November 06, 2017 <Back to Index>
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Abu Abd Allah Muhammad al-Idrisi al-Qurtubi al-Hasani al-Sabti or simply Al Idrisi (Arabic: أبو عبد الله محمد الإدريسي القرطبي الحسني السبتي; Latin: Dreses) (1099 – 1165 or 1166) was a Muslim geographer, cartographer, Egyptologist and traveler who lived in Sicily, at the court of King Roger II. Muhammed al-Idrisi was born in Ceuta then belonging to the Almoravid Empire and died in Sicily. Al Idrisi was a descendent of the Idrisids, who in turn were descendants of Hasan bin Ali, the son of Ali and the grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Al-Idrisi traced his descent through long line of Princes, Caliphs and Sufi leaders, to The Prophet Muhammad. His immediate forebears, the Hammudids (1016 – 1058), were an offshoot of the Idrisids (789 - 985). Al-Idrisi's was born in Ceuta, where his great - grandfather had fled after the fall of Málaga in Al-Andalus (1057). He spent much of his early life traveling through North Africa and Spain and seems to have acquired a detail information on both regions. He visited Anatolia when he was barely 16. He is known to have studied in Córdoba, and later taught in Constantine, Algeria. Apparently his travels took him to many parts of Europe including Portugal, the Pyrenees, the French Atlantic coast, Hungary and Jórvík, also known as York, in England. Born and raised in Ceuta, at an early age al-Idrisi traveled to Islamic Spain, Portugal, France and England, and visited Anatolia when he was barely 16. Because of conflict and instability in Andalusia, al-Idrisi joined contemporaries such as Abu al-Salt in Sicily, where the Normans had overthrown Arabs formerly loyal to the Fatimids. According to Ibn Jubayr: "the Normans tolerated and patronized a few Arab families in exchange for knowledge" Al-Idrisi incorporated the knowledge of Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Far East gathered by Islamic merchants and explorers and recorded on Islamic maps, with the information brought by the Normans voyagers to create the most accurate map of the world in pre - modern times, which served as a concrete illustration of his Kitab nuzhat al-mushtaq, (Latin: Opus Geographicum), which may be translated A Diversion for the Man Longing to Travel to Far - Off Places. The Tabula Rogeriana was drawn by Al-Idrisi in 1154 for the Norman King Roger II of Sicily, after a stay of eighteen years at his court, where he worked on the commentaries and illustrations of the map. The map, with legends written in Arabic, while showing the Eurasian continent in its entirety, only shows the northern part of the African continent and lacks details of the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia. For Roger, it was inscribed on a massive disc of solid silver, two meters in diameter. On the geographical work of al-Idrisi, S.P. Scott wrote in 1904:
Al-Idrisi inspired Islamic geographers such as Ibn Battuta, Ibn Khaldun and Piri Reis. His map also inspired Christopher Columbus and Vasco Da Gama.
An abridged version of the Arabic text was published in Rome in 1592 with title: De
geographia universali or Kitāb Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī dhikr al-amṣār
wa-al-aqṭār wa-al-buldān wa-al-juzur wa-al-madā’ in wa-al-āfāq which in English would be Recreation of the desirer in the account of cities, regions, countries, islands, towns, and distant lands. This was one of the first Arabic books ever printed. The first translation from the original Arabic was into Latin. The Maronites Gabriel
Sionita and Joannes Hesronita translated an abridged version of the
text which was published in Paris in 1619 with the rather misleading
title of Geographia nubiensis. Not
until the middle of the 19th century was a complete translation of the
Arabic text published. This was a translation into French by Pierre Amédée Jaubert. More
recently sections of the text have been translated for particular
regions. In the 1970s a critical edition of the complete Arabic text was
published. Al-Idrisi's geographical text, Nuzhatul Mushtaq, is often cited by proponents of pre - Columbian Andalusian - Americas contact theories. In this text, al-Idrisi wrote the following on the Atlantic Ocean:
This translation by Professor Muhammad Hamidullah is however questionable, since it reports, after having reached an area of "sticky and stinking waters", the Mugharrarin (also translated as "the adventurers") moved back and first reached an uninhabited island where they found "a huge quantity of sheep the meat of which was bitter and uneatable" and, then, "continued southward" and reached the above reported island where they were soon surrounded by barques and brought to "a village whose inhabitants were often fair - haired with long and flaxen hair and the women of a rare beauty". Among the villagers, one spoke Arabic and asked them where they came from. Then the king of the village ordered them to bring them back to the continent where they were surprised to be welcomed by Berbers. Apart from the marvelous and fanciful reports of this history, the most probable interpretation is that the Mugharrarin reached the Sargasso Sea, a part of the ocean covered by seaweed) which is very close to Bermuda yet one thousand miles away from the American mainland. Then while coming back, they may have landed either on the Azores, or on Madeira or even on the westernmost Canary Island, Hiero (because of the sheep). Last, the story with the inhabited island might have occurred either on Tenerife or on Gran Canaria, where the Mugharrarin presumably met some Guanche tribe.
This would explain why some of them could speak Arabic (some sporadic
contacts had been maintained between the Canary Islands and Morocco) and
why they were quickly deported to Morocco where they were welcomed by
Berbers. Yet, the story reported by Idrisi is an indisputable account of
a certain knowledge of the Atlantic Ocean by the Arabs and by their
Andalusian and Moroccan vassals.
The popular IDRISI GIS system, developed by Clark University, is named after Muhammad al-Idrisi |