“Ṣūrat al-Maghrib” = Typical Medieval Islamicate map of ‘the West’ — i.e. Iberian Peninsula and North Africa

At first glance the typical medieval Islamicate map of ‘the West’ —Surat al-Maghrib—strikes us as nothing more than a quaint abstraction of circles, triangles and oblong shapes ornately adorned with vivid pigments. Closer study presents a more complex image, however, of passion and conflict; of attraction and revulsion; of love and hate. Indeed, the Maghrib map is by far the most dissonant image in the extant collection of medieval Arabic and Persian maps and, as such, one of the most engaging. Whereas all the other images have a veneer of harmony and balance, this one is—by deliberate design—passionately conflicted. It is the discord of desire inlaid within the Muslim pictographs of the Maghrib that is the focus of my work of the Maghrib map, the over-arching question being how did medieval Islamic cartographers settle on such a strange-looking image as a representation of the western Mediterranean– in particular, North Africa, Islamic Iberia, and Sicily? Answering this question requires immersing ourselves in the map-image itself, and takes us through a series of subliminal messages ranging from intra-Islamic imperial ambitions to erotic and nostalgic Andalusian poetry.

The empirical basis of this analysis comes from the well-known KMMS example of MS. Or. 3101 housed at the Rijksuniversitat library in Leiden. Firmly dated to 1193 CE and of Sicilian provenance, this Maghrib map of Leiden's Or. 3101 is chosen here as the focus for discussion because of its dramatic stylized forms, which usefully facilitate analysis of how symmetry works in these portraits of ‘the West'.

This dot-story only briefly skims the surface of this map. For those interested in greater detail please see full article “Passion and conflict: Medieval Islamic views of the West”: https://www.academia.edu/3630073/Passion_and_conflict_medieval_Islamic_views_of_the_West

Note that the bulk of the medieval Islamic cartographic tradition is characterized by emblematic images of striking geometric form that symbolize – in Atlas-like fashion – particular parts of the Islamic world to the familiar viewer. They comprise a major carto-geographic manuscript tradition known by the universal title of Kitab al-Masalik wa al-Mamalik (Book of Roads and Kingdoms) that was copied with major and minor variations throughout the Islamic world for eight centuries. It was a stylized amimetic vision restricted to the literati and, specifically, to the readers, collectors, commissioners, writers and copyists of the particular geographic texts within which these maps are encased. The plethora of extant copies dating from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries produced all over the Islamic world – including Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt, North Africa, Anatolia, and even India – testifies to the long-lasting and widespread popularity of a particular medieval Islamic cartographic vision. Each manuscript typically contains twenty-one iconic maps starting with an image of the world, then the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian Ocean, the Maghrib (North Africa and Andalusia), Egypt, Syria, the Mediterranean, upper and lower Iraq, as well as twelve maps devoted to the Iranian provinces, beginning with Khuzistan and ending in Khurasan, including maps of Sind and Transoxiana.

If you want to see more examples check out Pixeum exhibition 412 which contains “Islamic Maps from the Collection of Karen Pinto”: https://pixeum.org/exhibits/412/islamic-maps-from-the-collection-of-karen-pinto

If you have chance do check out my book on “Medieval Islamic Maps”  

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo17703325.html

This Muslim map of the Maghrib is not a simple rendering of geopolitical space. Rather it is a pictograph of very deliberate design made from the perspective of the eastern heartlands of the medieval Islamic world (Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, Iraq and Iran) graphically representing the reigning view among the eastern Muslim elite of the far West. Unlike most of the other KMMS maps, which face South, this map has West on top. This deliberate switch in orientation serves to emphasize that the vision of the Muslim cartographer is from the bottom of the map looking up—from the East looking West— through the neck of the Mediterranean past North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula.

One is struck immediately by the dramatic contrast between the forms that make up this medieval Islamicate KMMS map of the Maghrib: the perpendicular North African landmass (on the left) jostling for attention with the semi-circular Iberian peninsula (on the right). In between the two, the Mediterranean intervenes. 

This Islamicate depiction represents a distinct departure from the symmetry of the full Mediterranean map. See, Pinto’s Pixeum Dot Story of the Mediterranean: “Islamo-Christian Cartographic Frontiers: Views from Medieval Islamic Maps of the Mediterranean.” 
https://pixeum.org/s/G6OPnhYvfa

Whereas the Mediterranean map emphasizes a symmetrically harmonious balance of forms, the image of the Maghrib is asymmetric and unbalanced. The eye is drawn to a multitude of conflicting, off-centre focal points that form a patchwork of triangulated gazes laid seemingly haphazardly one over the other. 

