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Harmony Masks Conflict: The Mediterranean in the Medieval Islamic Imagination - Karen Pinto
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12th-century Islamic Map of the Mediterranean Belonging to Frederick II
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Leiden Mediterranean Map - Translated
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Leiden Mediterranean Map - Modern Equivalent
12th-century Islamic Map of the Mediterranean Belonging to Frederick II
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12th-century Islamic Map of the Mediterranean Belonging to Frederick II
Click on the the Show Dots button (image below) to find a guided tour through this map by Professor Karen Pinto.
After that, click on the Dot Story entitled "Ten Intriguing Aspects by Karen Pinto."
Academic Image Description:
This medieval Islamic representation of the Mediterranean is classified as a late 12th century work of medieval Sicilian provenance. It is from an Arabic geographical manuscript titled Kitab al-masalik wa-al-mamalik ascribed to Abu ‘Abbas Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Istakhri al-Farisi [sic]. The colophon of the manuscript provides a firm date of Rabi‘ I 589 A.H. (April 1193 C.E.) This manuscript is housed in Leiden at the Bibliotheek der Rijkuniversiteit, Cod. Or. 3101. The map is located on folio 33a.
This map stands out as one of the best examples of a particular iconographic form that emerged as the hallmark of medieval Islamic representations of the Mediterranean. It is a highly stylized geometric form with a bulbous base and a narrow neck that portrays both sides of the Mediterranean as perfect mirror images of each other. In addition, the three large circles in the center, markers for the islands of Cyprus, Crete, and Sicily, capped off by a large triangle adorned with inverted crescents, form a prominent vertical axis in the image. The map-maker is suggesting that these islands are crucial stepping stones of the Mediterranean; conversely s/he may have been trying to use them to indicate a major division between the northern and southern portions of the sea with the islands serving as the ultimate barrier between the Christian and Muslim sides. The strange, triangular, mythical island, which heads up the other known islands, is enigmatically labeled Jabal al-Qilal (Mountain of Qilal). This island appears to act as a cap to the Mediterranean. Its inverted crescent markings give the impression of a formidable barrier beyond which the sailor should not venture. It is tempting to read into this mythical island a muslim symbol for the Pillars of Hercules – the Pillars beyond which it was said only death and danger lay.
The horizontal axis with the large semi-circular gulf containing the islands of Dumyat and Tinnis, on the left-hand side of the image, versus the rectangular inlet of the Bosphorus, on the opposite side, unbalances the symmetry of the image. It is as if the cartographer is deliberately disrupting the rigid central vertical axis of the image to suggest contrarily that the northern and southern flanks of the Mediterranean are in fact not perfect mirror images of each other. This opens up the reading of the map to suggest that differences unbalance the image or that the differences actually provide an alternate point of connectivity across the Mediterranean. The interpretation of the latter is dependent upon the interpretation of the central vertical axis. If the central vertical axis serves to provide a unifying seam across the sea then the horizontal axis serves to disrupt it. If, on the other hand, the central vertical axis is meant to be read as a rigid boundary dividing the sea into two equal halves then the horizontal axis could be read as either an unbalancing of the sea to the Muslim side or as a node of communication between the primary Muslim and Christian powers of the region: Byzantium and Egypt.
The gaze of the cartographer/viewer moves along the central vertical island-axis: from the heart of the Islamic world in the East at the base of the map, looking out towards the West, to the top of the map and the mouth of the Mediterranean, which opens out into the Encircling Ocean.
12th-century Islamic Map of the Mediterranean Belonging to Frederick II
Click on the the Show Dots button (image below) to find a guided tour through this map by Professor Karen Pinto.
After that, click on the Dot Story entitled "Ten Intriguing Aspects by Karen Pinto."
Academic Image Description:
This medieval Islamic representation of the Mediterranean is classified as a late 12th century work of medieval Sicilian provenance. It is from an Arabic geographical manuscript titled Kitab al-masalik wa-al-mamalik ascribed to Abu ‘Abbas Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Istakhri al-Farisi [sic]. The colophon of the manuscript provides a firm date of Rabi‘ I 589 A.H. (April 1193 C.E.) This manuscript is housed in Leiden at the Bibliotheek der Rijkuniversiteit, Cod. Or. 3101. The map is located on folio 33a.
This map stands out as one of the best examples of a particular iconographic form that emerged as the hallmark of medieval Islamic representations of the Mediterranean. It is a highly stylized geometric form with a bulbous base and a narrow neck that portrays both sides of the Mediterranean as perfect mirror images of each other. In addition, the three large circles in the center, markers for the islands of Cyprus, Crete, and Sicily, capped off by a large triangle adorned with inverted crescents, form a prominent vertical axis in the image. The map-maker is suggesting that these islands are crucial stepping stones of the Mediterranean; conversely s/he may have been trying to use them to indicate a major division between the northern and southern portions of the sea with the islands serving as the ultimate barrier between the Christian and Muslim sides. The strange, triangular, mythical island, which heads up the other known islands, is enigmatically labeled Jabal al-Qilal (Mountain of Qilal). This island appears to act as a cap to the Mediterranean. Its inverted crescent markings give the impression of a formidable barrier beyond which the sailor should not venture. It is tempting to read into this mythical island a muslim symbol for the Pillars of Hercules – the Pillars beyond which it was said only death and danger lay.
