Abu Abdullah al-Idrisi

1099–1165 OR 1166

Geographer

Sources

Mapmaking . Known as one of the greatest medieval geographers, Abu Abdullah al-Idrisi is best known for his Kitab Nuzhat al-Mashtaq fi Ikhtiraq al-Afaq (Amusement for One Who Desires to Travel Around the World, 1154), which includes detailed maps of the Mediterranean region.

Early Life and Career . Born in Ceuta, North Africa, al-Idrisi was educated at Cordoba. He visited Asia Minor when he was only sixteen, and continued his extensive travels around the Mediterranean, observing the flora and fauna of Muslim lands.

Court Geographer . In about 1145 al-Idrisi was invited to work at the court of the Norman king Roger II in Palermo, Sicily, where Roger formed the Academy of Geographers and invited other scholars to help al-Idrisi create the most scientifically accurate map in the world and to gather together all available geographical information. The result was Kitab Nuzhat al-Mashtaqfi Ikhtiraq al-Afaq, also known as Kitab al-Rujari (The Book of Roger), a major contribution to the geographical knowledge of his time. Al-Idrisi also made a celestial sphere on which the constellations were inscribed on a three-hundred-pound silver disk bearing a map of the known world. Shortly after Roger’s death in 1154, his court was attacked by Byzantine invaders, who melted down the silver disk to make weapons. Al-Idrisi escaped with the Arabic version of his Book of Roger, but the Latin version was destroyed and the work was not translated into Latin again until the seventeenth century.

Sources

J.H.Kramers, “Geography and Commerce,” in The Legacy of Islam, edited by Thomas Arnold and Alfred Guillaume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931).

G. Oman, “al-Idrisi,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, CD-ROM version (Leiden: Brill, 1999).