I will focus on decoding each layer of ‘gaze', starting with the most prominently marked sites and working through progressively more subtle planes demarcated by locations of lesser significance.

Our eye is initially confused and uncertain and wanders between all the circles and half circles—red, black, and dusty plum colored.

At first, red circles jump out at us, especially the biggest red circle on the map that is tucked away in the lower right hand corner of the map, off-center from the main focus of the image. Encased within the blue waters of the Mediterranean, the Arabic label of “Jazīrat Ṣiqilliya” announced it to be the island of Sicily. 

But why would the island of Sicily feature so prominently on a map whose central focus according to it’s title is North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula? 

An answer arises from the specificity of the manuscript within which this particular map is housed. It is a twelfth-century copy of al-Iṣṭakhrī’s KMMS (Kitāb al-Masālik wa-al-Mamālik (Book of Routes and Realms) with a very clear colophon date of 589 AH/ 1193 CE that, on the basis of manuscript illustration details and a unique stamp and signature, yours truly 😉 has identified as a production of late 12th century Norman Sicily. Furthermore, I believe it was owned by the famous conqueror Frederick II, the first Holy Roman Emperor, who was born and raised in Sicily and went on to be one of medieval Europe’s greatest conquerors—uniter of western Europe hence his honorific title in Latin of Stupor Mundi (Wonder of the World). Known as such because of his brilliant mind and insatiable Renaissance-like intellectual curiosity, it is tempting to think that the great Frederick II may have been weaned on world geography through this Arabic KMMS manuscript. It may even have been one of his favorites as the two curious signatures below the colophon that appear to be a sort of double Latin/Arabic visual teaser spelling out the first part of Frederick’s name suggests.

 

This next big circle that draws our eye is not complete and not quite red but rather a reddish-purple semi-circle located along the upper left flank of North Africa demarcating the southern Moroccan entrepôt of Sijilmasa famous as the North African hub for the lucrative West African gold trade. The route to West Africa via the southern Sahara was dangerous and plagued with sandstorms. 

West African gold was prized as the highest-quality gold of the medieval period. Ronald Messier, a numismatist and reigning expert on Sijilmasa, notes that 25–30 per cent of the gold that circulated in the Middle Ages passed through Sijilamasa, and during the city's zenith, under the Almoravids (1056–1147), there was an abundance of gold coin mints. During eleventh–thirteenth centuries, Sijilmasa was the financial and business capital of the Islamic West: ‘it was a focal point where Africa, Europe, and the Middle East met during the Middle Ages.' Through Sijilmasa large quantities of African gold and slaves made their way to Europe and the eastern Muslim world.  

The map of the Maghrib makes no mistake about this. Sijilmasa may have been on the edge of the West, but it is still represented on the map as one of the most important places of the Maghribian realm. 

Completing the triad of big reddish-brown-orange-purplish circles is the famous city of Cordoba (Qurṭuba in Arabic) that was the central hub of Islamic Andalusia. As the capital of the rebel Umayyad Emirate (later Caliphate), established by ‘Abd al-Rahman I in 756, Cordoba came to be ranked as one of the ornaments of the Muslim world. 

The prominence accorded to Cordoba in this late twelfth century map is, however, a curious feature. This map was made during the period of the Almohads, one of the two North African Berber dynasties that governed Islamic Spain, two centuries after the city's heyday. By this time, other places, such as Seville, had superseded Cordoba in importance.

One explanation for Cordoba's exaggerated prominence on this twelfth-century map is that the KMMS image of the Iberian peninsula was frozen in time sometime between the the 8th and 10th centuries. Another explanation is that a romanticized memory of the greatness of Cordoba lingered on in spite of the fact that the city was no longer the centre of power in Andalus by the 12th century. 

