier sources. The author did not observe it directly.
compilation of Ptolemaic and Balkhi-school material by an Egyptian (Fatimid) author c.1020-1050; the northern peoples appear as inherited book knowledge, not observation
Research notes
- Erroneously attributed in older catalogues to Abd al-Ghani al-Arabani (d.1450); the Bodleian dates the copy 1190-1210 and the work 1020-1050 (Savage-Smith and Rapoport 2013). Only 8 of 426 annotations on this map touch the northern peoples, so the steppe is thin here.
- Annotation readings retrieved: Bilad al-Turk al-qaribah [= Ghuzziyah], Balad al-Sin, Nahr al-Sin. Circular world map on fols. 27b-28a (canvas 53) not sampled.
Why it matters
The only Islamic rectangular world map with a scale bar, pre-Idrisi (c.1020-50); its annotated labels include the Land of the Ghuzz Turks north-east of Khurasan and China, giving an eleventh-century Egyptian view of the Turkic north; annotations make label checking easy.
Places named
Whole inhabited world; northern rim: Land of the Ghuzz Turks, China, River of China; Mediterranean and Indian Ocean in detail
Who copied whom
No copying traced for this map yet. See the family trees.
Keep exploring
The maps drawn just before and just after this one.