The horizontal axis with the large semi-circular gulf containing the islands of Dumyat and Tinnis, on the left-hand side of the image, versus the rectangular inlet of the Bosphorus, on the opposite side, unbalances the symmetry of the image. It is as if the cartographer is deliberately disrupting the rigid central vertical axis of the image to suggest contrarily that the northern and southern flanks of the Mediterranean are in fact not perfect mirror images of each other. This opens up the reading of the map to suggest that differences unbalance the image or that the differences actually provide an alternate point of connectivity across the Mediterranean. The interpretation of the latter is dependent upon the interpretation of the central vertical axis. If the central vertical axis serves to provide a unifying seam across the sea then the horizontal axis serves to disrupt it. If, on the other hand, the central vertical axis is meant to be read as a rigid boundary dividing the sea into two equal halves then the horizontal axis could be read as either an unbalancing of the sea to the Muslim side or as a node of communication between the primary Muslim and Christian powers of the region: Byzantium and Egypt.
The gaze of the cartographer/viewer moves along the central vertical island-axis: from the heart of the Islamic world in the East at the base of the map, looking out towards the West, to the top of the map and the mouth of the Mediterranean, which opens out into the Encircling Ocean.
Professor Karen Pinto has spent three decades at the forefront of the study of Islamic cartographic history. Her first book, Medieval Islamic Maps: An Exploration, came out in 2016, and she is currently working on a second, focusing on Islamic maps of the Mediterranean. Today, she is an Associate Scholar in the Religious Studies Department at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Ṣūrat Baḥr al-Rūm صورة بحر الروم , which translates to the “Image of the Sea of the Romans” (i.e. the Byzantines) comes from a twelfth-century Norman-Sicilian copy of the Book of Routes and Realms, attributed to the early tenth-century geographer al-Iṣṭakhrī.
I abbreviate this type of book to KMMS based on its Arabic title: Kitāb al-masālik wa-al-mamālik. It represents a snapshot back in time to the caliphal age of the eighth-through-tenth centuries.
This map is special. It comes from the earliest extant KMMS manuscript housed at one of the best and most generous medieval manuscript libraries in the world. In addition, unusual colophonic reader signatures and a trademark Siculo-Norman ‘alāma (or formal signature) suggest this copy was owned by a young Frederick II before he became the famous conquering Holy Roman emperor.
Image details: Gouache and ink on paper. 34 × 26 cm. Courtesy: Leiden University Libraries. Cod. Or. 3101, fol. 33.
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Andrew Gu
(@amg11)
Aug 05 2024
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Out of a bed of grey, blue, and white encased on three sides by aged cream colored paper from the 12th century, the most popular medieval Islamic form of the Mediterranean emerges. Painted with ornamental wave-like designs, the form of the sea is depicted schematically in an unusual bulbous shape that is round and wide along its eastern Levantine edge tapering off into a narrow neck of water that runs past North Africa and Spain into the Atlantic.
Pictured: A modern satellite map of the Mediterranean with the locations from this map. To explore this more closely, check out the other images in this exhibit.
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Andrew Gu
(@amg11)
Aug 05 2024
0.66
0.69
What takes us aback about this Islamicate image of the Mediterranean is its emphasis on smooth geometric spaces. Mimesis in the KMMS atlas series exists only in geometric contours.
Especially striking is the fact that both sides of the Mediterranean are mirror images of each other.
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Andrew Gu
(@amg11)
Aug 05 2024
0.83
0.51
Because of the history of tension between the Christian and Muslim flanks of the Mediterranean, this geometric harmony comes as a surprise.
Does this mirror-image portrayal assert an idyllic message of unity? Or does it depict a Muslim Mare Nostrum in deliberate contradistinction to the sea of the Romans?
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Karen Pinto
(@mapsgal)
Aug 07 2024
0.24
0.51
Or, does this form come from ignorance? Were the Muslim cartographers simply reflecting their knowledge of the undulating North African coast onto the other side of the sea?
That's unlikely. Muslim geographical accounts that accompany the manuscripts that contain these maps indicate that Muslim sailors understood the physical shape of the sea.
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Andrew Gu
(@amg11)
Aug 05 2024
0.54
0.24
Should we read this form as a vase, a fish, an inverted church, a key-hole, a fountain, a belly, a uterus, or simply as a bottle?
One possibility is to read this unusual form of the Mediterranean as a representation of the na’l, or sandal print motif of the Prophet Muhammad, shown below.
This makes sense in parallel with the image of the Baḥr Fāris, or Persian Gulf-Indian Ocean, shown below, which, as a firmly Muslim sea, traditionally enjoyed the senior status of resembling the Prophet's tooth.
Image created by Karen Pinto, based on an Ottoman world map from the Suleymaniye Library. See more images like this in Karen Pinto's collection of Islamic maps on Pixeum.
