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" Mapping Mediterranean Geographies: Geographic and Cartographic Encounters between the Islamic World and Europe, c. 1100-1600 "
Jeremy Francis Ledger
Hughes, Diane Owen
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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804423
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| Doc. No
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TL49254
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| Call number
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1876895741; 10391861
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| Main Entry
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Kim, Juri
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| Title & Author
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Mapping Mediterranean Geographies: Geographic and Cartographic Encounters between the Islamic World and Europe, c. 1100-1600\ Jeremy Francis LedgerHughes, Diane Owen
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| College
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University of Michigan
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| Date
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2016
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| field of study
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History
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2016
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| Page No
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402
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| Note
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Committee members: Bonner, Michael David; Fancy, Hussein Anwar; Hughes, Diane Owen; Mallette, Karla; Savage-Smith, Emilie
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| Note
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Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-369-59070-8
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| Abstract
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This dissertation is a study of the cultural encounter between Muslim and Christian inhabitants of the Mediterranean basin between the twelfth and sixteenth century. It approaches this subject from the vantage point of the circulation, transmission, and reception of geographical knowledge between Muslim and Christian geographical writers and cartographers who inhabited the shores of the central and western Mediterranean during a period of considerable political and religious change and hostility. At a basic level, it demonstrates the possibility of the transmission of knowledge in a world fragmented by violence and religious divisions. But it also argues that geographical writers and cartographers did not innocently receive and use this geographical knowledge. Rather they incorporated it piecemeal and adapted it, modified it, and even distorted it to fit their own preexisting conceptions of the world. The cross-cultural transfers of geographical knowledge examined in this study did not transform the mentalities and worldviews of recipients though they nevertheless modified them in important ways. The study is organized chronologically around four case studies, each an example of the transfer and reception of geographical knowledge across linguistic, religious, and political divisions. It begins in twelfth-century Sicily where the Muslim polymath al-Sharif al-Idrisi produced a geography on behalf of the Christian king Roger II in which he blended information from his own Arabic sources with new knowledge he had learned in Sicily. It then moves to the Maghrib and examines the way in which an anonymous Muslim cartographer took up a form of mapping that had developed in Europe and inscribed it with a view that betrayed his Islamic faith. Next it shifts to fifteenth-century Iberia where it explores a Castilian translation of the twelfth-century Arabic geography of al-Zuhri. Finally, it focuses on sixteenth-century Ifriqiya where ‘Ali al-Sharafi took up a European form of charting and modified it to present an Islamic sacred geography. These examples demonstrate that the analysis and assessment of the transfer and reception of geographical knowledge across cultures is a valuable technique for the study of mentalities and the milieus within which the recipients of knowledge lived.
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| Subject
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Middle Eastern history
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| Descriptor
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Social sciences;Cartography;Europe;Exchange;Geographical knowledge;Geography;History;Mediterranean;Muslim;North Africa;Portolan
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| Added Entry
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Hughes, Diane Owen
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HistoryUniversity of Michigan
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