At its apex during the tenth century, Cordoba had a population of around 100,000, some 900 baths, thousands of shops, seventy libraries, including the Caliphal library which is said to have housed around 400,000 books, and a reputation as one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the medieval Islamic world. It was the cultural capital of the Muslim West. Poets and artists flocked to the city, and it gained a reputation as the third most splendid city and cultural centre in the Muslim world after Baghdad and Cairo. It was an emporium for gold and goods that was envied in the heartlands of the Muslim East and came to be known in European circles as ‘the brilliant ornament of the world that shone in the west'

The main gaze of the image is deliberately unbalanced by plethora of additional site markers. Note, for instance, the prominent demarcation of two additional sites also indicated by red markers: Mārtula (Mértola) on the westernmost end of the Iberian peninsula and Zawila on the easternmost end of the North African landmass [where this marker for number #7 is located]. These need to be read as a further reinforcement of the conflict-ridden gold trading grid [as indicated by the prominence given to Sijilmasa discussed earlier in connection with marker #5] ‘sub-imposed' below the layer of the main Cordoba–Sijilmasa–Sicily gaze [indicated by markers 4-5-6 and the red triangle linking them] Mértola [end point of red line] in western Iberia, a Berber stronghold, was protected from eastern Muslim interference by its location at the western extremity of the Iberian peninsula. It would have provided an alternative protected route for gold from North Africa to Cordoba. Zawila, on the other hand, provided an alternative route from the Mediterranean through the Sahara to the gold reserves of the West African sites of Ghana and Kanem. The eleventh-century Andalusian Muslim geographer al-Bakri described Zawila as “a town without walls . . . situated in the midst of the desert . . . the first point of the land of the Sudan . . . [where] caravans meet and radiate out in all directions.” These two smaller red sites locate alternative angles of gaze—‘key' routes of movement— that exist at an intermediate level below the main triangle of focus that governs the map but above the level of a plethora of smaller markers in black that dot its surface.

The use of red marker for Mértola comes as a surprise because it is barely remembered in the history of Islamic Portugal today—in fact I, Karen Pinto, was the first scholar to correctly identify it on KMMS maps of the Maghrib. It only gained in importance after the North African Berbers, the Almoravids (1050-1147) took over control of Andalusia and overthrew the fading power of the Umayyad caliphate of Andalus. Since the 2000’s it has gained attention as an important site of Islamic occupation of Portugal with many artifacts from the Muslim period that have resulted in no less than 7 museums devoted to Islamic art in the sleepy small but picturesque Portuguese town resulting in a burst of new articles on and Mértola and the major role it played as a key port connecting North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula in a lucrative trade. For further reading see: https://www.camertola.pt/en/info/museum-town-mértola and https://www.aramcoworld.com/articles/2024/pieces-of-the-past-mrtola-portugal-rediscovers-its-islamic-roots
and https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/6/10/the-portuguese-rediscovering-their-countrys-muslim-past
For greater scholarly detail on the Almoravids and the role that Portuguese Mértola played for their century of rule of Andalus see: https://escholarship.org/content/qt4916z508/qt4916z508_noSplash_fc05c862cd0fc078d86f70982cd9d81d.pdf?t=qcsupy

The reason for the importance this map accords to the Libyan town of Zawila is another puzzle. Sources tell us that is considered one of the oldest urban centers in Libya and that it had early trade relations with Egypt and the oases of Sudan. Because of this it developed a privileged position on the trans-Saharan trade networks and given that Mértola was key for trade too we could read the importance that the KMMS map accords to these now almost forgotten sites is that they were crucial end-points on the important Sub-Saharan trade network. Just like Mértola it is considered an important Islamic heritage site even though with the exception of a few important early Islamic grave sites and one of the earliest mosques in Libya, the site has all but disappeared. 

One of the three remaining gates of historic Fatimid Cairo is called “Bab Zawila” reinforcing the importance accorded the site by the KMMS maps even though we no longer fully grasp why this site was given so much significance.

Chasing mysteries like Zawila and Mértula is one of the reasons these maps are so fascinating because they open up new windows onto history that the mainstream has long since forgotten. 

What do the profuse array of smaller half-and full-moon markers in black outlined with ray-like hatchings radiating out from Cordoba on the Iberian mainland and hugging the coastal flanks of North Africa indicate? Within this third layer of sites the illustrator generally does not exploit the size of the marker to indicate the significance of places. That some places are provided a berth on the map at all, when many other sites were omitted, appears to be the approach to visual privileging. 

