Geography by al-Idrîsî

This work, also entitled Book of Roger from the name of its patron, was written by Idrîsî for King Roger of Sicily (r. 1105-1154). The life of the geographer is ill known but he was a descendent of the Shiite Hammamid dynasty. The Hammamids left Maghreb for al-Andalus upon the disappearance of the Caliphate of Cordoba. But the struggles between the Taifa kingdoms overthrew them and a representative from the Malaga branch left this city for Sicily in the middle of the eleventh century. This was the father of Idrîsî and if we do not know what the destiny of his immediate lineage was to be after the conquest of the island by the Hautevilles, it is certain that Idrîsî spent part of his life on the island and that he was at court in the middle of the twelfth century.

Traditionally, the writing of the Nuzhat is dated at 1154, the probable date of a first version written before the death of Roger II, but H. Bresc has definitively established that certain events reported by the text relate to the year 1157.

The particular position of Idrîsî, Muslim at the service of the Christian king who was a native of northern Europe by ancestry, explains the evolutions that this author made known to Arab-Muslim geographic literature. This literature had been concentrated since the tenth century on the description of the dâr al-islâm (“the Islamic world”). Idrîsî opened it up once more to further horizons, by following the Ptolemaic division of the world into climates[1] or latitudes. He divided each of the seven climates into ten cross-sectional parts[2] and thus split the known world into seventy compartments to which the same interest is devoted in theory, even if the knowledge is not equal for all the regions. Each compartment has its own map.

The importance of this cartography holds to the fact that the text supports a silver planisphere, which today has disappeared and which was created for Roger II based on the geographer’s indications. It was supposed to specify what drawing could not achieve. One of the most innovative aspects of this text is also the nature of the sources used: previous works with authority, autopsies, but also surveys of travellers and merchants passing through the court of Sicily which were in the royal archives.

Each locality has its own “text” which are all relatively homogenous: location, natural resources, facilities (market, baths, etc.), production, and any curiosities that existed, reduced to a minimum. The work lists more than 5000 place names, which is colossal.

However, if Idrîsî is quoted by Arab-Muslim authors, he did not receive all the fame that he deserved until the publication of his text in Rome in 1592, in an abridged version , the “Small  Idrîsî”. It was translated into Latin in 1619 in Paris, under the name of Geographia nubiensis. Ten copies previous to the seventeenth century are known in the world. The copy in the Bnf is the oldest and richest in terms of maps (69)[3]. The representation is quite rough and each section occupies a double page. However, an effort at legends has been made: the seas are blue with white undulating nets; rivers and most of the lakes are green; towns and cities are symbolised by golden rosettes, while mountains are either represented by mounts or chains in various colours. The names of the regions are shown in red and the localities in black. The map reproduced here is from section 2 of climate IV and represents Sicily and the islands which surround it.

[2] The sections are north-south divisions, the first of which is situated at the west and the last at the east of the known world.

[3] Une carte globale et 68 sections. Il manque celle de la section 10 du climat VII et la moitié de celle de la section 9.