Al-Idrīsī

Al-Idrīsī (byname of Abū ‘abd Allāh Muhammad Ibn Muhammad Ibn ‘abd Allāh Ibn Idrīs Al-hammūdī Al-hasanī Al-idrīsī) is the most famous medieval Arab geographer in the West. A pharmacologist and geographer, he is famous for compiling Kitāb Rujār, or Al-Kitāb ar-Rujārī (‘The Book of Roger’). This great geographic work began with the production of a large silver planisphere (on which was depicted a map of the world) commissioned by Roger II, the king of Sicily, who then asked al-Idrīsī to produce an accompanying text. This led to the compilation of Kitāb nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq (‘The Pleasure Excursion of One Who Is Eager to Traverse the Regions of the World’), more commonly named after the king who commissioned it. The book described everything that couldn’t be represented on the map: the natural environment, distances, crops, businesses, dwellings, and buildings.

Although there’s ample information about the circumstances surrounding the compilation of Kitāb, few facts are known about al-Idrīsī's life, work, and name. Only his nisbas[1] provide reliable sources of information about his personality, family background, and life.

Al-Idrīsī was a member of the Prophet’s family, as he was a descendant of Abū Ṭālib, Muhammad's uncle, and ‘Alawī, a descendant of ‘Alī, and Hasanī, a descendant of Hasan, which is mentioned three times in his nisbas. He came from a family that traced its descent to Idrīsī [2] (the origin of his name Idrīsī), and was a member of the Ḥammūdid dynasty, an offshoot of the Idrīsids of Morocco.

He was born in Sabtah (now Ceuta, a Spanish exclave in Morocco) in around 1100, which was part of the Almoravid Empire. He seems to have had a good knowledge of Spain, and he is known to have studied in Córdoba, which was the intellectual centre of the Islamic West.

Al-Idrīsī’s compilation of Kitāb and his previous botanical works show that he had a good knowledge of medical matters; he had extensive knowledge of plants, poisons, and the specific pharmacological and aphrodisiacal properties of various powders. He had some knowledge of Latin, spoke Greek, and seems to have travelled widely in the Mediterranean. The lack of reliable sources does, however, mean that there is little certainty about this great traveller’s destinations and the places in which he stayed. 

According to the introduction in Kitāb, al-Idrīsī arrived in Sicily in 1139—it took him fifteen years to collect his information before writing and compiling the famous work.

Al-Idrīsī therefore began to compile Kitāb on the orders of the king in 1154, one-and-a-half months before Roger’s death. The work was completed during the reign of William I, probably in around 1157, after which there’s no further trace of al-Idrīsī. He is thought to have died in 1165.

Al-Idrīsī is first and foremost the heir to a long tradition of Arab geographers, and is the perfect example of a writer and scholar who maintained Arab culture and traditions in Norman Sicily. And Roger II is the perfect example of a learned king, who was a patron of the arts and sciences. He was pragmatic in governing his territory and sought to assert Palermo’s cultural and scientific influence, and raise the status of Sicily.   

The learned Muslim’s work is a good example of Arab geographical traditions, in which a territory is studied both geographically and technically and culturally and politically.

In his prologue, al-Idrīsī refers directly to twelve Arab books; the text includes quotations from the works of Ptolemy (second century AD), which were lost to Western Europe but survived in the Muslim world thanks to a translation in Arabic by various writers: Ibn Khordadbeh (Baghdad, ninth century), Jayhānī (‘The Book of Routes and Countries’, tenth century), Qudāma (tenth century), Hasan Ibn al-Mundar (Spain, circa 950), Mas’udī (‘The Book of Wonders’, tenth century), and Ibn Hawqal.

The destiny of al-Idrīsī—a learned Muslim who entered the service of a Christian king—attests to the ferment of ideas, the intellectual effervescence, and the cultural porosity that existed in the complex world of the Mediterranean in the twelfth century, at the juncture when relations between Western Christians, Eastern Christians, and Muslims were changing.

The scholarly emulation, the diffusion of knowledge, and the clash of ideas and doctrines meant that regions like Sicily and Andalusia became places of cultural convergence—centres for the creation and establishment of political and cultural reconciliation.

[2] Founder of the Idrīsid kingdom in the Maghrib.