In deliberate contrast to the Iberian peninsula the map seems to suggest that there were no key towns in North Africa around which other places were situated. Instead a string of seemingly randomly selected coastal sites on the Atlantic coast run along the Mediterranean coast or parallel to it, while significant historical sites such as Tangiers, Ceuta, Nakur and Malila are left out. The inner line, running parallel to the coast, appears to be a demarcation for the chief commercial and military artery of the early Muslim armies and traders. This route along the edge of the Sahara ran from Cairo to the far-west Moroccan city of Tahart. It was preferred by early Muslim conquerors because it bypassed the coast where they were at the mercy of the Byzantine fleet. Known as the Qairawan corridor, the route is named for the city of the Qairawan (marked on the map), an important place of learning and culture, which began as a Muslim garrison and grew to become one of the central Muslim cities in the region. Hence the naming of the route that ran all the way from Cairo, passing through Barqa, Shatif, to the far-western Moroccan city of Tahart—all except Cairo marked on the North African flank of the map. Tahart benefited from its location on the Qairawan corridor. Lying at the nexus of the West African gold route, and the North African point of trade with Muslim Spain, Tahart became one of the richest cities in the region. 

The sites on the Iberian peninsula, on the other hand, radiate out in all directions from the centre. In doing so, they stress the roundness of the form used to represent the Iberian landmass and weight the image towards a single central focal point: Cordoba [marked #6 and previously discussed]. All the places of Muslim space in Iberia are arrayed in triangular radial sectors around the central Cordoban node further emphasizing the important centrality of Cordoba in the picture of Muslim Andalusia.

The northernmost three sectors are a visual reference to the main frontier areas, which divided Muslim and Christian Spain [see next #9]. This was a crucial buffer zone between the Umayyad kingdom and the Rumiyya's – ie. Christians – lurking beyond the ever-shifting Duero line. Next to these three triangles representing the Christian–Muslim frontier border zones lies the prosperous heart of Muslim Andalus, from Santarem to Tortosa on the eastern flank of the Iberian peninsula. We can presume that the selection of sites marked in this segment, Cordoba [6] at the centre, were the places that the cartographers considered most important in the Andalusi interior.

Note that two place markers in the interior of Andalus, in the north-eastern quadrant, are graced with larger black markers: Wadi al-Hijara (known today as Guadalajara) [location of this dot 8] and Turtusha (Tortosa). The two together create the line of yet another level of gaze tucked beneath the dominant Cordoba–Sijilmasa–Sicily gaze. The emphasis is related to the fact that both sites figured prominently as frontier towns with key fortresses protecting the northern boundaries of the Andalusi realm.

 

Franks, Saxons, Basques

Tucked away along the lower eastern edge, the Muslim cartographer relegated the Christian kingdoms of the Franks, the Galicians and the Saxons as if but a minor inconvenience taking up the small edge of one flank—symbolizing the ever shifting Duero line. In doing so the Muslim cartographer is deliberately minimizing the impact of the Christian Reconquista efforts that began as early as 722 and continued over the course of 7 centuries gaining momentum and eventually ejecting the Muslims completely from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492 with the conquest of the last city-state hold out of Granada–coincidentally just as Columbus was discovering the Americas!

Many books have been written on the subject of the Reconquista so I will not dwell on the details here as I am not an expert in them. I do, however, recommend to you the work of my mentor, Brian Catlos, who has written extensively on the subject including The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims of Catalonia and Aragon, 1050–1300 (Cambridge: 2004), Infidel Kings and Unholy Warriors: Power, Faith and Violence in the Age of Crusade and Jihad (Farrer, Straus & Giroux: 2014), Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, 1050–ca. 1615 (Cambridge: 2014) and Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain (Basic: 2018). See: https://www.colorado.edu/rlst/brian-catlos

 

Jabal al-Qilāl = Mythical Pillars of Hercules Guarding the Mouth of the Mediterranean or—as we familiarly know it today—good ol’ Gibralter!

Most medieval Islamic maps of the Mediterranean and the Maghrib contain a curious yet persistent anomaly: a triangular-shaped island that guards the mouth of the Mediterranean.  The “Jabal al-Qilāl” as it is called in Arabic has thus far defied explanation.  It is one the most prominent feature on the Muslim maps, often adorned in bright colors with elaborate and sometimes forbidding markings.  My quest to uncover the meaning of the Jabal al-Qilāl, which I identify as the Muslim pillar of Hercules of yore, has led me through a rich sampling of maps, myth, and erotic Arabic poetry.

