Exhibits containing tag : islamic-maps

Passion & Conflict: Islamicate Maps of the Maghrib / ‘the West’ (Iberian Peninsula and North Africa)

KMMS Maghrib MapsFor more information on these 8th-15th century KMMS maps of North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula check out this detailed article on the subject by Karen Pinto, “Interpretation, Intention, and Impact: Andalusi Arab and Norman Sicilian Examples of Islamo-Christian Cartographic Translation”: https://www.academia.edu/37439184/Interpretation_Intention_and_Impact_Andalusi_Arab_and_Norman_Sicilian_Examples_of_Islamo_Christian_Cartographic_Translation 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-pintoIf you have chance do check out my book on “Medieval Islamic Maps”  https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo17703325.html 

Balkhi School of Geographers

Balkhi School of Geographershttps://www.perplexity.ai/search/What-are-the-NUIX0SC0TLqCR8BcVWTRNg?s=c https://www.perplexity.ai/search/What-were-the-wDHZqe2sRVqJ.gHkCPGGug?s=c Source: FranPritchettSource: Fran Pritchett Midieval MapsSource: Fran Pritchett Maps pageSource: Fran Pritchett main pageLink: Fran Pritchett Columbia Universityi40430i40431

Islamic Maps from the Collection of Karen Pinto

Mapmaking in Islamicate Societies

.Mapmaking in Islamic SocietiesHundreds of maps survive mostly in manuscripts drawn and colored by unknown people over a millennium in numerous different societies that were ruled mostly by men but also occasionally by women adhering to different Islamic denominations. The manuscripts with maps are often undated and provide rarely information about the place of production. How then can we know when and where or by what kind of person they were made? Colors, styles of script, also called calligraphy, the type of paper and occasionally of card board, traces of instruments or lack of them, content features of the maps, and notes on cover or end pages, at the margins, or on other parts of the manuscript and the langue/s used in the manuscript can help us identifying at least the period, region, culture or disciplinary context of the people who drew the maps – scribes, painters and other craftsmen, scholars, captains, soldiers, court historians and possibly other professionals and amateurs.This exhibit is a brief introduction into some of the main domains where maps were used as illustrations of texts, as carriers of independent information, as educational tools, or as witnesses of cross-cultural contacts and interests.Generally, four classes of maps are recognized:1. maps derived in some way or the other from Ptolemy's Geography2. maps connected somehow with pre-Islamic Iranian political geography3. maps reflecting connections with cartographic developments in European Christian cultures4. narrative maps.This classification is admittedly too narrow to do justice to the many different specimens that survive in many libraries and museums across the globe. It somehow also hides what is in my view the main, unifying feature of almost all maps from Islamic societies that I have seen: the multiplicity of their cultural features. The only class that does not bring together elements from at least two other classes is number 4.In addition to the maps that can be included into one of the four classes there are exceptional specimens which differ from any of the standards represented by them.In this introduction, we show a few examples of each of the four classes and of the exceptions.Based on the work of Sonja Brentjes.Academia.edu