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Andrew Gu
(@amg11)
Aug 06 2024
0.54
0.39
West-East Axis Across the Central Heart of the Mediterranean
Crowned by the mythical Jabal al-Qilāl, which may be the Pillars of Hercules, the islands of Sicily, Crete, and Cyprus carve a West-East axis in distinctive red and gold. The line stretches from the mouth of the Mediterranean to the thughur al-shāmiyya--the border with Byzantium--in northern Syria and southeast Anatolia.
Are these islands stepping stones which connect the southern Muslim and northern Christian halves of the sea? Or should we read them as a line of division, splitting the Mediterranean into Muslim and Christian worlds?
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Andrew Gu
(@amg11)
Aug 06 2024
0.07
0.82
South-North Axis: Nile Delta to Bosphorus
Reinforcing the West-East island axis is another South-North line from the Nile Delta to the Bosphorus. Placed together, they reveal an underlying source of Muslim anxiety with this foreign, Roman sea: a Christian cross.
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Andrew Gu
(@amg11)
Aug 06 2024
0.54
1.11
Amid three rivers, the Jayḥān, Sayḥān, and Baradān, slashed into the eastern coast, we find the eye of the Muslim cartographer, looking out on the Mediterranean from the contested frontier between the Roman Byzantine and Muslim worlds: the thughūr al-shāmiyya.
For no less than seven centuries, Muslims battled for control of this crucial entrance, marked by two of the rivers of Paradise, into Anatolia from northern Syria, first with Byzantine forces and then with Crusaders and Armenians.
The Muslim cartographic vision of the Mediterranean stands atop a violent battleground.
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Andrew Gu
(@amg11)
Aug 05 2024
0.05
1.25
Ever since the success of my MA essay at Columbia University on the Mediterranean in the Islamic cartographic imagination, I have been chasing Islamic maps in manuscript libraries around the world, and I have assembled a massive archive of images (about 3,000 strong), many of which have not been published before. I simply love working on them and have devoted my life to understanding them and explaining them to the world.
If you'd like to explore more about medieval Islamic understandings of the Mediterranean, see my articles below in the DOT text:
“In God’s Eyes: The Sacrality of the Seas in the Islamic Cartographic Vision.” Espacio, Tiempo, y Forma, Serie VII, Historia del Arte, vol. 5, no. 1, 2017, pp. 55-79. http:// revistas.uned.es/index.php/ETFVII/issue/view/961.
"Güneydoğu Anadolu'nun en Tartişmali Ortaçağ siniri: sugûru’l şâmiyye’nin islami kartografik vizyonunun incelenmesi,” (“Southeastern Anatolia‘s Most Contested Medieval Border: Examining the Islamic Cartographic Vision of the Thughûr al-Shâmiyya”), in Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nda Coğrafya ve Kartografya/Geography and Cartography in the Ottoman Empire, eds. Mahmut Ak and Ahmet Üstüner, (forthcoming İstanbul Üniversitesi Yayınevi, 2024).
Created by Karen Pinto in close collaboration with Andrew Gu, Summer 2024 intern for Pixeum.
Scripted and presented by Karen Pinto.
Edited by the brilliant Andrew Gu.
Thanks to Samer Issa for suggestions and to Leiden University Library for generously making high-res images of Or. 3101 available for research use.
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Exhibit ID:597
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Harmony Masks Conflict: The Mediterranean in the Medieval Islamic Imagination - Karen Pinto
Harmony Masks Conflict: The Mediterranean in the Medieval Islamic Imagination - Karen Pinto
Professor Karen Pinto has spent three decades at the forefront of the study of Islamic cartographic history. Her first book, Medieval Islamic Maps: An Exploration, came out in 2016, and she is currently working on a second, focusing on Islamic maps of the Mediterranean. Today, she is an Associate Scholar in the Religious Studies Department at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
"When I was a graduate student at Columbia in 1991, my professor, the late but incredibly great Olivia Remie Constable (1961-2014), suggested that I write a seminar paper on the medieval Muslim geographers. That sent me to the dark recessed of the Islamic history and geography collection on the 11th floor of the Butler Library. There I, literally, tripped over Konrad Miller’s late 1920’s extensive 6 volume: Mappae Arabicae: Arabische Welt und Länderkarten des 9–13. Jahrunderts. (6 vols. Stuttgart, 1926–1931) black and white reprints of hundreds of medieval Islamic maps hidden in Oriental manuscripts hitherto little known in the western history of cartography world.
Miller’s dusty, crumbling black-and-white reprints of medieval Islamic maps of the Mediterranean, formed the basis of my first major work on the subject: “Ṣūrat Baḥr al-Rūm: The Mediterranean in the Medieval Muslim Cartographical Imagination,” my MA Essay at Columbia U that went on to win SSRC’s 1992 Ibn Khaldun Prize. That experience led, in turn, to a life-long obsession and hunt for maps scattered in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish manuscript libraries worldwide that resulted in her first book on Islamic maps of the world in “Medieval Islamic Maps: An Introduction” (Chicago, 2016) and a collection of some three thousand images of maps, many not reprinted.