This is not the place nor space to delve into all the scintillating details of the mysterious Jabal al-Qilāl and  theories about it’s location along with the never-ending error connecting it to medieval Europe’s Fraxinetum (today’s Switzerland) bequeathed to us scholars by misguided 18th and 19th century Orientalists that was spawned out of the shifting location of this mysterious island in medieval Islamic maps from the mouth of the Mediterranean to its location further into the Mediterranean astride the Iberian Peninsula in front of the island of Sicily on this Maghrib as indicated by this point 10. [see Jabal al-Qilal‘s location at the “mouth of the Mediterranean” on Pixeum exhibition 597].

I will be further addressing the mystery of “Jabal al-Qilāl” in my forthcoming book on “The Mediterranean in the Islamic Cartographic Imagination.” 

Until then, please consult earlier publications on this subject, including: Pinto, "Surat Bahr al-Rum,” 228-33 https://www.academia.edu/1153023/Surat_Bahr_al_Rum_Picture_of_the_Sea_of_Byzantium_Possible_Meanings_Underlying_the_Forms

and “Passion and Conflict,” 209-215 https://www.academia.edu/3630073/Passion_and_conflict_medieval_Islamic_views_of_the_West

See also the work of Jonathan Jarrett, "Nests of Pirates?”, 198-222: https://www.academia.edu/39762510/Nests_of_Pirates_the_Balearic_Islands_and_la_Garde_Freinet_compared

who argues convincingly that with “Jabal al-Qilāl” on the Maghrib maps we may be looking at the earliest cartographic reference to the Balearics. Jarret’s theory could be plausible for the regional Maghrib case but not for the macro Mediterranean view in which the island settles comfortably into it’s front row seat at the top of the KMMS map of the Mediterranean, squarely between the landmasses of North Africa and Spain, from where the Jabal al-Qilāl dominates the entrance out of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic exactly as it’s misnomered twin—Gibralter—does! Hence the deduction that at least in the Mediterranean maps Jabal al-Qilāl is probably the medieval Islamic reference to what we refer to today as Gibralter. It is possible that on these Magrib maps that the intention was the Balearics. Since no definitive answer exists anywhere only suppositions and deductions the truth is that Jabal al-Qilāl will probably remain an unresolved mystery forever! 

The Jabal al-Qilāl appears to be linked in size and form to another mountain indicated on the Iberian Peninsula that is named Jabal al-Tariq after the famous Arab conqueror—Tariq ibn Ziyad—who initiated the Lightening Conquest of the Iberian Peninsula when he crossed over the Straits of Gibralter in the fateful year of 711 with a small battalion of under 2,000 men and proceeded to wipe out the Visigoths with amazing ease—a hallmark of rapid Muslim conquests from the early 7th century onwards soon after the revelation of Islam. In that one year of 711 the Muslim armies swept through and taken control of most of Spain and Portugal including Cordoba and Seville all the way up to Toledo and Guadalajara. By the end of that decade, in 719, they took Barcelona and Narbonne but then Muslim progress was stalled by strident Christian resistance in the North courtesy of the Franks, Saxons, and Galicians who are also marked on this map as discussed in dot 9. 

For those interested in a detailed account of the Muslim conquests of Spain and Portugal from 711 onwards, I recommend the excellent Wiki entry on the subject from which the map below is taken:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquest_of_the_Iberian_Peninsula

 

In the end, after all the specifics of places and emphases, it is the underlying template of the map, upon which the landforms are conceived, that unites the disparate renditions of the Maghrib to provide a coherent conception of the West in the Islamic cartographic imagination: the perpendicular North African coast versus the circular Iberian peninsula with the Mediterranean gushing up in between them like a fountain. How should we read this fundamental motif? Is it nothing more than stylized geometry – a semicircle, a rounded rectangle, and a triangular bottleneck shape with a bunch of smaller circles thrown in for good measure? If we strip the map of its clutter of place names, markers and islands, what do we see?

Probably best for us to discuss this in the context of another image of this map minus all the dots and arrows :)

 

Site by site decoding and listing of all the names and places on the Maghrib map for you to peruse if you are curious about discovering more.

Modern Map Layout of Maghrib Map Places done by last year’s student and  later Pixeum Summer Intern Summer 2024, Andrew Gu. 

Analysis of Shape and Form minus clutter of dot-story dots and lines. What do you see? 

🫣