Islamic Maps from the Collection of 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. 

Islamo-Christian Cartographic Frontiers: Views from Medieval Islamic Maps of the Mediterranean

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. 

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