Who was the first to draw a map of the world? How did Muhammad Al-Idrisi draw the world map?
Drawing a map of the world was a dream that haunted many scholars, but the first to draw this map was the Islamic historian, known as the father of geography, Sharif Al-Idrisi. It was a graph that showed an imaginary layout of the surface. of the Earth or part of it, and showed the relative size of several sites and their locations and is used in it. Some graphic scales. Al-Idrisi drew an inverted map from south to north, top to bottom, which are the directions known as the Earth suspended in space. Additionally, the Arabs knew that the Earth was spherical in shape, according to Al-Idrisi's drawing based on this.
Who is Al-Idrisi?
His name is Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Muhammad bin Abdullah bin Idris Al-Hassani Al-Idrisi. He was born in the city of Ceuta in northern Morocco. Al-Idrisi studied philosophy, medicine, botany and astronomy. He was also a traveler and visited many countries, such as Asia Minor, Anatolia, then France, Spain and North Africa. Africa at the beginning of his life was between travel and the search for knowledge, notably in the center of knowledge of the time, Islamic Córdoba. Muslim travelers, particularly Moroccans, the most famous of whom were the Moroccans Ibn Battuta and Al-Idrisi, played an important role in the development of geography.
The history of drawing the first world map:
The map was made at the request of the Norman king of Sicily, Roger II, in 1138, when he summoned Al-Idrisi to his court in Palermo, where he was then commissioned to create a map of the world with rules specified by the king . such as the definition of regions and a detailed explanation of them based on cultures, climates, races, seas, paths, distances and many other characteristics. Each region was not chosen arbitrarily by Al-Idrisi. Rather, it was chosen because of its interest, studies and books on seas, gulfs, countries and regions. He also studied the novels and books of the most famous travelers, including Muslims and others.
Cartography was linked to the emergence of man and was drawn from the earliest times in the form of drawings on the rocks of certain regions and maps of various civilizations such as Babylon, Greece and Middle Ages Europe. However, they were unrealistic, either for specific regions or misleading or even mixed with false beliefs and imaginary things, like monster maps, huge sea serpents, ghouls and dragons, and these were narrative methods among travelers, which led to the spread of false, superstitious and vulgar beliefs. , and most of them were medieval Europeans, contrary to the descriptions of Muslim travelers. Their religion was very realistic, to the point of being accurate. They also lied to most of the false stories.
Al-Idrisi adopted Ptolemy's method and his studies of the positions of the stars, which he called easy tables, which are the closest thing Muslim travelers use to determining their paths. He also used his own travel experiences and the writings of Muslim travelers. such as Abu Nasr Saeed Al-Juhani, Qasim Muhammad Abdullah bin Khadhabah and Ahmed bin Yaqoub to describe the regions... Until these descriptions were not enough for either Al-Idrisi or the king, when Al-Idrisi used his resources to produce the most accurate map of the time, which included the seven climatic zones and their nations, as well as details of each region, including rivers and estuaries, inhabited and uninhabited areas, coastlines, beaches and...Seas, internal roads and external transport routes, specifying distances between countries in miles, as well as possible anchorages
The map includes ethnic, social and cultural information, economic resources, physical characteristics and a number of specific information according to each region. The map editor, Peter Whitfield, admitted that Al-Idrisi's maps were superior to contemporary European maps, particularly the most reliable at the time, the Rogeriana maps.
After the admiration and satisfaction of the king and all those who asked him, Al-Idrisi wrote a descriptive book for his map, The Book of Pleasant Journeys to Distant Lands, also called the Book of Roger.
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